Desire – do you really know what you want?

One of the biggest obstacles in being successful at anything is not knowing what you want. Desire is the starting point of personal achievement (as explained by Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich). You can find a brief description of all the principles of success here.

Start thinking about what you want

Take some time to reflect on what you really want in life. Find your purpose that you want to pursue. It may be a large amount of money, a happy family life, a new level in your career. What ever it may be, don’t  let it be just a dream. Start thinking of ways to actually make it come true.

Here are some questions that you should answer, in order to better define your goals:

1. Do you have a clear picture in your head of what it is you want to acquire? It might be a certain amount of money. Maybe you’re after the romantic attention of someone you like. Or you want to get in shape (lose weight). It can be anything. However, when you establish what you want, you must be specific. Be exact about the sum of money you want, the amount of weight you want to lose, or whatever is a measurable metric for your goal. Your goal must be clearly defined in your mind, if you want to have any chance of taking it to fruition.
   
2. Do you have a fixed deadline for when you want to reach your goal? Nothing gets done without a deadline, so you should put an end date by which to get to the object of your desire. Try to keep it realistic though – if you say “I want to increase my bank account by a billion dollars by next week”, it might be unlikely, unless you are already a multi-billionaire. At that point, you probably would not be reading this post, since you are already doing what is described here quite efficiently.
   
3. Do you know what you have to give in return? These is no such thing as something for nothing, so you must be prepared to put in the work required for your goal. It might be extra hours at your job, finding a better job with better pay, working out for a certain amount of time over a certain period and so on.
   
4. Do you have a plan that you can follow, in order to reach your goal through it? If you don’t have a plan, you will need to start putting one together as soon as possible. It does not have to be perfect.
   

After you’ve answered the questions above, follow the simple steps below and transform your imagination into reality.

7 Steps to getting anything you desire

1. Fix in your mind the exact object of your desire (fixed amount of money, dream car, dream house, etc.)
   
2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money or object you desire. Remember that you should provide value equivalent or greater than that of the object of your desire.
3. Establish a definite date by when you intend to possess the money you desire (deadline is extremely important). Make sure you give yourself enough time to put your plan to action. Be careful not to give it too much time, so that you are not inclined to procrastinate.
   
4. Create a definite plan for reaching your goal and begin at once to execute it, whether you are ready or not.
5. Write everything down: describe what it is you want to obtain, by when you want to get it, what you are willing to give in return and the plan you have for attaining your objective.
6. Read your written statement out-loud, twice, every day. Do it first thing after getting up from bed in the morning, and last thing at night before going to bed. As you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money or object of your desire.
   
7. Place your written statement somewhere so that you can see it multiple times during the day. This helps you remember that you need to take action, in order to meet your deadline.

Stop finding excuses and just do it!

Start executing the plan immediately. Even if you have to make a few adjustments along the way, taking action is always the best option. It does not matter if the actions you take are not perfect. What matters is that you stay focused on your goal and execute to your plan. By doing it, you will get more experienced and more efficient at getting what you want.

To give you an example of the above steps in action, this blog is the result of my newly found desire to share with you the knowledge and methods that I have learned recently about what it takes to be a high performance person and how anyone can step up his mindset and action, in order to improve. It is my goal to reach at least 1000 subscribers before the end of 2018. My plan is to write at least 2-3 posts every week, providing the best content I am able to produce, by packing into it the most valuable information I have found to date.