Manufacture Want, Emotion and Desire to Succeed
The key thing that separates successful people from the average is how badly they want it. The people who want it badly enough have the endurance to go through all the trouble, hoops, and obstacles required to get to what they want to achieve.
You can buy the course, learn the skills, get the memberships, have the time but still not apply yourself to get your desired outcome. Why? Because you don’t want it bad enough. Are you willing to risk life itself to get what you truly want? If you are, you better make sure what you desire is worthy of all that hard work. I’d recommend it should be an internal state of being rather than possession of things or an exotic life in external reality. The external can motivate and exhilarate momentarily, but it will not provide consistent returns.
So how do you go about manufacturing want? As with everything in life, it’s simple but not easy.
Think about an expensive purchase that you dwelled over for a while but were previously completely unaware of. Maybe it was a new toy, a gadget, if you’re feminine, perhaps a handbag or a piece of clothing or a shoe.
Before you saw the item, you had no idea about it. The moment you saw it and began to dwell over it, your desire to acquire it continued to increase. You began to obsess over it. This proves that want can be manufactured.
It’s also important to note that another person who looked at the same idea was not obsessed with it. So what triggered your desire doesn’t necessarily trigger another person’s desires. From this, we can conclude that what works for one person doesn’t work for another person. What you value and are attracted to, someone else may not value or be attracted to. So you need to figure out what it is that you value and what will resonate with you to cultivate that desire. This can only come from great self-knowledge. You can obtain this by observing yourself, your behavior, your past, and begin to discover patterns that have been repeated in your life.
Reverse engineer the process of desiring a material possession or experience and you will find that it requires that you consciously construct your mentality to obsess and dwell over the outcome you require. Visualize the outcome in your mind backed by an intense amount of emotion. Scientifically, it is programming your Reticular Activating System. But the key thing is to manufacture a strong emotion.
Emotion can be manufactured, just like movie actors can get into the emotional state of a character, you can train yourself to develop this capability through practice and repetition.
You can start small. For example, when I wake up, I like to visualize how the next hour or two is going to look like. I mentally practice the routine I will perform so that I actually do it. This involves seeing myself brushing my teeth, followed by putting on workout clothes, walking out the front door, turning on my Fitbit to track my run, the route I am going to take, the intensity of the jog or run at different points in the path, coming home and doing bodyweight exercises, drinking a liter of water, followed but a warm and cold shower, followed by a cup of coffee and reading a chapter from the book I’m reading. I find that this helps keeps things on track and the probability of me carrying through with the plan increases.
Building on this you can visualize longer time horizons and the results you seek to achieve. This is just like planning in your head and something you build through practice and repetition.
I know this sounds simple, unscientific, and probably stupid if you haven’t any experience with this, but there is a lot of literature around this from different time periods. I intend to bring more practical tips on how you could practice this daily with examples from personal experience and the experience of others.
Originally published at https://thinkriseact.com on August 23, 2020.
