The Year I Wanted Everything and Got Nothing
There was a year in my life, I was thirty-two, when I wanted more intensely than I’d ever wanted before. I wanted a better job. I wanted a healthier body. I wanted a relationship that actually worked. I wrote these desires in journals. I made lists. I visualized. I affirmed. I did everything the manifestation books told me to do.
And at the end of that year, nothing had changed.
Not because I wasn’t trying. Not because I wasn’t sincere. But because I was stuck in a state of wanting, which, as I would eventually learn, is one of the most counterproductive states a human being can occupy.
The distinction between wanting and intending is one of the most important ideas I’ve encountered in the teachings of Neville Goddard, Joseph Murphy, and the broader mental-science tradition. It’s subtle enough to miss entirely, but once you see it, it reframes everything.
What Wanting Actually Communicates
Here’s the problem with wanting: it’s a state of lack. To want something is to acknowledge, at the deepest level of feeling, that you don’t have it. And both Neville and Murphy were emphatic that the subconscious mind, the creative power that shapes your experience, responds to your state of being, not your words.
When you say “I want more money,” your subconscious hears: “I don’t have enough money.” When you say “I want a loving partner,” it hears: “I am without a loving partner.” The wanting reinforces the absence. The more intensely you want, the more powerfully you affirm the lack.
Neville addressed this with characteristic directness:
“To desire a state is to have it. As soon as you desire, it is yours. But you must feel that you have it. The feeling is the secret.” – Neville Goddard (1944), Chapter 1
That phrase, “to desire a state is to have it”, confused me for a long time. How can desiring something be the same as having it? The answer is in the second sentence: “you must feel that you have it.” The desire has to move from wanting (future-oriented, lack-based) to having (present-tense, fulfillment-based). That movement, from wanting to having in imagination, is what Neville called intention.
What Intention Actually Is
Intention, in the way these teachers use the word, isn’t a plan or a goal. It’s a settled inner state. It’s the feeling of something being decided, resolved, already in motion.
Think about the difference between these two inner experiences:
“I want to go to Paris someday.” That’s wanting. It’s wistful. It’s floating. It has no gravity.
“I’m going to Paris in October.” That’s intention. Something has shifted. You’ve decided. You may not have booked the flight yet, but internally, the trip is real. You’ve begun to organize your thoughts, feelings, and actions around it as an accomplished fact.
Joseph Murphy described this shift in The Power of Your Subconscious Mind:
“The law of your mind is the law of belief. What you believe about yourself, your life, and the nature of things becomes your reality. Change your beliefs and you change your experience.” – Joseph Murphy (1963), Chapter 2
Wanting is a statement about the future. Intention is a statement about the present. Wanting says “I hope.” Intention says “I know.” Wanting lives in the head. Intention lives in the body, you can feel it in your posture, your voice, the way you move through the day.
How I Recognized the Difference in My Own Life
Looking back at that year of frustrated wanting, I can see exactly what was happening. Every morning, I’d repeat affirmations about abundance and health and love. And every morning, as I said the words, there was a hollowness underneath them, a tight, anxious feeling that whispered, “But you don’t really have any of this.”
I was performing intention while living in want. The words said one thing; the feeling said another. And the feeling always wins. Murphy and Neville were both absolutely clear on this point: the subconscious mind responds to feeling, not to words. You can say “I am prosperous” ten thousand times, but if the feeling underneath is anxiety about rent, the subconscious takes its orders from the anxiety.
The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to force beliefs I didn’t hold and instead began working with the feeling directly. I stopped saying “I am wealthy” (which felt like a lie) and started sitting with the question: “What would it feel like if I were financially secure?” Not the things I’d buy. Not the number in the account. The feeling. The bodily, emotional experience of security.
When I found that feeling, a kind of settled calm in my chest, a relaxation of the jaw, an ease in the shoulders, I practiced returning to it throughout the day. Not as an affirmation. As a physical, felt state. And that felt state, sustained over time, was the thing that actually began to shift my circumstances.
The Mechanics of the Shift
Why does this work? I think there are at least two explanations, and they’re not mutually exclusive.
The Psychological Explanation
When you shift from wanting to intending, from lack to settled expectation, your behavior changes in ways you might not consciously notice. You show up differently in job interviews. You carry yourself with more confidence in social situations. You make decisions from a place of clarity rather than desperation. You’re more open to opportunities because you’re not clenched around the fear of missing out. People respond to this. Circumstances shift because you’re engaging with them differently.
The Metaphysical Explanation
Neville and Murphy would go further. They’d say that consciousness is the fundamental reality, and that the subconscious mind, when impressed with a belief held in feeling, literally rearranges circumstances to match that belief. You don’t just behave differently; the world reorganizes around your inner state. I can’t prove this, but I’ve experienced enough coincidences, timely opportunities, and unexpected doors opening to take it seriously.
Whether you prefer the psychological or the metaphysical explanation doesn’t matter much for practical purposes. The technique is the same: shift from wanting to intending. From lack to having. From hoping to knowing.
The Exercise: Moving From Want to Intention
This practice is designed to help you identify where you’re stuck in “want” mode and consciously shift into the state of intention.
Step 1: Name Your Wants
Write down three things you currently want. Be honest and specific. “I want a raise.” “I want to lose twenty pounds.” “I want a peaceful relationship with my mother.”
Step 2: Notice the Feeling of Wanting
For each item, close your eyes and say it silently: “I want ___.” Notice where you feel it in your body. For most people, wanting registers as a tightness, a yearning, a pulling-forward sensation. It might be in the chest, the throat, or the stomach. Just notice. Don’t judge.
Step 3: Rewrite as Intention
Now rewrite each item as a present-tense statement of having. “I am valued and well-compensated.” “My body is healthy and strong.” “My relationship with my mother is peaceful.” These are not affirmations to repeat mindlessly. They’re doorways to a different feeling state.
Step 4: Find the Feeling of Having
For each rewritten statement, close your eyes again and feel into it. Not the words, the feeling. What would it feel like in your body if this were already true? Where do you feel ease? Where does the tension release? Stay with that feeling for sixty to ninety seconds. Breathe into it. Let it fill your body.
Step 5: Practice the Feeling Daily
The shift from wanting to intending isn’t a one-time event. It’s a daily practice. Throughout the day, when you catch yourself in the wanting state, the yearning, the anxiety, the “I need this to happen”, pause and deliberately return to the feeling of having. You can do this in thirty seconds. At your desk. In the car. Waiting in line. The feeling is always available.
Step 6: Watch for the Wanting to Return
It will. Old habits don’t disappear overnight. You’ll catch yourself spiraling back into wanting mode, especially around things you care about deeply. That’s normal. The practice isn’t about never wanting again. It’s about recognizing the state when it arises and choosing to shift.
The Paradox of Letting Go
There’s a beautiful paradox at the center of this teaching. The things I wanted most desperately during that frustrated year at thirty-two? Many of them eventually came to me, but only after I stopped wanting them so hard. Not because I gave up caring. Because I shifted from the desperate energy of wanting to the settled energy of knowing.
This isn’t passive. Intention still involves action. You still apply for the job. You still eat well and exercise. You still have the difficult conversation with your mother. But you do these things from a fundamentally different inner place. You do them as someone who already has what they’re moving toward, not as someone who’s grasping for something they fear they’ll never reach.
Neville put it in language that’s stayed with me for years: “An assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact.” The assumption of having, when it becomes your dominant feeling state, stops being an assumption and becomes your reality.
The gap between wanting and intending is small in language but enormous in experience. Every major shift in my life, financial, relational, creative, spiritual, has followed the same pattern: I stopped wanting and started knowing. I stopped reaching and started having. I stopped hoping and started being.
It’s the simplest shift in the world. And it might be the hardest to make. But once you feel the difference in your body, the ease of intention versus the tightness of wanting, you’ll never confuse the two again.
