Conatus is each singular thing’s striving to persevere in its being. Proposition 6 of Ethics III attributes this striving to singular things generally; proposition 7 identifies it with the thing’s actual essence. It is not confined to conscious human purposes.
Reading striving as a freely chosen future goal would conflict with Spinoza’s necessary causal order. Persistence does not mean independence from surroundings: it concerns the relations a thing can maintain in encounters with other things.
In humans, body and mind express the same striving in different ways. Desire articulates its place in human experience. Encounters can increase or diminish the power of acting, connecting conatus systematically with joy, sadness, and affect.
Neither a biological survival instinct nor a slogan for personal success captures this scope. The ethical issue concerns how activities adequately explained through our own nature become possible. Conatus should therefore be read alongside potentia and affectus.