The 7 Best Ways to Create a Burning Desire for Success

If you want success, it’s essential to have a burning desire. All success gurus out there will tell you that. And they are right! But what if you don’t have it? Very few of them will show you how to develop it.

Can you Develop a Desire for Success if you don’t have it?

This has bugged me for years. I was determined to find out whether a desire for success was a learnable skill or not. I discovered two things. Firstly, yes, it is a learnable skill. Secondly, you need to fuel that burning desire. All successful people are adding fuel to their desire to keep it burning, whether it’s consciously or unconsciously.

When you come up with a new idea, you naturally get that burning desire. Maybe you want to lose weight or gain muscle. Or you are ready for a new career or business direction. It’s exciting because it’s new, and you have that initial inspiration. You enjoy the learning side of it.

Over time, it starts to fade. If you want to continue, you’ve got to keep that desire burning. Why does that happen? Because eventually, you’re going to hit some obstacles. If you don’t have enough passion, those obstacles will cause you to quit. Or, be inconsistent with the activity necessary to achieve success.

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What is a Desire for Success?

A burning desire for success is a 100% commitment to achieving the goal. It’s going from hoping to knowing. It’s when you want it so badly that quitting is not an option. It’s when you will do whatever it takes to achieve it. You will find a way or make a way. In your mind, you already see that goal happening. It’s a continual creative drive. Ask yourself now, am I really driven towards the goal that I want to achieve?

I’m now going to cover the 7 best ways to create a burning desire for success. This will help you achieve your goals and the life of your dreams.

1. Have a Very Specific Goal and Action Plan

To come up with a really specific goal, ask yourself the following questions:

• What do I want to achieve?
• When do I want to achieve it?
• Where do I want to be when I achieve it?
• Why do I want to achieve it?
• How am I going to achieve it?
• With whom am I going to achieve it?

Some of these questions may not be relevant to every goal, but they will help you get really specific. I’ll give you a couple of examples. Let’s say you have an online business. Your goal is to make $5,000 a month of passive income. You can commit to it 20 hours a week. You want to achieve it by the end of 2020. That is a highly specific business goal.

For a weight-loss example, it could be how much weight you want to lose. Specifically, how much body fat or what body fat percentage? Do you also want to gain muscle? When do you want to achieve it? Within the next three months? Or six months?

Whatever the goal, be as specific as you can. But don’t get too perfectionistic. The main thing is that you have a goal. Write it down. Over time, add the details as they become more obvious.

Create a Plan

You’ve set the goal. Now you need to create a plan. You may not know how you’re going to achieve that goal right away. Just start with some steps. Your plan doesn’t have to be too precise. You can develop it over time, but it’s essential to have a game plan.

People that have a strong desire for success are always setting goals and creating plans. The more specific your goals and plans are, the higher your desire will be. Keep developing the plan over time and notice how the desire for success increases.

2. Focus on Your Goals Daily

You need fuel to keep the fire burning. Review your goals every day. That will keep fueling your burning desire. Successful people do this, consciously or unconsciously.

Think about falling in love. What’s it like? You’re constantly thinking about that other person. The more you think about that person, the more you feel love. That feeling gets stronger and stronger. You feel the burning desire.

People stay in love because they keep thinking about that person for years and decades. Sometimes people seem to fall out of love because they stop thinking about that person. They stop caring. If you’ve ever been in love, you can use that experience to achieve that burning desire in other areas of your life.

How to focus on your goals

The simplest way to focus is to read your goals out loud. Or, to create and read positive affirmations that are relevant to your goals.

Another great way is to visualize having achieved the goal in great detail. Details are very important. Make the image bright, vivid, and colorful. If you can, make it in 3 dimensions, panoramic, and animated. Make sure that you’re visualizing through your own eyes, not seeing yourself in the image. You could listen to inspiring music while you’re doing that to add an extra effect to it.

You could use a vision board. Have a board and post images of your goals. Look at that daily. You could put screensavers on your computer or your mobile phone. These are all great ways.

Whatever you do, the key thing is to incorporate feelings. That’s important because your subconscious mind really picks up on feelings. This will help your unconscious mind start believing you’ve already achieved that goal. Feelings are super important. Make sure you incorporate feelings when you focus on your goals daily.

3. Know What You’re Willing to Give or Sacrifice

You might need to give your time, effort, or money. Maybe you’ll have to study or learn how to achieve your goal. Perhaps, you’ll need to let go or give up a few things, such as time with friends or nights in front of the TV. You must know what you’re willing to give up or sacrifice.

If it’s a business goal, focus on what you’re going to give to other people. The more value you can give to other people, the more successful you’ll be in the long term. This is a good one because it can get you out of your own head. If you think more about how to help other people, you’ll focus less on the time and effort that you’re putting into it.

4. Take Immediate Action

I have found this to be very important. When I’m taking action consistently, I continue to fuel that desire for success. When I take a few days off, I start to see doubts coming into my mind. My desire seems to reduce, and I feel less motivated.

So, if you have a new goal, ask yourself, what is the first obvious step? What’s the first obvious thing you need to do? Here are some examples. If you want an online business, the first obvious step would be to buy a domain name for your website. If you’re looking to lose weight, the first obvious step would be to go into the fridge and clear out all the junk food. If you want to change your career, the first obvious step would be to update your CV or resume. Or research some courses that could help you gain new skills.

You could spend 3 or 4 hours coming up with a grand plan for achieving your goal. Instead, I recommend that you perform or act on the very first step. Do that and then make a plan. That will help you create and maintain that burning desire.

5. Make the Pleasure Outweigh the Pain

Focus on the benefits of achieving your goal. Think less about the effort, time, or money involved. Focusing more on pleasure will help you to fuel that desire for success.

When you focus more on the pain and the work involved, you begin to procrastinate. Motivation reduces. You start taking less action. When you take less action, that desire for success starts to fade. So you must keep focusing on the benefits.

6. Replace Negative Energy with Positive Energy

It can be tough to stay motivated and positive when there are lots of negative sources of energy around you. These can include the news. Instead of reading the news or watching it on TV, watch educational programs.

Maybe you have negative people around. Sometimes it’s hard to keep these people out of your life. Especially if they’re family or close friends. What you can do is try to minimize their influence as much as you can.

For some people, watching horror movies or reading horror books can lead to a negative state. If that’s the case with you, avoid that for a while.

Also, simple things like having a clean and tidy desk with no distractions could be helpful. Or, laughing more. Watch funny programs on TV or funny YouTube videos. Get that nice positive feeling.

Think about this. Are you achieving things to be happy, or are you happily achieving? This idea comes from Steve Pavlina. Most people feel that they must achieve things to be happy. For example, I will be happy when I leave college, get married, become a senior manager or buy a house. But what would it be like to be happy during the process? To be happily achieving rather than achieving to be happy.

7. Burn the Boats!

If all else fails, use this method to create a burning desire. What does “burn the boats” mean? Let me give you a little bit of history.

Back in 1519, Hernan Cortes led 600 Spaniards in 11 boats to Mexico. His goal was to capture the magnificent treasure that was believed to be in Mexico. Upon arrival, Cortes ordered the ships to be burnt and destroyed. Why did he do that? Because it meant that he and all his troops were going to win or perish. They had a much higher burning desire to win because their whole life was at stake. Two years later, they conquered Mexico.

A point of no return

So the story about the burning boats represents a point of no return. It’s a psychological commitment. You have crossed a line, and you’re never going back. In today’s modern world, we don’t need to do something as extreme as that. But there are some things that we can do. The trick here is that there’s no hedging. There’s no looking back over your shoulder. Everything, all your thoughts, and efforts are now directed towards achieving your goal. You cannot go back; you’ve crossed that point of no return.

I deliberately left this one to last because it is the hardest one to achieve. I recommend you work on the others first. But, if this is what you need to get yourself going, then do it. Here are some of the ways you can burn your boats in the modern world where it’s not a life-or-death situation.

Make your goals public

You can do this by telling your friends or having an accountability partner. You could post them on social media. That gives a psychological commitment because you’ve told someone else, and they’re accountable. You’re going to feel bad if you fail to achieve your goals because you’re going to have to explain to them why. That is an excellent psychological way of burning your boats.

Write your resignation letter

If you’ve got a business goal and you plan to quit your day job, then you could write a resignation letter. Give it to a friend and get them to post it or email it to your manager on a specific date. That point of no return means you’ve got to be at a stage where you can earn a full-time income by that date.

Place a bet

Here is another way of burning your boats. You could place a bet. You will lose money if you don’t achieve the goal. As there’s money at stake, this is likely to be very effective!

In Conclusion

Doing these 7 things will help you create a greater belief in achieving your dreams. Your faith in your plans will grow stronger. Most importantly, you will create and maintain that burning desire for success. Good luck!

Thank you for reading this article.  If you enjoyed it and found it useful, then please share it with other people, or on social media.

Hope you are having a wonderful day!

Paul