You can achieve anything in this world if you want it bad enough. This is a truth I regularly say, because I believe it with all my heart.
In my role as a life coach, I am often helping people pursue a lifestyle they want to live more than anything else.
In doing so, I’m usually guiding them through an essential lifestyle change required to inspire success.
I believe, if you want something bad enough, you’ll be willing to make the following changes. If you don’t, you won’t. That’s all there is to it.
So, let’s dive into my long list of changes you’d make if you wanted something badly enough.
Let’s dive right into it.
1. Picture What Your Life Would Look Like If Everything Stayed The Same
This is a great exercise to help motivate you into action, and hopefully highlight how bad you want a particular thing to happen during your time on this planet.
Write a list of all the ways that not having this specific thing is hurting you. Be as detailed as possible.
Let’s say your goal is to improve your confidence with the opposite sex; your list might contain all the ways that being shy is hurting you:
- I’m lonely a lot of the time.
- I’m not being invited to as many parties.
- I feel uncomfortable and awkward at the parties I do go to.
- I’m not enjoying as many memorable experiences with women.
- I’m not having sex.
- I’m becoming addicted to adult movies.
- I’m not making as many friends.
- It feels like I’m wasting my youth.
- My chances of starting a family with a great woman are slipping away.
- If I ever do meet my dream woman, I’m most likely going to mess it up.
- I’m being made fun of for being useless with women.
- My self-esteem is damaged every time I don’t talk to a woman I like.
- I feel inferior to my friends who can talk to women.
Now, sit in a quiet room and meditate on what it might look like in five years if you still don’t have what you want. Now, try 10 years or 20 years? Really sit and vividly imagine. This meditation should be so painful.
Hopefully, this will inspire you to take action towards a positive change.
The reason this exercise works so well is because humans tend to be more motivated by avoiding pain than chasing pleasure.
2. Start Acting Like A Professional Now
The best thing you can do if you have professional aspirations is to begin acting like a professional today.
If you want to live as a blogger or social media influencer, start putting as much work as the pros.
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, start mirroring the habits of entrepreneurs in your field.
A lot of people stand around waiting to be picked. If you want it bad enough, you’ll pick yourself. You’ll become so good that it’s impossible not to pick you.
A great thing about the digital era is it’s no longer down to one person to ‘pick’ you. If you want to be an author, you can self-publish your own book. If you want to be a journalist, an entertainer, a taco expert or anything else, you can launch a YouTube channel.
Then, it’s up to you to be the best version of that thing you can be. The audience decides who makes it big and who doesn’t.
3. If You Want It Bad Enough, There Will Be No Excuses
There will always be a valid reason not to try and follow your dreams. There will always be hurdles standing in front of you.
The perfect time to start your journey doesn’t exist. The only perfect time is therefore now.
The main differences between champions and failures is that the champs kept going when things got tough. They found a way to jump the hurdles in front of them, while the failures saw them and gave up.
Most likely, there are people out there living the lifestyle you want, even though they had bigger hurdles to jump than you.
The difference is: they didn’t listen to their excuses.
Consider reading the autobiographies of the biggest successes in your desired field (or any field) for inspiration. They’ll explain the struggles they had to overcome – and how they managed to do so – in explicit detail.
4. Define What Shit Sandwich You’re Willing To Eat
Even those in the world’s most desirable career have to eat a shit sandwich.
Athletes have to put their body through the pain of reaching peak physical condition. Actors have to suffer endless rejections for parts. Entrepreneurs have the pressure of making enough money to survive and pay their staff. YouTubers have to spend hours editing their videos, dealing with the ever-changing YouTube algorithm and trying to ignore haters in their comments.
There’s a shit sandwich in every vocation. Everything sucks, sometimes. No job is perfect in every moment.
Your job is to identify the flavor of shit sandwich served with your passion and ask yourself if you’re willing to eat it.
If the answer is no, you don’t want it bad enough. If you’re only after the money or fame, you never wanted it bad enough.
So, save yourself the effort, get up and go do something else.
But remember, there will be another shit sandwich waiting for you in whatever other path you take instead. (Credit to Mark Manson for the metaphor)
5. Eliminate Activities That Don’t Help You On Your Journey
It’s a sad reality of our existence as humans that most of us can only become really good at one or two things.
So, it’s really worth focusing on the one thing you want more than anything else.
If Tiger Woods had tried to become the world’s best golfer and squash player, he maybe would have been ‘quite good’ at both of them.
If Michael Phelps was trying to be an Olympic swimmer and a famous DJ, he’d probably end up with no gold medals.
When someone really wants to achieve a difficult feat, they’re willing to eliminate all distractions not helping them get there.
For most of you, that might mean giving up a few hobbies and spending less hours in front of the TV.
If you’re not willing to do that, you probably don’t want to achieve your main goal badly enough.
6. Put Some Financial Skin In The Game
If you want it bad enough, you’d be willing to pay a coach to show you exactly how to do it properly.
Yes, coaches can cost a lot of money. If you want something bad enough, you’d find a way to save for it.
The high cost of a coach can actually work in your favor too.
Once you’ve invested a lot of money into improving at a specific skill, you’ll be more likely to take it seriously, because you’ll want to see a return on your investment.
It’s true that there is a lot of information available for free online. Yet, free advice is rarely followed. It’s taken for granted.
A well-paid coach will be able to ensure you make less mistakes on your way to the top, and you’ll be more likely to actually follow their advice when you’ve paid good money for it.
The best investment you can make is in yourself. You’ll make more than enough money back if you’re smart about this investment.
7. You’ll Learn From Your Mistakes
If you really want something, you’ll work hard to get it. That’s a given.
But if you’re smart about it, you’ll also put in the time to analyse your work and learn from your mistakes.
The truly determined individuals out there will never rest on their laurels. They’ll be looking for ways to improve every day, until they reach the very top. Then, even once they’re at the top, they’ll be on the lookout for improvements they can make to stay there.
Yes, you should acknowledge your progress and pat yourself on the back. But if you want it enough, you’ll also stay on the lookout for ways to improve. A coach can come incredibly useful here too.
8. Don’t Be Shy About Your Dreams
If you want something bad enough, you won’t keep it to yourself. Instead, you’ll be shouting about it from the rooftops. You’ll post about it on social media, you’ll be telling your friends about your progress. That’s why they call it your ‘passion’.
There are a few reasons why this is highly recommended.
First off, it creates accountability. Most likely, you won’t want to look silly by not achieving what you’re constantly telling everyone you’re going to do.
Secondly, affirmations are known to be very effective in helping inspire someone to achieve a big goal.
On top of that, it helps to attract opportunities. When you’re always talking about what you love to do, you’re more likely to attract somebody who can help you take off.
For more information on how and why this works, see this guide on the law of attraction coaches.
9. You’ll Stop Caring About Other People’s Opinions
The entrepreneurs and inventors who changed the world with their innovative ideas were surely surrounded by people who thought they were crazy.
In fact, most people have at least a couple of pessimistic friends or family members who discourage them from trying to achieve a truly amazing feat.
If you want something bad enough, you are absolutely not going to listen to the things these people say, even if they promise they’re only trying to save you from heartache. Maybe you would be better off spending less time with these people. Use the satisfaction of proving them wrong to motivate you to try harder.
Listen only to those who believe in you and want to see you succeed.
10. You’ll Get To Work, Even When You Don’t Feel Like It
No-one achieved anything great by only working when they felt like it.
Motivation is fleeting, by definition. Sometimes, you’ll want nothing more than to slack off.
Your heroes all had days when they didn’t want to work hard, but they turned up and put in a shift anyway. It’s called having discipline.
If you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way to develop discipline.
If you’re only moving towards your dream when you feel like it, you don’t want it bad enough and you’re probably never going to get to the top.
11. You’ll Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway
All the best things in life are a little bit scary.
Whenever you’re on the path to achieving something unique and awesome, you’re taking risks, you’re facing uncertainty, you’re creating the opportunity to fall flat on your face in front of everyone.
There’s a real chance that you’ll have to look a little silly as a beginner. It’s possible you could lose a lot of money along the way.
These would all be scary things to happen.
Success can be scary too. We already explored the shit sandwiches being swallowed by some of the world’s most successful people. Whenever you taste success, you tend to attract more haters. That’s often part of the journey.
If you really want success, you need to acknowledge your fears, then plow forward regardless.
12. You’ll Create A Plan And Start Today
Whatever goal you’re trying to achieve, there is most likely someone out there who has already achieved it.
In most cases, there is usually someone who has prepared a step-by-step guide to help other people achieve it too.
There are plenty of successes who write a book, create a digital course or offer one-on-one coaching to help others replicate their success.
So, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel to create the lifestyle you want.
I love this quote about the steps to success by Brain Tracy. He said:
“First, decide exactly what it is you want. Second, determine the price you’re going to have to pay to get it, and then resolve to pay that price.”
It really is that simple.
You could search for a plan online right now. Most likely, you’ll find it within a couple of minutes. Maybe you’ll need to buy it. That will be money well spent. Now you have skin in the game.
Once you have that plan, take the first step today. The best day to begin. The sooner you get started, the sooner you could be living the life you always wanted.
By having a proven plan, making progress every day and never giving up, how could you fail?
13. Burn The Boats
‘Burning the boats’ is a metaphor which means giving yourself no choice but to continue a course of action.
It comes from the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1519, during which the Spaniards supposedly burned their own boats after touching down on Mexican soil, so there was no turning back. They’d either conquer or die.
A lot of people romanticise burning the boats as a grand gesture of showing how committed they are to something.
There are aspiring actors who sell all their things to move to Los Angeles. There are rockstars who get face tattoos to destroy their chances of landing a ‘real job’. Maybe some of them happened to make it big!
The thing is: burning the boats isn’t a guaranteed way to get success. In fact, that’s arguably the easy part. You’ll still have to conquer. You could still end up with nothing.
There are different opinions around whether going ‘all in’ on any project is a good or bad idea. It’s rare that you need to do it.
Still, if you want it bad enough, you might at least consider burning the boats, as a method of motivating yourself for the challenge ahead.
Any more questions on wanting something bad enough?
Thanks for reading my long-winded thoughts on wanting something bad enough.
If you’d like to address this article or get any questions you have on this topic answered, leave a comment below.
I would love to see what you have to say – and will be excited to respond to your comments as soon as I get a spare moment.
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