3 Degrees of Freedom

In-Between Episode: Needs Vs. Wants with Derek Clifford

• Derek Clifford • Season 3 • Episode 155

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"Beyond the Surface: Embracing a Life of Adventure and Meaningful Experiences" 

This week on 3 Degrees of Freedom, we have the pleasure of talking to Derek. He has a fascinating story to share. 

In this episode, Derek talk about how he decided to take the plunge and embark on their journey, as well as what he has learned along the way. He discussed the importance of spending time in the moment, living with intention, and making meaningful connections. He also share his tips for anyone considering a similar lifestyle. With the title "Beyond the Surface: Embracing a Life of Adventure and Meaningful Experiences," this episode will inspire you to look beyond the surface of your life and find ways to create an intentional and meaningful life.

Connect with us through our social media channels, where we can get to know each other better and foster meaningful connections:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derek-clifford-elevate-equity/
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dereklovesequity
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If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another in-Between episode of the Three Degrees of Freedom Podcast. Today gonna talk about something that may seem pretty obvious, but it is the idea of needing versus wanting. And when I first heard this concept explained in Dan Sullivan's recent book, called 10 x is Better Than two x, which by the way, I highly recommend that you go out there and pick up because in many ways, 10 x is much easier than two x. You just have to make some tough decisions and execute with them. I felt that the idea of need versus want just for some reason, it felt like the same thing for much of my life. And inside the book, Dan helped inspire, you know, this monologue that you're about to share with me here. And listen in on my thoughts on what it means between the gap between needing versus wanting. So inside the book, he talks about how need is more externally focused and wanting is internally focused. And in many ways I can agree with that because whenever you say that you need something, it's generally something that's from the outside world. Right? And we're gonna talk a little bit more about this later on, but when you want something, it's generally something that you have the choice of wanting, which means that it's internal. And over the many years that I've been, you know, experimenting with self-development, with the thanks, thanks to my wife, for exposing me to this entire. Rabbit hole that I will never seem to get out of. And, I'm happy that I'm not. It's this black hole that keeps sucking you in and you just keep it getting better and better as you travel further and further down the black hole. I would say that an internal focus of control or internal locus of control, as what I've heard in all of these, books and concepts and ideas from other successful people. Far superior to the external locust of control. And in my personal journey, I've been experimenting with this internal locus of control. And I can say that, for many reasons it has helped me to the better because it helped me ask bigger questions. You know, to go a little bit further down on this need versus want and external versus internal locus of control idea, Back when I was growing up, I surrounded myself around people who always had an external locust of control. They said, oh, you know, make sure that you get a job and make sure you get into a good college and make sure that from that point forward you follow all the rules and you do everything that we tell you're going to do. And if you do that, then we're gonna guarantee you a great future. And that was something that I picked up on and how I was raised and what I was led to believe was true for many, many years. And I kept doing that, right? And I let the outside world determine what was best for me. Almost to a point where, you know, when we have to make these decisions about what we're going to study in college, right? And that's something that we have to do as an internal thing, one of the very few internal choices that we have. Major internal choices that we have that determine the path of our entire lives. Right. That's why it's so stressful of a moment, at least for me, it was, I wanted to do computer science, I wanted to do something else, but I was convinced by people around me that doing computer science at the time was being outsourced to all different parts of the world, out in Asia and also in South America and different parts of the world out in, the near east, far east. And so I let that decide that it was a need, that I needed to pick a different major, not what I wanted. And the thing is with need is that when you have a need, it's an external focused thing, so you're doing it to appease other people. So where is your heart in it? It's just not there. That's exactly what happened to me in school. I went through the motions and I ended up going into chemical engineering and getting a job through chemical engineering, mainly because of the salary, because again, that was a story that I told myself that I needed to pay off my student loans. So I had to go and essentially get a job that paid well and it couldn't have been computer science, which is what my love was at the time. And, Unfortunately, I ended up getting something into the chemical engineering degree. I made a great, I had a great job for a while, and enjoyed everything that I did, with the people that I worked for. But I was not great at Chemical Engineering. I was just doing it for the money and doing it for the need, not because I wanted to do it. And as a result of that, to finish up this point, I ended up going through school. Graduating, getting a job and then promptly after five, six years switched out of chemical engineering and found something else, found a different talent, which obviously, was meant that I wasn't in the right place at the beginning. But maybe it has to do with the fact that I wanted something else. And then I made that want a part of me and I wanted the change, and I made the change happen. So, Just to summarize this, one point need is externally facing and want is internally facing. So be sure that when you're making decisions that you make it out of want and not out of a need, which is externally facing. Point number two I want to make on this is that when you look at the difference between needing versus wanting, I want you to also take a look at it instead of internally versus externally facing. I want you to look at it as being a buyer versus being a seller. A buyer mindset is someone who gets to choose what's acceptable to them. So let's put yourself, you're in the. Auto or the car shop, right? And you're looking, you're in the market for a new car and you have a specific price point. You have a specific standard, you have a color of the car, or you have specific needs that you want to meet, and there's car salesmen that come up to you and they really want to sell something to you, right? And so a seller is eager to sell because they have what they have and they're trying to please you. If you have a buyer mindset, you're the one that gets to choose. You have the power, you drive. No pun intended, but you are driving the decisions. So sellers in natural relationships or natural ways about negotiating decisions in the universe can come across as more desperate. And another book, that came from Dan Sullivan, which I believe is called, be the Buyer or something , of that sort, because it was mentioned in his book, 10 X is Better than two X. This book inspired what he talks about in this is that you've gotta be a buyer of ideas and a buyer of your choices rather than a seller. You don't wanna sell yourself to the outside world. You wanna instead be a buyer of what's out there. So if you're in a job search right now, or if you're looking for opportunities, you wanna make sure that you're making that decision out of a wand versus a need, right? Because if you do it out of what you want to do, then eventually the money, the energy, the effortless, it's just going to, the money's gonna come and the effortless, the effort is gonna be effortless. It's gonna be a much better experience for you, and you're gonna continue to grow down that road, and you're gonna continue to stack your efficiencies on top of each other. One example I wanted to give of this particular topic was, Will Smith and Jada Pickett Smith. I'm sure you guys remember, I think it was actually over a year ago, or maybe even longer than that, since this blowup at the awards show happened. I can't remember if it's the Oscars, the Emmys, I'm sorry, probably the Oscars. But in that interaction, if you go back and look at some of the tapes of that, you can see very clearly, right. That Will Smith is the seller and his wife Jada is the buyer. And that dynamic in that relationship, you can sense all of that, right? You can see that. And the point is, is that who has the power here? Will Smith obviously has been featured in so many different movies and films and his wor, his net worth and his notoriety and recognition, far eclipses his wife's. In their relationship between Will and Jada, you can tell there's a power dynamic there. Someone is a buyer and someone is a seller. Someone is a want and someone is in need, and so what I encourage you to do is continue to push yourself to be in a position of power, of being able to make the choice to want instead of needing. And you can very clearly see that, right? In personal relationships and choices that we make. Make sure that you are being the buyer and you are wanting versus needing. The third point I want to make about this is that the subtlety of wanting versus needing has a backdrop. There's desperation that goes along with a need. A want comes out of a pure creation and out of a curiosity. And what's more attractive than desperation is almost anything out there. So if you're curious and you're pursuing something because you want it and because you have plans and intentionality for it, guess what? It's going to force you to make a plan to go and get it. It's constructive. A want is constructive. You have to go get it if you have a need. The need is just kind of like, oh, it's gotta come, you know, I have to have this, but I don't know how to get it. And, you know, you end up making sacrifices and desperation and you start selling yourself short to get these things that you quote unquote need. So I guess the only point that I want to make here on this third point is that when you are wanting something, you put plans in place, it's constructive and there's no desperation behind it. The dating world is a fantastic place to put this analogy to use, right? As soon as you start entering the dating world and someone senses that they need either you or something, you've got, the attachment just goes away because there's desperation. And usually the reason for that need is on something else and not the actual person wanting to be that person. So to speak, right? I know there's a lot of mind games here, but basically what it comes down to is lack of authenticity in my mind. When someone is desperate, they're needing something for the need of it and not for who people are not being honest to themselves and to the other person. So anyway, it's been a long time since I've been in the dating world, thanks to my lovely, lovely wife, and I don't ever plan to be in the dating world again. So last point I'll say on this is that there's a spectrum of healthy versus unhealthy detachment. And so I encourage people to look at what that spectrum entails for you, and that healthy detachment comes with a want because yes. You don't have that thing that you want right now in this particular moment because you're drawing plans up to, to get that thing. But that's the whole point, is that you're drawing plans up to constructively go at it and chunk away executing on a plan to go get what you want, whether off, and if it's a need, then the energy is different. You have an unhealthy amount of detachment, which may not even be completely true, which I'll get to in a second. All right. Number four. Last point I wanna make is that when you want, you are being honest with yourself and with others. Needing is basically borrowing what everyone else says is important. So it's not your honesty, it's untruthful. Needing, has a context of what is the world's standard for you. Right. While wanting is actively choosing to go after something and getting it right, some of the best minds on the planet, like Elon Musk, obviously don't conform to any standard, and so they really don't have any needs at this point. You can make an argument that, yeah, people need clean water. People need food. Right. I get that. Those are basic things. But I think that the attachment is what we need to be looking at here, need obviously some of those basic things. We live in this world right now in the United States, where a lot of those needs are met, and so I'm not necessarily talking about specific needs. I'm just trying to encourage you to remove this word of needing from your vocabulary. It's like the difference between should and could. And will. Our performance coaches have encouraged us to never use the word should again and just say Will or will not to be able to help make clear, decisive decisions. And it comes down to this honesty of wanting versus needing. So I encourage you to give that some thought as well. Now, That's my final point on what need versus want is and how I analyzed and how I thought about all of this when I was deep in thought about it. But I wanna leave you guys with some ways to curb the tendency to need versus want more in case that is in your particular case. I think one of the biggest things that can help out with this is to reflect on what you already have and know that. Really the things that you want are the things that you want, and the things that you need are most likely things that you mostly have already. Because if you're listening to this podcast, you're most likely in a position right now where you've got most of your basic essentials covered. And let's be honest, if you say you need a job and you have maybe $10,000 in the bank or something, really, the idea is, is that the outside world is telling you that you need that job because you really don't need the job. You don't. You don't have to live in a house. You could live on the streets, which I'm not saying that you could. You could live with your parents, you could live with roommates. You can find ways to get what you need in this abundantly and resource rich part of the world by being true to yourself. And this happened with us when we left my full-time job, the need was, oh, we needed a place to, we needed a home. Right? But then it turned into a want, our living situation where we wanted to stay in specific areas and we ended up doing it for cheaper than staying in one place in the part of the United States. It's one of the most expensive areas to live. And so our need of needing a house then became a want. And now we are here. We are traveling around the world and just enjoying what life has to offer. So to close out, I would encourage you to reflect on some of the things that you do have already. And do you really want what you're looking for or do you need what you're looking for? And I hope that you can take a look at using those words differently and reflect on what. What these really mean in your life, and if you're grateful for what you have, then you start needing less because you already have them and you start making choices out of desire, out of wanting things, which is constructive and positive and curious, and energetic. You're being the buyer. In this case, you're having the choice to choose because you're making the choice to want something and put a plan together. You're looking internally, your inward locust of control, and there's no desperation. It's more out of curiosity, construction and being intentional about the design of your life. Thank you guys so much for listening. To this podcast, you dunno how much it means to me. And, I just want to thank you for listening to me rant on here about the two words need versus want. If you guys like what you heard, please go to wherever it is that you're listening or watching this podcast, whether it's YouTube or Spotify or iTunes or wherever. And please thumbs up, like, comment, subscribe, and help me get this message out there of the three degrees of freedom. How important it is to enable location, time, and financial freedom in your life, so you have more choices out there and get them sooner. So thank you for listening, and we will see you guys soon. Talk to you next week.