I get it, you have exciting dreams and big goals to achieve, but do you
have all the energy, desire, and motivation you need to achieve them? This is what
happens to most people – they lack a strong and burning desire to achieve
whatever they want in life.
One of the main differences between someone successful and someone who
is not isn’t their ability or talent or
knowledge, but their desire.
Successful people have a strong desire for what they want. And that is
why they are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals and to turn
their dreams into reality.
They don’t take no as an answer. When things are hard, they push on.
When they fail, they don’t give up. And when most people are slacking and
partying, they are working hard for their dreams.
Do you have a burning desire for success? Are you willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your goals? Are you willing to sacrifice your leisure and commit to taking massive action until you get the things you want in life?
This is what separates someone successful and someone who is not.
Why Your Desire for Success is Everything
Without a strong desire for the success you want, you will buy into
instant gratification rather than working and focusing on your long-term goal.
It is extremely hard to have discipline and stick to your plans and goals. And there are just so many distractions to take your focus away from your goals.
Without a burning desire, your goals will become your wishes. Guess
what, you will never achieve your wishes.
On the other hand, successful people understand that if they want to
make their goals come true, they need to develop the desire for them.
They understand they need to turn their goals into something they must achieve. Not wants, not wishes, and certainly not hopes, but a must-achieve.
When your desire for what you want isn’t strong enough, you will procrastinate. You’ll choose instant gratification and do what is comfortable now than delay the gratification and work for your long-term vision.
In other words, you must turn your wants/hopes/wishes into a strong
burning desire:
- Every person wishes they have all the money they want and they want to be financially free as well. But only a small portion of people ever become financially successful.
- Every person wants to have a slim, fit, and healthy body. But not all guys have 6-pack abs and not all women are slim and fit. Only those who turned this into a burning desire managed to make it a reality.
- Every person hopes they can make a positive impact in the world and they want to help as many people as possible. But only a small fraction of them manage to create anything significant in their lives and touch others.
Your desire is what separates you from the rest.
It is what transforms your wishes/hopes/wants into a must-achieve.
And when something becomes a must-achieve for you, you will do whatever it takes to get it.
The Real Meaning of a Strong and Burning Desire
A dream or goal without desire is like an engine without fuel. And
desire creates the motivation, the will, and the energy you need to take
massive and consistent action to reach your goals.
So what is a burning desire?
Desire is not the same as wants, hopes, or wishes. Desire is something that comes from within you. A deep, insatiable urge for what you want.
So do you have it? Do you desire success? Or do you wish for it?
Your answer to the above question will tell whether you will be
successful or not.
Imagine you’re walking by the side of a pool. And you don’t know how to
swim. Your friend walks to you and he wants to have fun with you, so he pushes
you into the pool.
Guess what happens next?
You struggle to get your head above water. You fight for life. You do
whatever you can to keep your head out of the water so that you can breathe.
And when someone gets you, you’ll grab him as hard as possible to stay
afloat. That’s a burning desire – to survive.
When it comes to life and success, most people lack this desire.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone wants to be successful, but not all of
them have a strong desire for it.
- They wish they can be successful, but they’re not committed.
- They want to be successful, but if it’s inconvenient or tough, they won’t do it.
- They hope to be successful, but they procrastinate and they’re not willing to do the work.
By this point, I hope you understand the real meaning of having a
burning desire.
When you develop your desire for your goals and dreams, you become unstoppable.
You’d do everything you can to get the results you want. And that’s how success
is created.
So how do you boost your desire for success? Here are 5 powerful methods
you can apply…
1. Burn The Ships
I bet you have heard about this method. When you leave yourself no options,
you’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it.
When Hernan Cortes ordered his men to burn down their own ships so that they could take down the island, he left his men with no means of escape.
Many times in life, you’re not doing your best and going all in because
you know you have a “cushion” to fall onto.
You know that it is okay to fail and it is okay even if you don’t achieve
your goals.
Your goals and your dreams are not a must-achieve, and so you think
that it is alright to not do it with your best. And it is alright to just try.
And this is exactly what happens
when you know you can fail.
If you’re truly committed to your goals and dreams, you need to burn the
ships. Leave yourself with no other means of escape.
It is either you go big, or you go home.
Many people want to be rich, but most of them are not rich because they’re
okay with the amount of money they’re earning now.
They want to achieve great success in life, but even if they don’t, it
is alright because they can still survive. The world still goes on and everything
will still be fine for them. And that is exactly why they don’t have the desire
for what they want.
Burn the ships. Give yourself no other options but to achieve it.
Make a public commitment
One of the most powerful ways to burn ships is to make a public commitment. What you need to do is to announce it to the world so that you put yourself on the line and you have no way to back out.
For instance, if you want to start an internet business but you’re holding a job, what you can do is quit your job. It may sound scary, but when you do so, you’re leaving yourself no other options but to do it.
Once, there was a manager made the decision to quit smoking. He did not feel that he had the willpower or enough motivation to do it alone, so he put a big poster in his office saying, “If you catch me smoking, I’ll give you $10,000 cash with no strings attached!”
And guess what, from that moment on, the manager never picks up another
cigarette anymore. That’s the power of a public commitment.
Of course, not all public commitment will work. And you need to be
extra careful so that it won’t backfire.
One thing you can do is to share your action commitments, your plans, and your goals with someone who is supportive.
Share your progress report with them so that they can keep an eye on your
performance.
When you get other people involved in your plan and progress, you automatically boost your accountability and commitment toward your goals.
So how are you going to make a public commitment? Are you going to share with a supportive friend? And how often are you going to send your progress report to him or her? Let me know in the comment below.
Read: 10 Powerful Steps How to Fully Commit to Goals That Terrify You
2. Feed Your Mind With Your Dreams
Here’s another way to increase your desire for success – feed your mind
with the results you want.
Success isn’t going to come to you overnight. And most likely it is not
going to happen in weeks, months, and sometimes even years. You have to endure
the progress and maintain your momentum.
When most people first started with a goal, they are fired up. They
have a lot of energy and motivation in the
early stage. However, as time passes by, they slowly lose steam and started to
lose their drive for their goals.
They are distracted by their busy daily life, they tend to forget about
their goals, and they then slowly lose excitement
for what they want.
And this is why you need to constantly feed your mind with empowering
thoughts on a daily basis. Zig Ziglar said it wisely:
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.”
You need to keep your desire strong and make sure you maintain your drive
each day.
So what can you do to keep your desire strong each day? Here are a
couple of suggestions:
1) Read and learn the right materials
Reading inspirational books and listening to motivational audio
programs are, in my opinion, the best way to maintain your motivation and drive
for success.
It is common sense. If you want to start a business, read books written
by successful entrepreneurs. When you read business books and magazines, you
are feeding your mind with positive thoughts of how others have done it.
The key is to continuously recharge yourself with positive thoughts and
to keep your desire strong. You don’t want the fire to die down within you. You
want to keep your fire burning strong.
All you need to do is to read for about 30 minutes a day. You can spend more time devouring inspirational materials over the weekend.
Go here to check out my recommendation for worth-reading books.
And if you have the chance to attend seminars, conferences, and workshops, go for them. You want to
“soak” yourself with energy and drive.
2) Keep an eye on the rewards
If you want your desire to continue to burn strong, you must keep your
eye on the rewards. Never ever get your eyes off the goals that you want.
The moment you get distracted and lost focus, you will begin to lose
the excitement and momentum. And this is where most people started to fall back
and eventually quit. Never let this happen to you.
For instance, if your goal is to lose weight and build a slim and fit body, make your own poster with the goal. Change the wallpaper on your computer that portrays the same thing or to some inspirational imagery.
You can also read fitness magazines, cut out those pictures of people
who have the perfect bodies that you desire, and put them around your house.
You can also sign up for a gym membership and get a personal trainer to
train you. Find a workout partner so that you will be more accountable to
exercise on a regular basis.
Whatever you do, you must keep your eye on the rewards. Make your goals
as real and as tangible as possible.
By the way, don’t worry if someone will laugh or make fun of your goals or what you do, they just don’t understand your level of desire and commitment.
Just let people see how serious and how committed you are to your goals. They will eventually believe in you and support you.
3) Visualize and imagine the success you desire
Another great technique to feed your mind with your dreams is visualization.
Always take time off to imagine the success you want. Plenty of research and studies have proven that visualization actually works.
Alan Richardson, an Australian Psychologist made a study on a group of basketball players. He discovered that basketball players who visualized their practice sessions (without physically touching the ball) had a significant improvement in their free throw skills.
This shows how powerful visualization can be.
What you need to do is obvious – spend a few minutes and imagine yourself reaching all your goals and dreams.
See yourself living the life that you desire. Visualize yourself doing the work and achieving all the great success that you want.
Jack Canfield, the author of The Success Principles suggested we visualize at least twice a day – once in the morning after waking up, and once in the evening before we go to bed.
3. Surround Yourself With Successful People
If you were to choose just one method to boost your desire for success,
I will tell you this – surround yourself with other extraordinary people.
I bet you have heard this phrase a gazillion times, “You are the
average of the five people spend the most time with.”
It is true. You will be affected and influenced by the people you spend
the most time with. This is why smokers usually hang around with other smokers
and the same thing happens to alcoholics.
Like attracts like. So when you network and mix with other successful people, guess what the topics of conversation will be about? Business, economy, market, etc.
- You will talk about business when you surround yourself with other business people.
- You will talk about blogs and social media when you surround yourself with other bloggers and internet marketers.
- You will talk about travel and what is the next hot vacation if you surround yourself with travel enthusiasts.
On the contrary, if you surround yourself with negative people who love to blame and complain, guess what are the topics of conversation? Blames and complaints.
This is how the people you spend the most time with can influence and
change your life.
Therefore, try to make friends with people who will encourage and support you on your journey to success. Find ways to spend more time with people who share similar dreams to yours.
For example, if you want to lose weight and have a fit body, go to the
gym often. Start making friends with those who are already in great shape and
who believe in exercising.
When you are the only one overweight in your circles of friends, trust me, you will feel the discomfort and do whatever you can to lose the additional pounds.
Like what Les Brown often said:
“If you want to fly with eagles, don’t swim with the ducks.”
If you run around with losers most of the time, you will end up
becoming a loser too.
So network and make friends with extraordinary people who shared your desire as you.
Get rid of negative people from your life
Besides spending more time and making friends with the right people, one
very important thing you must do is to get rid of the negative people in your
life.
Stop spending time with people who love to complain and blame. They
will do you nothing good and only drag you down to their level.
Removing the negatives from your life is important. It is like driving
with your handbrakes on. If you want to go faster, you don’t have to press the
accelerator, you just need to let go of the handbrakes.
Sometimes, you don’t have to do more to achieve more. You just need to
do less of the wrong things.
Thus, take a few minutes now to really ponder about your circles of
friends and co-workers. Who do you spend the most time with and are they going
to be helpful to your success?
If not, you may want to really consider spending less time with them.
Sometimes it is difficult to get rid of negative people in your life, like your
colleagues or people who are close to you.
But you can consider greatly reduce the time you spend with them.
Instead of spending time with negative people, choose to read books and
materials that will inspire you.
4. Improve Your Identity
Another powerful factor that will determine your success or failure and always affect your desire is none other than your self-identity.
Your self-identity is how you look at yourself. It is the sum of your
thoughts and beliefs about yourself.
Let me as you this, do you think you are smart?
Whether you think you are smart or not depends on your beliefs and past
experiences. If you fail tests in school, this experience can make you think
that you are not smart at all.
Similarly, if you score all A’s in school, it can make you believe that
you are smart and clever.
And when you think that you’re smart because you graduate with flying colors, it makes you apply for “better” jobs or work with “higher qualifications”.
Well, this is just an example of how your self-identity can influence your life.
Hence, you must develop an identity that you’re someone successful. You
must see yourself as someone who is destined for big success. You must grow the
belief that you have a strong desire for success.
So how do you do that? Here are some suggestions:
1) Dress for success
First, dress for success. How you look can greatly affect your desire. Stand in front of a mirror, how do you feel about yourself? How do you look? Do you look good and portray yourself as someone who is successful? Or are you not?
Although I prefer jeans and a T-shirt because that’s more comfortable, when I see myself in the future, having achieved all my goals and living a successful life, I see myself dressing more nicely and more professionally.
And so I slowly dress more professionally and nicely to fit in the
identity that supports my dream.
So dress for success, my friend. Your physical appearance can greatly
impact your identity and change your level of desire for what you want.
When you see yourself having achieved all your goals and living the best life you want, how do you see yourself physically?
And from now on, dress like you are how you want to be in the future.
2) Create the right environment
Besides getting dressed for success, create the right environment that will support your dreams and goals.
What kind of office or place will you be working from once you are successful? How do you want your workstation to look? Do you want a proper and professional workplace or do you want a casual work-from-home style of office?
Let your environment boost your desire for success. And you can start
right now and build the environment you desire.
3) Watch your self-talk
One of the most impactful techniques to cultivate your desire for what
you want is to change your self-talk.
There is no way you can achieve great success if you keep telling yourself that you’re a failure or that whatever you do amounts to nothing.
Your identity is reflected by your thoughts and they are expressed as
your self-talk. So watch how you talk to yourself. Your inner conversation says
a lot about yourself.
So stop saying “I can’t”, change it to “I must”.
Similarly, you can boost your desire with affirmations too. When you
keep telling yourself you can do it, eventually, you will buy into it and believe
it.
You can’t litter negativity everywhere and then wonder why you’ve got a
trashy life. It all starts with your thoughts.
Each day, keep telling yourself positive affirmations that will elevate your mood and develop your desire.
Read this article to make your affirmations work for you:
How To Make Your Affirmations Work – The 5 Simple Rules To Follow
5. Take Immediate Action
There’s no point in having the
drive without taking any solid action. When you are motivated and your desire
is strong, you must maintain it by taking immediate and consistent action.
Don’t just dream about losing weight, do it. Once you have set your goal or made it a target to achieve, like losing weight, take immediate action. For instance, you can go to your kitchen and throw away all the junk foods that are not helping.
You don’t want to give yourself too much time to think. You want to
act. Most people spend too much time thinking and planning, eventually, they
fall into analysis paralysis and don’t take any real action.
You must fuel your desire with actions because that’s how the success cycle works.
When you take some form of action, be it big or small, you will build up momentum. And when you celebrate your small victory, you feel good and you gain more confidence. When you feel good and have more confidence, you will want to take more action.
This is the cycle that you must continue to work on so that your desire for the success you want will never fade.
The key is to consistently add
fuel to your desire. You want to keep your desire burning strong, so you must add
in the fuel (actions) every day.
When you consistently add actions to your desire, you will reach a
point when you have built up the habit and you know that nothing can stop you.
By that time, success will be a matter of time.
Start small and stay consistent
Taking immediate action is important, but so with starting small and being consistent.
Remember, you are what you do consistently, not what you do once in a while. Your success is determined by your daily agenda, not what you do once in a blue moon.
Therefore, always start small so that it is easier to do and has less resistance. When a task is easy to complete, you are more likely to do it because it takes less willpower and motivation.
Besides that, act consistently. In order to maintain your desire, you
must take consistent action. Even if it is something as small as making a phone
call, doing just 5 push-ups, or writing just 100 words, do it.
The key is to maintain your consistency so that you will never run out
of steam.
This is why being small and consistent is important.
In fact, most of the big successes you have seen out there started small
and with consistency.
Apple wasn’t built in a day. A best-selling book wasn’t written in a day
too. It took many days of small and consistent actions that lead to the
complete product.
You want to make your desire and motivation sustainable. And to do
this, you must do it small and with consistency.
Conclusion
Desire is one of the ultimate keys to success.
- Without desire, you will never be committed to your goals.
- Without desire, you will do what is easy and skip what is hard.
- Without desire, you will give up whenever you face setbacks in your journey.
- Without desire, your motivation will never last.
And if you have a strong and burning desire, anything is possible. You
are motivated when you are driven by a strong desire. You are willing to do
whatever it takes when you are motivated by a burning desire.
So no matter what you do, use these 5 methods above to create the
desire you need for success.
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