there's been a cultural shift to normalize all preferences as valid, where satisfying them is intrinsically good and denying them bad. this was corrective to a culture of conformity to social roles regardless of individual feeling but is insufficient to the challenge of building…
every human is a bundle of contradictory preferences and we know that satisfying every impulse is not in our own best interest- we stop eating before entirely full as it takes time to experience satiety; we get up and do things when we'd rather relax and nap; we refrain from loud…
untangling your wants allows you to live with less willpower- frees up willpower to be applied to harder things. imo this is an underrated skill made harder by the cultural narrative that preferences are immutable
sometimes i find myself interested in something, wanting to do it, but in practice not pursuing it. i *could* interpret this as revealed preference that i don't really want it. but that is limiting, narrows my life to the things without contradictory preferences.
instead i can dig into it and question myself- what particularly seems aversive? what if i did this related thing instead? what if i was more skilled at it? what if i had less uncertainty about the outcome?
i think this is a particularly acute problem wrt relationship formation- accept me as i am + i want what i want = many people have zero matches who want them as they are and meet all their expectations