Describing someone you love to another person is always such a difficult task. How do you capture the depths of someone you’ve gotten to know so intimately?
Try it. What comes to your mind first? The quirks you adore? The qualities that you remember noting when you first met, or the ones that have slowly bubbled up to the surface, the more time you spend together.
Recently, when I found myself trying to describe a loved one to a coworker, I noticed something unexpected: the qualities I admired most in the person I love were the very same ones I hoped to cultivate in myself.
This made me pause.
How often do we surround ourselves with people who embody the traits we’re striving toward?
When we choose friends, partners, or mentors, are we actually choosing a version of a person we hope to become?
Falling in love is a look into your own desires
Think about a time when you fell in love for the first time.
When you felt captivated.
A magnetic pull towards something.
Or, maybe it was a slow burn.
The development of a friendship, and then maybe something more.
At the blossoming of something new and exciting, the “honeymoon phase”, it is so incredibly easy and exciting to realize the incredible qualities of someone you have most recently become infatuated with.
Everything they do is magic.
But, isn’t it interesting to notice what you tend to prioritize?
Is it their passion for life?
Their hobbies?
How they treat their friends? Their family?
What are you attracted to the most?
Often, this is an exercise in prioritizing our values, and it can frequently lead to revealing what we truly desire.
Admiration and its manifestations
When you admire someone, that pull can grow in two directions: toward closeness (love) or toward comparison (jealousy).
At first glance, jealousy and love feel like opposites, but I often think they can feel quite similar.
Both emotions can spring from a place of deep intrigue, longing, and desire.
When I first joined Substack about a year ago, I stumbled across an incredible piece by Tara Bixby: How to Use Envy as a Compass to Your Desires.
Tara’s words stuck with me. She wrote:
“Get curious. Don’t shut down your envy, explore it. What about that person don’t you like? Are they touching on a dream or desire you have for yourself? What is your envy telling you?
Remember, your envy is telling you what you want.
Ask yourself… How can I get it?”
When you read “how can I get it,” what comes to mind?
A possession?
Or is it something more profound? Like a presence, a quality, an energy that you wish you could embody yourself.
Often, admiration goes far beyond physical pieces. You can admire someone’s house or car, but that is simply surface-level.
What do you truly long for? Admiration unfolds from a place of respect, a deep reflection on the values and attributes we hope to grow into.
Is personal development all that complicated?
Back in high school, loyalty was the quality I craved most.
I had broken friendships for the first time and lost people who mattered deeply to me. In the absence of loyalty, I became obsessed with it. I watched movies and sat in awe of characters who stood by each other no matter what. I envied people who had effortless, unshakeable bonds.
Eventually, I realized my longing wasn’t about others at all. It was really about me. I knew loyalty was something I needed to develop, to nurture, to prioritize in myself. My envy was illuminating an area of my life that I deeply craved.
It showed me the next step in what I needed to grow into to live a fulfilling life.
Sometimes personal development isn’t about elaborate systems or goals. Sometimes it’s as simple as noticing who sparks something in you, whether this be envy or a feeling of love.
Both are valid.
Both are guides along your journey to becoming closer to who you want to be, deep down inside.