Prefer to listen? I often record podcast versions of my favorite essays and share them through Substack’s audio feature. You can listen to the first two essays in this series by clicking the podcast button above.
What do you really, really want? The first answer… hate to break it to you but it’s often far from true.
Whatever popped into your mind just now—be honest—how much of it is still shaped by survival? By performance? By someone else’s idea of success?
In this six part series I am going to share the secret to building desire and pleasure in the body. This series was originally published for my private email list.
In the first article in this series, we looked at how people spend years chasing things that never truly satisfy them. The wrong relationship. The “right” career. The curated, idealized life that ends up feeling like a trap. They get the thing—and then they hate it.
This week, I want to go deeper. Inspired by a recent episode of Mel Robbins’ podcast on science-backed manifesting, I’ve been thinking about how little we understand about what we actually want. There’s so much advice out there about goal-setting and visualizing your future—but most of it skips the hardest part: desire isn’t very easy to access in our busy, disconnected world.
And most people don’t know how.
The Problem Isn’t Goal-Setting—It’s Wanting the Wrong Thing
I’ve worked with clients who were consumed with getting someone back—a partner who never respected them, never chose them. I’ve worked with people who built careers that made them miserable, but the prestige kept them locked in place. People climb all manner of life mountains only to realize the view at the top is one they never even wanted.
And yet, the alternative—having no direction—is worse. People with no framework for desire don’t come across as free; they seem lost. The spark is missing. Their lives don’t move. They don’t ask for more, because they’ve stopped expecting anything to change.
It turns out, solving problems isn’t the hard part. The hard part is helping someone uncover what they want badly enough to struggle for. To want something real, something whole, something rooted in this life—not fantasy—you have to be willing to stay in the arena. Even when it hurts.
True desire doesn’t ask you to avoid failure.
It asks you to invite it.
Desire Is Born in the Arena
There’s a quote Theodore Roosevelt wrote that Brené Brown often repeats. It begins:
“It is not the critic who counts... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... who errs, who comes short again and again... but who does actually strive to do the deeds...”
Most people are spectators in their own lives. They’re analyzing, planning, fantasizing—but not participating. Desire doesn’t live in the bleachers. It lives in the grit of the arena.
That’s the space I hold for my clients. Not just to reflect, but to engage. To stay in the room when it gets uncomfortable. To not apologize for the breakup or the failed launch or the messy attempt at intimacy. Desire doesn’t show up when you sit around thinking about what might work the best.
It shows up in the doing.
You Don’t Think Your Way to Desire—You Experiment Your Way There
Desire isn’t something you decide. It’s something you discover. You learn what you want by trying things. By dating and fumbling. By saying yes to a new offer and realizing halfway through that it’s not quite it—and then adjusting. You test, you fail, and in that process, you refine.
Desire gets clearer every time you survive the fall and get back up. You stop chasing hollow highs. You stop pretending your half-dead relationship is enough. You start listening to what your body does when you try something new. How you breathe when you speak certain words out loud.
That’s the difference between real desire and fantasy.
One is a drug. The other is a direction.
Why Most People Bail
Staying in the arena isn’t glamorous. It’s hard. Your nervous system wants to flee. Your body floods with shame or fear or grief the moment you open your mouth and speak what you want. That’s why so many people stay quiet, or pivot into self-sabotage.
They mistake failure for proof they were never supposed to try.
But that’s not what failure means. Failure means you’re in it. You’re awake. You’re not numbing or scrolling or obsessing over someone who ghosted you three years ago. You’re alive in your life.
That’s what I teach: how to stay present when every cell in your body wants to run.
The Alchemy of Desire
You don’t need a perfect plan. You need a real starting point. And that comes from fusing two things:
The first is truth—brutal, unflinching honesty about your current reality. Not the story. Not the spin. Just the facts.
The second is embodied action—taking steps with your whole self on board. Even if you’re unsure. Even if you’re scared.
When those two meet, you begin to access something sacred. The hum of clarity. The warmth of real momentum. Desire starts to light up from within. Not all at once—but enough to keep going.
You stop outsourcing your vision to a trend. You stop mimicking other people’s wins. You stop needing to be perfect to participate.
And you start building a life you actually want to stay in.
Read the full desire series: Week 1; Week 2; Week 3, Week 4; Week 5; Week 6
I write primarily to support my small business, christinaelaine.com
I am a somatic coach, writer, and curriculum creator writing about the interior life of modern relating, weekly on Medium & Substack. I also host interviews on YouTube.