Creating Desire
Everyone knows that unless you’re motivated to do something, chances are you aren’t going to do it. People rarely do things for no reason, which is why motivation is so important. To motivate means to provide a reason or motive for doing something, but that can span a broad spectrum. I am sure you have heard people say or ask, “What can you do to get me motivated?”Seldom do we hear them say, “How can I motivate myself?” And here lies the difference between ordinary people and extraordinary people.
We can refer to the two extremes of motivation as fear and desire. The closer you get to either extreme, the more intense the motivation becomes. Let’s look at an example that illustrates this phenomenon.
Suppose a group of children is playing ball in the middle of a seldom-used highway. Over the course of several minutes, one mother comes out and tells her child to stop playing in the road and come in for dinner, another scolds hers for playing in the road and says it’s time to come in and do homework, and still another sees her children in the highway and starts running after them trying to get them out of the road. All the while, the children are making excuses as they continue playing their game. Dinner, homework, or even mad parents should all be good reasons for the kids to get out of the road, but none of the children are close enough to either extreme on the motivational spectrum to get them moving.
Suddenly, a huge tractor comes barreling around the curve. The driver sees the children playing in the road and knows he can’t stop. He slams on the brakes, reaches up, and grabs the cord for the air horn. When the children hear the screeching tires and the loud blasts from the horn, they instantly dive for the ditch on the side of the road. They don’t even look to see if it’s full of rocks or mud or even snakes. They’ll deal with whatever is in the ditch later. At the moment, the fear of death or being knocked down by the trailer is more than anything else. They are motivated! They have just experienced fear motivation to the extreme. (Many parents use fear motivation to a lesser extreme with their threats to spank or ground their children.)
Now, let’s suppose that the children in the road are fully engrosed in their game when one of them spots another child petting a young deer in the backyard of a house next to where they’re playing. He screams, “Look, everybody! There’s a young deer over there and Johnny is petting it. Let’s go pet it too!”
The rest of the children instantly drop everything and start running for the backyard. They clear the roadway just as quickly as if a tractor were bearing down on them, but do so for a totally different reason. None of them have ever seen a little deer before, especially one they could pet. They’re motivated! They have just experienced an extreme level of desire motivation.
Though the results in these two examples were the same, the motivation was entirely different. In both instances, the children got out of the road as quickly as possible, but with the truck, because they feared for their lives, and with the young deer, because of the inner desire. With the truck, the motivation comes from outside, from the fear of being physically harmed. The motivation to see and pet the young deer comes from within. Neither little Johnny nor the young deer applied any outside force to get the children out of the road. Their inner desire was enough motivation to get them to react as quickly as if their life had been threatened. Very interesting, isn’t it?
Fear from the outside and desire from within form the extremes of motivation, but when these roles are reversed, it can be counterproductive. Either inner fear or desire induced from the outside can kill motivation. The inner fear of failure, ridicule, criticism, loss, harm, or even fear of success can restrain a person from developing the motivation needed to tackle and solve problems. That fear could keep them from enjoying great success. On the other hand, desire created from the outside, the old carrot-on-the-stick approach to get the donkey to pull the cart, can also be counterproductive. Employers are often guilty of doing this when they dangle big bonuses in front of employees to encourage them to reach for unrealistic goals. It only takes a few times of busting your butt reaching for someone else’s goals and coming up short for the promised rewards to lose their value.
In contrast, the desire created by setting your own goals can provide the motivation to overcome almost any obstacles that stand in the way of reaching those goals. In this way, you can determine if your desires are strong enough. If you’re consistently reaching your goals, they are. If you aren’t consistently reaching them, they aren’t.
The Millionaire mindset materializes when you develop the ability to create desire so strong that they keep you on track when temptations or obstacles arise. This is done by setting small goals, experiencing some success, then gradually moving on to larger and larger goals. it also involves learning to rebound from setbacks and disappointments without giving up on your dreams.
Creating desire is not about coming up with a wish list. It’s about learning to think two or three steps ahead, it’s about anticipating the outcome of your actions and putting in place alternative actions if you get less than the desired results. Desire is strengthened by success, and this comes when you anticipate potential outcomes and prepare yourself to meet them.
Success strengthens desires because they give you confidence that you’ll ultimately be able to achieve your goals, part of the journey in building a Millionaire mindset. It’s important that you start with small goals. yes, you need big, long-term goals, but you have to break them down into small short-term goals that are easier to accomplish. This is important because successfully reaching each small goal gives you a feeling of accomplishment and allows you to measure your progress toward the bigger long-term goals. As you complete each small step, your desire level will grow, especially when you see yourself moving closer to the big goals.
That’s all for now, my friends. See you all in my next article.
Click Here if you desire to be Rich and Successful
Click Here to Fast Track your business.
Comments
Post a Comment