Wanting. Wanting is the most difficult thing to teach. Wanting to grow, wanting to be your best, wanting to learn, wanting to improve. That burning desire MUST come from within. Oh, you can role model it, you can try to plant and nourish the seed, you can call out to it and if the spark is there, you can fan embers and perhaps get a full born burn going… but it is extremely challenging to teach.
Clarification: by wanting I do not mean a vague urge or weak wishes or magical thinking: your dream job or perfect mate showing up on your doorstep by some wizardry, without significant effort or hard, sustained work. By “wanting”, I mean the willingness to do the work, power through the inevitable drudgery, rise up above the all too likely disappointments and setbacks and intelligently persevere and persist.
The Good News: With a bit of self-awareness and introspection, it is relatively easy to awaken one’s own desire. Pay attention to what captures and sustains your interest; invest more time and energy, think through the path forward with BOTH your Heart and your Mind, visualize success in great and vivid detail and accept that it is rare that things of true value are easily achieved or retained without meaningful struggle.
Closing Quotes:
“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” – Napoleon Hill, 1883-1970
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
“Very few persons, comparatively, know how to Desire with sufficient intensity. They do not know what it is to feel and manifest that intense, eager, longing, craving, insistent, demanding, ravenous Desire which is akin to the persistent, insistent, ardent, overwhelming desire of the drowning man for a breath of air; of the shipwrecked or desert-lost man for a drink of water; of the famished man for bread and meat.” – Robert Collier, 1885-1950
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier