The 9 Core Desires That Drive You
The Real Motives Deeper Than Personality
The same behavior can have a completely different heart behind it. Read the nine core desires to see why certain scenes shake you more than others, along with ways to find and handle your own desire.
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Friday night, three friends are planning a trip. One shows up with the accommodation and route laid out in a spreadsheet, one holds back with “I'm fine with anything, do whatever's easiest for you guys,” and one glances at the spreadsheet and laughs, “Can't we just figure it out when we get there?” From the outside, it's a scene where a meticulous person, an easygoing person and a free spirit have ended up at the same table.
But ask the friend who made the spreadsheet why they went to all that trouble, and the answer might surprise you. It could be anxiety that the trip might go wrong, a wish to see everyone having a good time, or a wish to be recognized for a well-made plan. Behind the same single spreadsheet sit completely different hearts. This piece is about that heart beneath behavior: the desires that move you.
Grain is the “how,” desire is the “why”
Statements like “I'm pretty high in sociability” or “I'm a planner” explain how you behave. But they don't tell you why you behave that way. Desire is what fills in that blank.
Take people with a high-accommodation grain, for example. They generally go along with others well. But one does it because they want to be loved, another because they want peace without conflict, and another because they believe it's the right thing to do. The behavior is the same, yet what puts them at ease when it's met and what makes them crumble when it's blocked are different. When grain alone can't explain “Why do I get so shaken in this particular scene?”, looking at desire gives you a thread to pull.
The nine desires at a glance
There's a framework that sorts human motivation into nine branches. It's widely known as the Enneagram, but here we'll borrow it only as a mirror for looking at yourself, not as a tool for passing judgment on people.
| Desire | When it's met | What you often say when it's shaken |
|---|---|---|
| The wish to live rightly | When you feel you've done it the way it should be done | “Isn't this a bit off?” |
| The wish to be loved and needed | When you've been of help to someone | “I'm fine, you go first.” |
| The wish to be recognized and to achieve | When you've proven it with results | “I can't stop now.” |
| The wish to be special and true | When someone recognizes what makes you you | “Nobody really knows me.” |
| The wish to know and understand | When you feel you've fully grasped it | “Let me look into it a bit more before I decide.” |
| The wish to feel safe | When you have people to trust and a backup plan | “What if something goes wrong?” |
| The wish to be free and joyful | When your options are open | “That's way too stifling.” |
| The wish to be strong and protect yourself | When you get to decide your own affairs | “I'll handle it myself.” |
| The wish for peace | When everyone looks at ease | “I'm fine with anything.” |
Usually one or two rows tug at you in particular. You don't have to pick just one. It's actually more natural for the closest one to have a second one mixed in.
Desires come into focus in the scenes that shake you
When a desire is being met, it's like air: hard to see. It shows itself when it's blocked, when you feel strangely hurt, unusually angry, or keep chewing on something for a long time. If something that looks trivial to others shook you hard, there's a good chance your desire is caught up in it.
Also, the you around people easily hides your desires. If someone who's easygoing and cooperative out in the world falls apart when alone with “Why does nobody notice how hard I try?”, that falling apart is an arrow pointing at a desire. That's why, when looking for your desire, the you alone is a better clue than your outer self.
When grain and desire pull different ways
When your grain and your desire point in the same direction, life is relatively easy. If you have a high-sociability grain and a strong wish to be loved, simply being among people fills both at once.
But when the two pull different ways, a fatigue that's hard to explain sets in. Someone with a high-sociability grain whose biggest wish is to know and understand mingles better than anyone at gatherings, yet inside keeps missing the time to dig into things alone. Someone with a high-accommodation grain and a strong wish to protect themselves goes along well with everyone on the outside, while inside piling up frustration: “Why don't I ever get to decide my own affairs?” If everything looks fine from the outside but you alone keep feeling that something doesn't fit, it's worth checking whether your grain and your desire are facing different directions.
In that case, the answer isn't changing your grain. Leave the you who mingles well as it is, and set aside a separate place where your desire can be met. In a week packed with plans, block off half a day for digging into something alone before anything else; in places where you do a lot of going along, make sure there's at least one small thing you get to decide.
Five ways to find and handle your desire
- Write down three recent scenes that shook you hard. Things that hurt, things that made you strangely angry, things that stayed with you unusually long. Then look for what the three have in common. If a sentence like “all three were moments when my effort was taken for granted” comes out, that's where your desire sits.
- Recall the compliment that stayed with you longest. If the scenes that shook you are the shadow of your desire, the compliment that stayed is a scene where it was met. Whether it was “you saved me” that stayed, or “you're really something else,” points to a different place.
- Ask “why?” twice about your habits. Ask for the reason behind habits like making plans, giving way, or working late. If a first answer like “because I hate being wrong” is followed by a second, like “because being wrong would make me someone who falls short,” the desire lives in that second answer.
- Ask in words instead of waiting to be guessed. If it's the wish to be recognized, try “Could you tell me in a word what you thought of this one?”; if it's the wish to feel safe, “If the schedule changes, just let me know a day ahead.” Asking for what you need in one sentence is far better for the relationship than piling up hurt while waiting for someone to notice.
- Try guessing the desires of people close to you, too. When you catch yourself thinking “Why do they go that far?”, look at the table again and consider what that person is trying to protect. Like telling the friend who made the trip spreadsheet “Thanks to you, I feel at ease” instead of “You're way too meticulous.”
What this doesn't mean
- The nine branches aren't a classification that sorts people into nine boxes. Everyone has a little of all nine, and the only difference is which one rings loudest.
- Desire isn't an excuse for behavior. It's not “I'm someone who wants recognition, so I can't help it.” It's for knowing that feeling and choosing how to handle it.
- This framework is a mirror for self-understanding, not a diagnosis that rules on your state of mind. You don't need to pin yourself down with a single table, either.
- The desire that rings loudest may look different depending on the season of life and the setting. You don't have to conclude that the row that caught you now will stay the same forever.
Wrapping up
If your personality traits tell you how you move, desire tells you why you move that way. Look at the two together, and understanding moves into the place where you used to blame yourself. You can read more about understanding yourself through five personality traits in When MBTI doesn't fit, and about how the same perfectionism can have different roots in Perfectionism, strength or shackle?.
Your free personality test results show five personality traits for the you around people and the you alone, along with which of the nine desires you're closest to. Set the rows that tugged at you in the table next to your results, and the reasons beneath your behavior get a little clearer.
This piece is written to help you understand yourself and does not replace psychological diagnosis or treatment.
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