Desire

Why are some people super successful in life and others are not and the rest just sort of flounder along? I think it all comes down to desire and what we want out of life. Like the band U2 sang, “…And the fever…getting higher. Desire.” Yet sometimes desire can be classified as healthy or unhealthy. But who is to decide which is which? Sometimes the things that we desire are classified as unhealthy and at times rightfully so. For instance if we only desire to eat the richest chocolate cake or tiramisu this may have negative impact on us personally and can be considered an unhealthy desire. Maybe we have a desire for too much of or a “strange ” type of sex. This can be considered by some to be unhealthy. There are people who like to go to the gym and lift weights to a point that others might consider extreme. They would consider this an unhealthy desire. We even have this concept of people who work too much and their desire to work at this level as being unhealthy. There is a word for that which even carries a negative connotation – Workaholic. There are people like Gary Vaynerchuk who have a very strong desire to win. They are the type of people who always want to do their very best and that very best has to be better than everyone else’s very best. Some people would consider that unhealthy. I don’t think Gary does. Gary is super successful and this is the reason why. I find it interesting that some people like Gary or Richard Branson are born with this sort of level of desire whereas others of us including myself are not.
I think the successful person is the one who can figure out how to find that balance between healthy and unhealthy desire. For instance there are people who are lazy and then there are people like Gary Vaynerchuk. What if the lazy person could find a way to make hard work desirable? What if the person who does not like to go to the gym finds a way to make going to the gym desirable? This I believe would make that person a much more “successful “person. So what is the answer? How does one change the level of desire? Do we do it with a series or a system of rewards? That’s one way to do it. For instance whenever you have a desire to have a piece of tiramisu then maybe before you have the tiramisu you must do 50 push-ups or jog in place for a couple minutes. Maybe someone uses something like hypnosis to help change their mindset. Or meditation by a koi pond?
I think you have to want it bad enough. It is easy to become comfortable and complacent and not do anything to get ahead. For those of us born without that gene people like Vaynerchuk or Branson or Tiger Woods is born with we have to dig down deep and work extra hard to word hard.
Like Christopher Gardner said, “You got a dream… If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.”
What do you think?