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Chapter 3: Desire it
Man is his desire.
—Aristotle
What is desire?
The dictionary defines desire as ‘a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen’. The keywords that stand out are ‘feelings’, ‘wanting’, and ‘wishing’. We as human beings are programmed to feel, want, and wish. It’s what makes us human.
From the moment of birth, a child has a desire for a breath of oxygen to the moment of death when the desire for breath is strong again. Our feelings, wants, and wishes change through the course of our lives as we age, grow, and mature. What you wanted as a child was different from what you wanted as a teenager, and what you will want twenty years from now will be different from what you want now. This is understandable as all desires are makings of the mind and aspirations of the moment.
Decide on your desires
Did you ever sit down and make a list of everything you want?
—Earl Nightingale
What I want you to do is open your mind up and pour your desires out on paper. This simple exercise will not only help you get clarity on what you desire but will also kick-start your imagination to start thinking of new desires that you never thought about. To start the ball rolling and get you thinking, I have five categories below that I want you to think about, and write down what you want to achieve in these categories.
- Health
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- Relationships
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- Success and achievement
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- Wealth
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- Material things or experiences
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Now, with the list of desires you wrote down for each category, combine them into one sentence for each category for you to be able to read. When finished, the task you should have one paragraph of five sentences that make up your desires.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Do your desires blend in with your dreams and passions? You should start to see a pattern emerging of the path you are on and the direction of where your life is going.
What you are doing is creating a blueprint of your current desires, dreams, and aspirations. You only desire things that you don’t have. If you had them, you wouldn’t desire them. Most desires come from a feeling of lacking, either wanting a certain thing and/or feeling a certain way. We all desire, but what makes us all different is we all desire different things at different times. What you desired in the past is not what you desire in the present, and what you desire in the present is not something you will desire in the future. And on and on it goes.
I want you to move past the egotistical desires for a moment, such as what you want, and see if you have a desire in you of something the world needs. What can you do that moves the needle forwards for humanity? Do you have an altruistic desire? Can you do something with your life to make the world a better place? If yes, write it down and become clear about what it is. For if you are clear about what you want, the world responds with clarity.
A plan for your desires
Now that you have completed the first step in getting your desires out of your head, the next logical step is to create a plan of action. Look back on the list of your desires you outlined previously, and order the list from the most important to the not so important. Don’t order your desires from the smallest to the biggest or from the easiest to hardest to achieve. Instead, order them according to the most important thing you desire to the least important. Write down your top five desires. These desires should be huge, hard to reach, out of your comfort zone, and scary all in one. If they are not, you are not thinking big enough or far enough into the future.
Write below your top five desires.
- __________________________________________________
- __________________________________________________
- __________________________________________________
- __________________________________________________
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Having written your top five desires, beside your most important desire, write a time frame for its achievement and so forth. What you need to do now is chunk down each desire into bite-sized action steps you can take. Daily small actions repeated over and over are compounded to move your desires into reality.
You should now start to see an outline of the direction of your desires in life. Now take a moment to shut your eyes, and vividly picture in your mind all your desires coming true and living that moment in the future. Close your eyes and do this for twenty seconds. What does it look like, and how does it feel?
Now open your eyes and realise that from where you are now to where your imagination took you, the only person stopping you achieving what you want is you. You and you alone. When I say you, I mean your thoughts, habits, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and actions.
Get out of your own way and start today. Take action right now to make a plan for the life you want. Be different, be extraordinary, be the best version of you and not the average, substandard version of your past.
The power of thought
Now that you have completed the exercise of taking your desires from your head and into concrete plans for your life, the next step in realising your desires is the power of thought.
You see, the most powerful force you possess is the power of your thoughts. Either your thoughts can control you or you can control your thoughts. Actualised people understand this concept of harnessing their inner power of thought to externally manifest their desires. By getting your mind into emotional harmony with your desire, you start the process of turning the invisible into the visible. See it in your mind your desires as fact, and think about that which you desire daily, and you will create the mental state of bringing yourself to action.
By practicing the art of directing your thoughts on what you want instead of what you don’t, you in turn are programming yourself to success. You see, your conscious mind is the thinking part of your mind which can accept, reject, and originate ideas. With repetition and emotion, thoughts of desires are passed on to the subconscious mind, which accepts all information impressed upon it as fact. Knowing now that you choose your thoughts, that then causes your feelings, which cause your actions. You want to start deliberately programming your mind with the thoughts of your dreams and desires so it can propel you to action.
Desire to action
By now you know your desires, you have a plan, and you understand the power of your thoughts. But all this is utterly useless unless you take the next step in the process: action.
Action is the name of the game. It completes the simple three-step formula: think, plan, and act. Acting without thinking and planning is careless, but thinking and planning without action are useless. Don’t get caught in the trap of mistaking thinking and planning for action. Only the execution of thoughts and plans have any real effect. First think, then plan, then take daily incremental actions to manifest the desires you want.
Using the law of compounding action, the effects of sequentially adding, or more accurately, multiplying the impact of growth on top of the previous one, you can move mountains. You live your life moment to moment, and so you build your life action to action. Make small measurable progress daily on the things you desire, and put the law of compounding in your favour.
Remember
- Decide on your desires and create a blueprint for your life.
- What can you do that moves the needle forwards for humanity?
- Daily small actions repeated over and over compound to move your desires into reality.
- Dedicate your whole self to your desires and you will achieve great things.
- All great achievements in life first started out as a desire.
- Do not procrastinate on your desire for success.
