How much of what you want is actually yours? The Argentine psychoanalyst and writer, who studied psychology at the University of Buenos Aires, says family expectations, what other people think, and guilt can push aside what someone actually wants, until they end up living a life they never really chose for themselves.
In a June 10, 2026, interview with a journalist Luis Novaresio, the author of the 2023 book La felicidad said that knowing yourself starts with figuring out which wishes are truly yours and which ones you picked up from other people. He was not saying hard work fixes everything. He was saying life feels a lot brighter when that hard work is going toward something that actually belongs to you.
Other people’s voices become an inner script
“It is not easy to know what you want,” he said. “Between desire and ourselves, so many things get in the way.” Following his perspective on this topic, the first things that get in the way are usually what your parents, family, partner, and even culture in general expect from you.
Those messages don´t always sound like a big deal. Maybe someone is told to study a certain subject, love a certain type of person, take the safe job,, or meassure success in a familiar way. Hearing that for years, may become so familiar that a person mistakes them for a private decision.
Gabriel Rolón discusses how breaking free from other people’s expectations can help people recognize and trust their own desires.
Desire is more than a passing impulse
In this interview, desire was not just about chasing whatever feels good in the moment. It means something deeper, connected to personal values, interests, relationships, and with who you really are.
Finding them can take time, especially when approval has always depended on meeting someone else’s expectations.
He talked about becoming disconnected from themselves once outside opinions take over. That is a feeling a lot of people know. A life can look successful from the outside and still feel like it belongs to someone else.
The superego can sound like everyone else
In his way of thinking, the superego is basically the place in your mind where all the rules, criticism, praise, and expectations pile up. Think of it as a voice in your head repeating everything you were ever taught about being good enough, worthy, lovable, or a disappointment.
That voice is not always a bad thing. Families and communities also pass down care, responsibility, and healthy limits. But the writer warned that guilt and anxiety can turn into roadblocks the moment someone starts walking away from a future somebody else planned for them.
Research points to the value of chosen goals
Science uses different words for this, and it does not prove every idea of psychoanalysis. But a well-know 1999 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, led by Kennon Sheldon and Andrew Elliot, found that goals matching a person’s interests and core values got more consistent effort and were more likely to actually happen.
Researchers call this self-concordance, which simply means that a goal fits who you really are. Self-Determination Theory research also shows that goals like personal growth and meaningful relationships tend to lead yo more happiness than goals built around status, looks, or gettin other people´s approval.
Family plays a role too. In a 2026 study looking across cultures, Martin Pinquart and Van Anh Nguyen reviewed 404 studies from 53 countries and found that when parents support their kids making their own choices, those kids tend to have fewer emotional and behavoir problems.
That does not mean parents should stop guiding children, because support is not the same as control.
Effort matters, but ownership comes first
“Life becomes much brighter and much more attractive when you make an effort,” he said. On its own, that might sound like just another motivational quote. But in context, he was talking about the effort it takes to learn, think, and build a life that actually means something to you.
That is an important difference. A student can work incredibly hard toward a degree they only chose to make their family happy. An employee can chase a promotion just because it will impress people. Both are putting in real efforrt, but effort alone can not tell you whether where you are headed actually feels like yours.
Parents can pass down unfinished dreams
One of the interview’s sharpest moments was about the promise some parents make to children. “You will have everything I did not have.” It usually comes from a place of love, but it can quietly turn a kid into the one carrying out their parent’s unfinished dreams.
And his anwer was straight to the point: “Who told you I want what you never had? Let me find out what I want.” Here his point was not to reject family history, but to create enough room for a new person to make a different choice.
A different way to think about destiny
One practical test follows from both the interview and self-concordance research. Would the choice still matter without praise, fear, guilt, or the need to prove something? The answer may not arrive quickly.
He described psychoanalysis “the art of trying to help someone not fulfill their destiny.” By destiny, he meant a path handed to you by somebody else. What people are really looking for, he said, is not that borrowed destiny. It is their own desire.
