Craig Harper www.craigharper.com.au

Another pearl of wisdom from the great man.  Visit his website for more like this www.craigharper.com.au

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah… but do you want it ENOUGH?

Posted: 20 Jan 2008 04:37 AM CST

For a scientist (of sorts), I’m about to write something relatively brief (for me) and very unscientific. I’m about to dumb down what I believe to be the essence of creating real change (genuine forever results) and discuss one of the biggest hurdles to happiness, fulfilment, personal growth and success; the do-you-want-it-ENOUGH factor.

The very simple truth is this:

“When it comes to ‘living the dream’, many people simply don’t have the desire or the drive to do what needs to be done. And to keep doing it. And doing it. And doing it.”

They think a lot, plan a lot, talk a lot and some of them even masquerade as experts (too many, in fact), but when all the dust has settled and the bullshit has stopped, they don’t produce results because they just don’t want it badly enough. Not because they can’t do it or they don’t have the ability, but because invariably they don’t have the same level of desire and commitment as some of their less gifted counterparts. In fact, many highly-talented people are chronic under-achievers simply because they lack the wanting-it-badly-enough mindset. The I’ll-do-whatever-it-takes gene. They are lazy, undisciplined, excuse-making, procrastinating, big-talking wannabees. Their talent is wasted and their potential never really explored or developed.

“Success has a price and some people are not prepared to cough up – they want someone, or something else, to pay it for them.”

Am I being harsh? Depends on where you sit and where you’ve been. From my experience, I’m simply sharing some truth – what I’ve seen thousands of times. And as always, you can get offended or educated. It’s a choice.

Or you can visit: tell-me-what-I-wanna-hear.com.

On the other hand, take a look at the people with less talent, less overall ability and less skill but more drive and desire – invariably they will achieve much more. Much, much more. People who want anything enough will always find a way.

“While others are making excuses, they are making it happen.”

They will deal with crap that most wouldn’t even consider, because giving up ain’t an option for them. If it’s humanly possible, they’ll get the job done. Whereas for many people their mantra is:

“If it’s comfortable, easy and not-too-inconvenient, then I’ll get it done. However, if you could do it for me, that would be even better!”

Why do you think we (we, the society) continue to spend more and more money on ‘quick fixes’ for our body, invariably with disastrous results? Because we don’t want it enough to actually do the work ourselves. The truth is that we all know how to get in shape (essentially) but it always involves a level of hard work, sweat and discipline – three things we’re allergic to. We want the results without the work, so we have become the Shortcut Society.

So, you want more from your life?

Of course you do, that’s why you’re here. Join the rather long queue on the road to self-improvement. A desire to change your life, your situation, your reality for the better makes you pretty normal. Clever even. If you’re like the majority then your typical life experience fluctuates between kinda crappy and pretty good. Occasionally great. But of course, you want more ‘great’ and less ‘crappy’. Me too.

In my job I’m always talking to people about their dreams and goals. Their plans for the future and their ‘best life’ – no major revelation there. People don’t come to see me because they want to stay where they are (in terms of their career, habits, relationships, finances, level of health and appearance). No, just like you and me, on some level they want more – whatever more personally represents for them. We all have dreams and goals and we all have a picture in our mind of where we want to ‘go’ – what we would like our life, or part thereof, to look like. It seems that we’re very effective at building our best life in our head, but out here in the real world, not so great. If only we would move from the theoretical to the practical, then we’d all be rock stars.

When we analyse the mechanics of the change process, we see that there are many ingredients in the typical ‘success recipe’ – the stuff we need to make it (our dreams) happen. And most change specialists (lame-ass term I know) talk about things like planning, research, goal setting, adequate resources, time-management, intelligence, people skills, organisational skills, problem solving skills, creativity, adaptability, evaluation and re-evaluation. And yes, as a rule, they are valuable ingredients in the change process. But… are they what’s most likely to make or break you?

Nuppity Nup.

Give me a person with buckets of drive and desire over a person with talent any day. Talent doesn’t get the job done any more than owning some climbing gear means you’ll conquer Everest. You need to take that talent (or climbing gear) and use it.
The obvious truth is that we live in the information age. You and I have access to more self-help stuff (books, CD’s, DVD’s, websites, workshops, courses, specialists), than we’ve ever had. If you read all day every day, you’d never even scratch the surface of the self-help literature available to you. And if creating our best life was all about information and resources, then we would all be ‘there’. But we aren’t.
Are we?

For right now, perhaps the only question you need to really ask yourself is:

“Do I want it enough?”