There are only 3 things between you and what you want.
But this isn’t a 3-step plan. There’s nothing to do. So don’t worry.
This is simply what stands between where you are right now and whatever you want.
What you do is up to you.
Getting what you want has nothing to do with discipline, or ‘massive’ action, or habits, or ‘experience’, or anything else society will tell you.
The only 3 things standing between you and what you want is Clarity, A Sufficient Level of Desire, and Understanding.
If you are not where you want to be, it is either because you don’t know what you want, you don’t really want it, or there are things you simply do not understand about the way things work.
Let’s look deeper.
1. Clarity
Clarity is knowing EXACTLY what you want, who you want to be, and what works for you to be at your best.
99.9% of the population has no clarity whatsoever.
They have never given themselves the time & space to figure out what they truly want, and settle for goals given to them by society.
Our goals, our beliefs, our habits, our standards, our methods, are all given to us by society.
By our parents, teachers, friends, online guru’s and social media influencers.
We’re told to get X degree.
We’re told to go into X industry.
We’re told to want the latest iPhone.
We’re told to try the latest side hustle.
We’re told to want to live a certain lifestyle.
We’re told to meditate for 20 minutes a day.
Come on.
If any of this really worked, the self-help industry wouldn’t exist!
But it does. Because 99.9% of people don’t ask themselves ‘what do I actually want?’ and wait more than 7 seconds before answering.
What is it that you actually want?
Who do you want to be?
What kind of life do you want to lead?
And why?
What works for you to be your best? To be your most productive? To be your most effective?
Have you ever asked yourself these questions?
Most people don’t achieve anything, and settle for a life of mediocrity, because they are constantly chasing things they don’t really want.
Trying habits & morning routines that don’t really work, but feel good to talk about.
Trying methods & techniques that don’t achieve anything.
Or worse still, they DO work, but only in achieving the goal they didn’t really want to achieve in the first place.
Never filling that hole inside of them & always leaving them wanting more.
One must sit down and really think:
What do I actually want?
Why do I want the things I say I want? What will they give me?
What do I want to do every day for the rest of my life?
Who do I want to spend time with?
What mission do I want to achieve?
Who do I want to be?
What kind of person do I want to be?
What kind of legacy do I want to leave behind?
And WHY?
The Why is the most important part.
Not because Simon Sinek tells you so.
But because it clears the pile of bullshit on top of the truth.
It clears away what we think we want,
what we say we want,
and reveals what we TRULY want.
It also provides a shortcut that most people spend their entire lives oblivious of.
Most people want the cars, and the houses, and the money,
not for the sake of having them, but for what it gives them;
A sense of pride, a feeling of ‘enough’, freedom from work, freedom to enjoy time with family, freedom to enjoy life.
When one comes to this realisation, at first, he feels appalled for wasting his life chasing surface level shiny objects.
Never realising what he truly wanted. Beneath the surface.
But then he understands that he does not have to wait to achieve all these deeper desires.
If what we want, deep down, is intangible, then we can bypass all the tangible lies we chase in search of it.
2. Desire
99.9% of the population does not achieve their goals, simply because they don’t really want them.
You have not achieved your goals, simply because you do not possess the sufficient level of desire.
Do you disagree?
Are you screaming ‘how could you possibly know that!?’
Well, look at the evidence.
If you so desperately wanted the thing you say you want, why do you not have it already?
If your house were on fire, would you ‘wait’ for the right time to evacuate?
Would you need instructions?
Would you need to read some books and learn some techniques to escape?
NO.
You would simply do whatever it takes to survive.
If the thing you say you wanted, was something you could not live without, you would have it.
Most people say they want it, but they only kind of want it.
They don’t want it more than going out on a Saturday night.
They don’t want it more than watching Netflix.
They don’t want it more than eating that ice cream.
They don’t want it more than staying wherever they are right now.
You see, on some level, you accept where you are.
Even if you scream and shout and say you hate where you are, you accept it.
You cannot deny it.
You would not accept staying in a burning building, so you would get out.
The fact you are where you are, means it’s not a burning building to you.
Yet.
On some level, in some way, where you are brings you comfort.
Your job is to find where.
That comfort, no matter how minute, will hold you back from achieving what you truly want to achieve.
Most people stay this way their entire lives.
To do any less than escape a burning building is unacceptable. Right?
Change that to; ‘to do any less than succeed is unacceptable.’
Now you’re getting somewhere.
How badly do you want what you say you want?
Is every situation where you have not achieved your goal completely and utterly unacceptable to you? As if it were a burning building?
I’m telling you, if it does not feel that way, you will not move.
Ever.
Are you truly willing to do whatever it takes?
Are you truly desperate?
Are you ‘house-on-fire’ urgent?
3. Understanding
You do not lack knowledge, or skills, or experience, or discipline, or motivation, or whatever else society will tell you you’re missing.
Understand this:
You have been programmed by society since the day you were born to believe that something and someone outside of yourself has the answers you are looking for.
Parents, to teachers, to professors, to coaches, experts & internet gurus. Telling you what you should want, and what you should do.
You have been conditioned to believe that it takes hard work and effort to achieve anything. Yet the hardest workers are not the most successful, or the richest, or the happiest.
We’ve been led astray.
Hard work has become the goal.
The experts and the gurus and those who have ‘made it’ will tell us it’s all down to hard work.
But that’s not true.
From the outside, it looks like hard work.
But from the inside, it’s simply pure obsession.
Michael Jordan was known as one of the hardest workers in the NBA. But ask yourself this;
Was he working hard because he was competing with other basketball players, and because they were working hard, he felt he ‘should’?
Or was he simply obsessed with the pursuit of mastering his craft, and was willing to do whatever it takes to win?
If you understand the difference in this, you get it.
99.9% of people do what everyone else does, and compete to try be a little bit better.
The 0.1% pursue mastery.
They pursue a mission.
They do not compete.
You have been programmed to believe that humans learn through memorization.
‘Memorize the lesson and get good grades’ is what we’re told.
It’s turned into a competition of who can rattle off the most information & seem the most intelligent.
In reality, humans learn through understanding.
Like a join-the-dots-puzzle.
That’s why it takes reading or listening to the same concept 3 to 4 to 10 times before it finally clicks in your brain.
That’s why golf instructors don’t work. Because you have to feel your way through the swing.
Think about this; who taught you how to walk? Who taught you how to understand language? Who taught you how to create words of your own?
No one.
You may have mimicked those around you, but no one taught your legs to move that way, or your body to balance like that.
You Figured It Out On Your Own through joining the dots & understanding.
The most fundamental things we do as human beings, were not taught to us. Think about that.
And finally, you have been conditioned to believe that the solution to the problem is to fix the problem, with a technique, strategy or life-hack.
When really, the way to cure a problem, forever, is to understand the problem so deeply, it dissolves itself.
The problem is never the problem.
The problem is your problem with the problem, and the idea you must ‘fix’ it.
You are not where you want to be because there is one thing or many things that you do not understand.
It could be that you do not understand exactly what you want and who you want to be.
It could be that you do not understand what actually works FOR YOU to be your best self and achieve what you want to achieve.
It could be you don’t understand how the mind truly works, and how you truly learn, and how the programming of society is holding you back.
The question, above all else, is what is it that you do not understand?
What are the things, that if you understood them, would lead you directly to your goal, effortlessly?
If you are not where you want to be, it is because you lack Clarity, Desire, and Understanding.
If one has Clarity of what they want, a Sufficient Level of Desire to achieve it, and an Understanding of the way things truly work to get him where he wants to go, he can achieve anything. It is inevitable.