Some thoughts on wanting, apologies, and what is stopping you from pursuing your dreams
September 2025 Newsletter
Welcome to September! August was a busy month for me. I traveled to visit the fam in Guernsey and surprise my beloved nieces with hugs and hangs. Obsessed.
Here’s what is in store if you are brave enough to read this newsletter:
🤔 A thought I’m processing [on wanting vs. liking]
💕 A thought I’m loving [on apologies]
🗳️ A poll [on what gets in the way of pursuing your dreams]
🔗 Some link love
📆 A full recap & links to this past month’s posts
🤔 A thought I’m processing [on wanting vs. liking]
Dopamine wants. Dopamine motivates you to explore the world, leave your cave, risk life and limb to strive for a better, more beautiful life, and it does this through anticipation. It motivates you by making promises about how things will feel. The ‘pleasure’ we feel with Dopamine is actually craving, longing, wanting.
Here’s the thing you need to know: liking is an entirely different process involving totally different neurochemicals: our opioids, oxytocin, and serotonin.
This may seem irrelevant to your life, but let me tell you it’s really relevant.
Dopamine - the feeling of wanting - motivates you with promises of how much you’re going to like something: how good it’s going to feel when you get that promotion, or when you’re finally on that vacation, or when you get to marry that person you love. But that longing feeling has no relation to how much you’re going to actually enjoy the thing you’re longing for. It’s designed to get you to move towards goals, but it has no bearing on how much you will like the thing you want. When you get there, to the thing you’re wanting, dopamine is done. It’s on to the next thing. Dopamine has no investment in enjoying the present; it wants to continue to crave more for the future.
As psychiatrist Daniel Lieberman says, dopamine writes checks that it isn’t responsible for cashing. It’s a salesman. It gets you to spend your life pursuing something by telling you how good that thing is going to feel, how happy it is going to make you, but it doesn’t guarantee that payoff will actually be real. Enjoyment isn’t dopamine’s goal. Motivation is.
We - as humans - have to get better at getting dopamine to pass the baton to other molecules. Otherwise, we will always be craving the next thing and never truly enjoying the present.
Dopamine is essential. It creates a longing strong enough to make my heart feel achy for my nieces halfway across the world as I sit here in Austin scrolling through pictures of them. It’s strong enough to get me to spend money I don’t have and travel in a way that is hard and uncomfortable - just so I can hug them. But, when I get there, I have to get dopamine to stop driving and hand off to other parts of my brain. I have to transition into my ‘here and now’ molecules - that help me be present and connected and enjoy my nieces. Otherwise, I’ll land and find myself hugging my nieces, all the while I’m craving the next thing (rest, naps, food, TV).
Start to notice the difference in your body between wanting and liking. Between craving and enjoyment.
Dopamine isn’t primarily invested in your enjoyment of your life. So, when that craving for something kicks in, whether that’s a cupcake or a new job, or a new world - we have to remember that longing is not a guarantee that the thing will feel the way we think it will. And if we want to enjoy our lives, we have to lean into different things than ‘wanting’.
❤️ A thought I’m loving [on apologies]
May you accept the apology you will never get.
This is a part of the benediction at the end of Amanda Knox’s memoir, and it resonates with me on a deep level.
In explaining what she meant, Amanda shared that it’s not about pretending something never happened or letting people off the hook. It’s about not living at a deficit. She realized that she was walking around waiting for her prosecutor to acknowledge their wrongdoing before she could heal and live her life:
If Giuliano never apologized, never admitted any wrongdoing, was I going to live the rest of my life with an open wound, without closure? All because one man couldn’t face the fact that he was wrong? My well-being only depended on that if I chose to let it. It was as simple as that.
🗳️ A poll on [pursuing your dreams]
I’m working on something around ‘taking heart’ or finding courage when you have a dream. So, help me out:
🔗Some link love
Monthly debrief questions to help you process August
My most listened to song in August
Questions to ask yourself when someone says ‘what do you need right now’ and you don’t know what to say
📆 What you missed in August
Below are some links to thoughts I’ve shared this past month! (Please note that some of my messier thoughts and musings are behind a paywall. You can read more about why I do that here, and feel free to upgrade your subscription to access them and support my research!)
How to design rewards that motivate you - and a task management worksheet for paid subs to help you apply and practice!
How dopamine keeps you coming back for more - aka how social media is profiting off your demise