Aging & Wisdom Quote by George A. Sheehan

Sheehan pulls a quiet rug out from under the self-help industry’s favorite virtue: willpower. The sentence starts by granting the reader their comforting assumption ("We may think...") and then pivots to a more human, less heroic engine of change: desire. It’s a demotion and a liberation at once. If change depends on sheer discipline, then failure looks like moral weakness. If it depends on "want power", failure looks like misaligned incentives - a craving problem, not a character problem.

The key word is "addiction", deployed with deliberate provocation. Sheehan isn’t only talking about substances or compulsions; he’s reframing identity itself as a kind of habit loop. That move does two things: it normalizes relapse (because habits fight to survive), and it makes transformation feel possible (because habits can be swapped). The subtext is slightly ruthless: you don’t quit the old life by hating it; you quit by falling in love with an alternative.

Context matters here. Sheehan, a physician-turned-writer best known for his work on running and self-renewal, is writing from a 20th-century American culture obsessed with grit, stoicism, and personal responsibility. His counterproposal is not softness but strategy: build a rival appetite. "Wanting the new me" turns self-improvement from punishment into seduction, implying that the most durable change is fueled by aspiration, not self-scolding. It’s motivational, yes, but it’s also diagnostic: people don’t lack will - they lack a compelling replacement story.