6 hidden yearnings that control your life
A woman moves to a new city. She doesn’t know anyone, but one day, she wanders into a thrift store, running her fingers over an old leather jacket, a vintage watch, and a well-worn novel.
Something about these objects—their history, past owners—feels oddly comforting. According to researchers Feifei Huang and Ayelet Fishbach, this feeling isn’t a coincidence. Across seven studies, they found that people who feel lonely are commonly drawn to secondhand goods, possibly seeking invisible connections. Even when we’re thrifting, we might be driven by deeper motives and hidden wants.
Our needs and yearnings shape our thoughts, feelings, and actions in unexpected ways. Although we’re rarely aware of their influence, they pull on our emotional strings, influence our choices, affect our well-being, and ultimately determine our quality of life. We all have those needs, the question is how we try to meet them. To our detriment, we often attempt to fulfill these yearnings in unhelpful, misguided ways, leading to self-destruction that causes pain and misery.
Although researchers argue about which ones are most important, the most foundational ones underlie the things we do to change our unique human lives. With that as the filter, there are six to note. With awareness and proper practice, we can redirect these yearnings and fulfill them in ways that broaden and enrich life. To do so, we need to understand what they are, how we try to satisfy them, and then explore alternative, more helpful routes.
Yearning for Belonging | Let Go of the False Self
To be seen and accepted, we often create a persona—a mask designed to win approval and avoid rejection. Instead of embracing our true selves, we mold our identities to fit other people’s expectations, curating an image that feels safer than authenticity. This pursuit, while seemingly positive, can become a trap. When our worth depends on validation, we hide flaws, exaggerate strengths, and suppress insecurities, leading to stress, anxiety, and self-deception.
Over time, this rigid self-image isolates us, as the gap between who we are and who we pretend to be grows wider. Society and cultural narratives fuel this, reinforcing the illusion that we will be worthy of love and belonging only when we fix all our flaws. True belonging, however, does not come from a perfect performance but from embracing the whole self, including our vulnerabilities, allowing us to connect with others.
Yearning for Orientation | Pay Attention to the Present
If you were dropped into an unfamiliar city, your first instinct would be to look for landmarks, street signs—anything to help you make sense of where you are. The mind does something similar when faced with uncertainty: it rummages through the past for clues and projects into the future for reassurance, searching for patterns, for control. This constant mental scanning can backfire. Instead of grounding us, it traps us in endless loops of worry and regret.
Mindfulness offers a different kind of orientation—one that doesn’t rely on solving the past or predicting the future but on fully inhabiting the present. Mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn describes it as “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” Rather than fixating on where we should be, we engage with where we are, acting with intention in the moment.
Yearning to Feel | Open Up to Emotions
We actively seek out emotions in every form—through movies that make us cry, music that stirs nostalgia, and stories that transport us into love, terror, or joy. Even as infants, we are wired to explore, touch, and experience the world with every sense available. And yet, as we grow, we develop a contradictory instinct: We avoid feelings that are too intense, too painful, too unpredictable. Our minds convince us that if we can filter out the discomfort and cling to the positive, we will be left with the pleasures of life. But we don’t just avoid pain or exhaust ourselves by clinging, we numb ourselves to human experience. Emotions are echoes of the past triggered by the present. They are pathways to wisdom, if we will let them be.
The real challenge is not in chasing happiness but in embracing all emotions without resistance and learning their lessons. Avoidance tricks us into believing that discomfort is a problem to be solved, rather than an inevitable part of a meaningful life. But those who learn to feel deeply rather than only seeking to feel good find that life opens in unexpected ways. When we stop fighting our emotions and start living with them, we reclaim the ability to fully experience our lives.
Yearning for Coherence | Embrace Complexity
We seek patterns and strive to shape our thoughts into neat, logical narratives—even when life is messy and contradictory. And in our pursuit of clarity, we often mistake normal contradictions as problems to fix—like loving someone yet finding them frustrating. We cling to rigid narratives that feel certain, even when they distort reality. True coherence, however, isn’t about forcing order but about embracing complexity and learning what works.
That kind of clarity comes when we stop demanding it. When two children quarrel, we don’t have to pick a side; we can observe. We can learn to step back from our thinking and recognize thoughts as experiences rather than absolutes. The mental noise softens, and we can take the useful and leave the rest. Our minds become freer, more flexible, and at peace—not because we have imposed order, but because we have learned to live without it.
Yearning for Meaning | Break Free from External Validation
In a world that pulls us toward external validation, the yearning for meaning is often misdirected. We measure success by socially constructed benchmarks—wealth, status, admiration—rather than by an internal sense of fulfillment. These external pursuits, no matter how diligently we chase them, never seem to satisfy. They provide short-term gratification but leave behind a nagging void. Meaning cannot be borrowed from without; it must be cultivated from within.
Yet, we fear stepping off the well-trodden path. We hesitate to make bold choices because we worry about failure or rejection. We internalize the belief that our worth is tied to socially prescribed roles—whether we’re a high-powered executive, a devoted parent, or a relentlessly happy individual. And when we deviate, we risk being seen as aimless or misguided. But true fulfillment comes not from adhering to a checklist of shoulds but from aligning our actions with our deepest values. And for that purpose, we must each find our way.
Yearning for Competence | Love the Process
From the moment we can grasp an object, we are driven to experiment and explore. Watch a child stack blocks or tie a shoelace. It’s not about rewards or praise, it’s about the joy of mastering something new. But while the desire to be competent is inborn, the way we pursue it can be flawed. We can become so fixated on achievement, proving we are good rather than getting better; we lose sight of the thing that made learning exciting in the first place.
The problem is that our minds don’t like slow, incremental progress. We want the reward now! We want to be skilled and knowledgeable without looking ignorant and awkward. And when reality doesn’t cooperate, we get discouraged, frustrated, even ashamed. This is why people forgo learning new skills—the gym membership goes unused, the guitar gathers dust. We tell ourselves we lack talent when in reality, we are unwilling to endure the awkward, unglamorous phase of getting better. The secret to real competence isn’t about innate ability; it’s about embracing the process, being willing to struggle, and finding satisfaction in the effort itself. Those who do—who learn to love the messy journey—are the ones who master their craft.
Redirect Yearnings Toward a Richer Life
Beneath our everyday choices, these yearnings quietly shape our lives. They can lead us into frustration, loneliness, and self-doubt, trapping us in cycles of avoidance and external validation. Or, when understood and intentionally redirected, they can guide us toward connection, clarity, and growth. The key is not to suppress these needs but to fulfill them in ways that expand, rather than diminish, our lives.
When we stop seeking belonging through pretense and instead embrace authenticity, when we trade control for presence, and when we welcome emotions rather than resist them, we begin to live more fully. We don’t have to be bound by rigid narratives, but can embrace life’s contradictions with openness. Our search for meaning can shift from chasing approval to creating something deeply our own. And our desire for competence can transform from a fixation on success to a love for the process of growth itself.
We will always yearn. That’s the nature of being human. But when we understand the hidden forces that drive us, we can stop being controlled by them—and instead, use them to shape a life that is truly ours.