Living for Everyone Else: How I Built a Life Around Expectations
He describes himself as a responsible father, a reliable husband, and a steady provider. That identity was carefully built over 40 years, during which he put his family’s needs first: mortgage payments, retirement funds, and school fees.
He chose a “safe job” because, as he says, “people depended on me”, which meant his path was largely decided by others. The expectations of respected people and broad social norms became his guide, often crowding out his own desires.
At his recent 70th birthday, organized by his children with balloons and a cake, his son gave a warm toast recognizing the sacrifices he’d made for the family dynamics. Later that night, alone in his kitchen, he felt deeper regrets about personal autonomy. He links that feeling to “conditional attention” (a psychological term for when actions are driven by a need for approval rather than by genuine desire).
The Trap of Waiting to Want
Looking back, he sees the main problem as deferred autonomy, which led to a loss of identity. He says he lived “in introjected regulation for the better part of 40 years,” spending years “waiting for permission to want things.” These aren’t just missed business chances or hobbies not tried, like moving abroad or learning to paint, but an overarching regret: a life lived with the “wanting switch turned off.”
Psychologist Thomas Gilovich’s research supports this. His work, carried out over “decades” using surveys and interviews, found that 74 percent of the regrets older people reported (including professors emeriti and nursing home residents) were about things they didn’t do. Gilovich’s finding is that long-term regret often comes from inaction, not from mistakes taken.
How to Start Letting Yourself Want
Changing from living for other people to honoring your own desires is about autonomy, the feeling of being the author of your own choices. He wishes he’d realized this earlier, maybe at age 30, and warns others to stop waiting because “nobody is ever going to give you permission to want things for yourself.”
He reminds readers that true selflessness shouldn’t erase the basic human need for emotional vulnerability. When desires are constantly managed instead of embraced, well-being drops, engagement falls, and burnout increases because autonomy goes unmet.
Even with a loving family, a secure home, and a “good job,” you can still feel hollow if those achievements aren’t tied to what actually matters to you. As he puts it, “I spent 40 years standing in front of a door that was never locked, waiting for someone to open it for me.”
His message is simple: give yourself permission to want. Become the author of your choices so the “muscle that knows what you want” stays strong and can turn possibility into real life.
