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Watch this if you feel like you’re behind in life

2025-04-04 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali · recording, 19:11 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness (also: Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, His medical past, His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present

In a Book Club episode on Luke Burgis's Wanting, Ali says feeling behind in life often comes from mimetic desire, modelled mostly on people close to us, and gives four strategies: identify thick versus thin desires, identify your Michelin stars, set boundaries with unhealthy mimetic models, and create positive flywheels of desire.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Feeling behind in life, and Luke Burgis's Wanting in Book Club

  • ★★★ Ali says the feeling of falling behind in life is often the result of mimetic desire, which Luke Burgis discusses in his book Wanting. — 00:00:00
  • ★ This Book Club episode, in the series where Ali has distilled highlights from favourite books for the last five years, breaks down insights from Luke Burgis's Wanting. — 00:00:00 · Book Club

00:00:35 — Part one: why we feel behind in life

  • ★★★ Feeling behind, Ali says, comes from believing you should already be at point B, where you want to be, and are not, so you feel like a loser or a failure. — 00:01:04
  • ★★ Ali says Luke Burgis's Wanting asks why we want point B in the first place, and argues we may want it because of mimetic desire. — 00:01:34

00:02:02 — Part two: what mimetic desire is, Celebristan and Freshmanistan

  • ★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): In a story in Wanting, Luke Burgis feels anxious when a friend from the same university tells him of a promotion with a $20,000 raise: the friend has become a model of desire to him. — 00:02:02
  • ★★ The theory of mimetic desire was first set out by the French philosopher René Girard, and Wanting is basically an exploration of his theories, Ali says. — 00:03:01
  • ★★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): Luke Burgis says mimetic desire comes from two worlds: Celebristan, the land of celebrities we never meet, and Freshmanistan, the land of people like us. — 00:03:01
  • ★★★ Ali says it is generally Freshmanistan, neighbours, friends, cousins and university peers, not celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, that makes us feel behind. — 00:04:00

00:04:37 — Brilliant sponsor read

00:05:59 — Questions on your Freshmanistan, his own mimetic desires, and goal selection before goal achievement

  • ★★ Ali suggests three questions: who in your Freshmanistan influences what you want, what you started wanting because someone close wanted it, and whose milestones make you feel behind. — 00:05:59
  • ★★ At school Ali's mimetic desire followed friends who all wanted fancy universities and subjects like medicine; at medical school it became prizes, accolades, publications and CV points. — 00:06:26
  • ★★ Ali still feels behind when his team compares VoicePal's growth rate with other AI apps that grow faster or have been funded by fancy investors. — 00:06:55 · VoicePal
  • ★★ Modelling someone else's goal saves some mental energy, Ali says, but mimetic desire becomes very problematic when we chase things that are not meaningful to us. — 00:07:54
  • ★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): Luke Burgis writes in Wanting that our obsession with goal setting is misguided, even counterproductive. — 00:07:54
  • ★★★ Since desires shape the goals we set, and goals shape our daily actions and feelings, Ali holds that goal selection is in many ways more important than goal achievement. — 00:08:52
  • ★★ Ali spends a lot of time journaling to work out what he actually wants and how far it is his own authentic desire rather than what people around him want. — 00:08:52

00:09:21 — Strategy 1: identify thick versus thin desires, and stories of fulfillment

  • ★★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): Luke Burgis likens thick desires to layers of rock: solid, enduring, deeply embedded in who you are, often held since childhood. — 00:09:21
  • ★★★ Ali's first strategy from Wanting for chasing meaningful desires is to identify thick versus thin desires. — 00:09:21
  • ★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): Thin desires, in Wanting, are surface-layer desires we hold mainly because someone we respect or a neighbour wants the thing. — 00:09:50
  • ★★★ Ali has always liked teaching: at seven he helped younger children with homework, at 13 taught at a maths and English study centre, at 16 tutored privately, and in medical school started a teaching business. — 00:09:50
  • ★★ Ali calls his desire to teach, which he now meets by sharing book insights on YouTube, probably a thick desire, since it has been with him a long time and barely changed. (hedged) — 00:10:20
  • ★★★ At US entrepreneurship conferences Ali often feels the brokest person there and wants a bigger business; his team ignores his plans for 72 hours after such trips, as the thin desires fade within three days. — 00:10:49 · United States
  • ★★★ To test a desire, Ali suggests asking whether it has been with you a long time, whether pursuing it energises or drains you, and, his favourite, whether you would still want it if no one could ever know you achieved it. — 00:11:18
  • ★★ VoicePal, the app Ali's team is building, has just released a frameworks feature with guided frameworks, including one for working out thick versus thin desires by speaking. — 00:11:47 · VoicePal
  • ★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): A story of fulfillment, Luke Burgis's way to identify thick desires, has three parts: you took action, you believe you did it well, and it gave a lasting sense of accomplishment. — 00:11:47

00:12:01 — Strategy 2: identify your Michelin stars

  • ★★ To find your stories of fulfillment, Ali suggests asking: what is a time in my life when I took action and it made me feel genuinely fulfilled? — 00:12:17
  • ★★★ In his fifth year Ali was one of the directors of the medical school pantomime, an unpaid charity production of over a hundred talented students, and remembers it as one of the most fulfilling things he has done. — 00:12:17
  • ★★ From the pantomime Ali reads his thick desires: contributing to something bigger than himself with a group of really talented people, which he asks how to bring more into his work. — 00:12:46
  • ★★ In a story from Wanting, French chef Bernard Loiseau heard he might lose a Michelin star, was downgraded from 19 to 17 out of 20 in another French rating system, and took his own life shortly after. — 00:13:15
  • ★★ Marco Pierre White, in Wanting, was the youngest chef ever to get three Michelin stars, at age 32. — 00:13:15
  • ★★ At the height of his success Marco Pierre White opted out of the Michelin star game and retired, the first three-star chef in history to shut down and walk away. — 00:13:44
  • ★★ Marco Pierre White (quoted): Marco Pierre White says he gave Michelin inspectors too much respect and belittled himself, and chose to give his stars back, spend time with his children and reinvent himself. — 00:13:44
  • ★★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): Luke Burgis writes that each of us has our own Michelin star system of status marks and badges, and naming its mimetic forces is the first step to more intentional choices. — 00:13:44
  • ★★ Ali's own Michelin stars changed: exam scores, rankings and admissions at school, first-class degrees and publications at medical school, then YouTube followers, views, ad revenue and New York Times bestseller status. — 00:14:26
  • ★★★ Once you know the Michelin stars you chase, Ali advises asking whether those measures align with your thick desires, which you pursue only because others value them, and which you would happily give up. — 00:14:26
  • ★★ Some external measures may align with your own authentic goals, Ali says; the point of the Michelin-stars exercise is awareness of the hidden scorecards that make us feel behind. — 00:14:56

00:15:22 — Strategy 3: set boundaries with unhealthy mimetic models

  • ★★ After reading Wanting, Ali unfollowed entrepreneurs who show off flashy cars and watches, not wanting to want them; he is content with his Apple Watch and Whoop band. — 00:15:25 · Apple Watch
  • ★★★ Since the people we follow on social media become models of desire whether we like it or not, Ali advises unfollowing those who prompt unhealthy or unwholesome desires. — 00:15:54
  • ★★ As a mental boundary, when you feel behind Ali suggests pausing, perhaps journaling, to ask why and whether the desire you chase is authentically yours or someone else's. — 00:16:23
  • ★★ Ali suggests physical boundaries too: keeping distance from people who inspire envy, jealousy or desires you do not want. — 00:16:23
  • ★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): Luke Burgis writes that experts are increasingly crowned mimetically, like fashion, and advises finding sources that have stood the test of time. — 00:16:52
  • ★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): Burgis adds that experts are less likely to be chosen mimetically in the hard sciences, but someone can easily become an overnight productivity expert by getting published in the right place; Ali says he loves the line. — 00:16:52
  • ★★★ Luke Burgis (quoted): Luke Burgis's positive flywheels of desire rest on the idea that the choices we make today affect the things we will want tomorrow. — 00:17:26

00:17:31 — Strategy 4: create positive flywheels of desire, and the main takeaway

  • ★★★ Ali advises building a positive flywheel around a mimetic desire, such as wanting to look good like a friend who works out, so that it improves your life rather than worsening it. — 00:17:57
  • ★★★ Understanding mimetic desire will not stop you ever feeling behind, Ali says, but it gives the awareness to ask: am I running my own race or feeling behind in someone else's? (hedged) — 00:17:57
  • ★★★ Ali's main takeaway from Wanting: when we focus on thick desires, which have lasted for years and energise us, the feeling of falling behind fades because we measure life against what truly matters to us. — 00:18:26
  • ★★ Ali says viewers who liked the video will definitely enjoy reading Luke Burgis's Wanting. — 00:18:26

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked by a viewer whether Ali is from Pakistan, the channel replies yes. — creator comment · Pakistan

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Luke Burgis · mimetic desire · thick and thin desires · Wanting

Also: People: Bernard Loiseau · Kim Kardashian · Marco Pierre White · René Girard

Projects: Book Club

Organizations: The New York Times

Concepts: Celebristan · flywheel · Freshmanistan · fulfillment story · Michelin stars

Places: United States

Products: Apple Watch · VoicePal · Whoop

Also centred on mimetic desire: How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life

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