March 07th, 2013

I’ve been thinking a lot about desire this week…what it means to different people…how it affects the way you behave…what you feel and think…how you act.  The dictionary defines it as ‘A strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen’.  I think of it as so much more than ‘wishing’…for me, desire is much more active…it’s about wanting something so badly that you are prepared to really put yourself out there to make certain that you ‘achieve’ the object of your desire.

Basketball coach, Liv Profitt sums it up perfectly for me in this motivational speech to his team.  The video’s pretty motivational too, if you can’t be bothered to read the text! 🙂

“There was a young man and he wanted to make a lot of money and so he went to this guru…and he said ‘I want to be on the same level you are’ and the guru said, ‘ok, if you really want to be on the same level I am, I’ll meet you tomorrow at the beach.’  The young guy said ‘I like the beach, but I wanna make money, I don’t wanna swim!’

But the guru said, ‘Be at the beach at 4am.’ So the young man got there at 4 am, ready to rock n roll…got on a suit, should’ve worn shorts… The old man grabs his hand and says, ‘how badly do you want to be successful?’  He says, ‘real bad’.

‘Walk on out into the water”…so he walks out into the water, and when he walks out into the water he goes waist deep, and he’s like …‘I’m dreaming of making money, n he’s got me out here swimming…I didn’t ask to be a life guard…I wanna make money!’

‘Walk out a little further’…so he walks out until the water is lapping around his shoulders and he’s thinking, ‘this old man’s crazy…he’s making money, but he’s crazy’.

‘Come out a little further’.  He walks out a little further till the water’s lapping in his mouth, and he’s thinking, ‘i’m gonna have to go back in…this guy is out of his mind’

So the guru says, ‘I thought you said you wanted to be successful..?’ He says ‘I do!’, so he makes him walk a little further till the water’s over his head and dunks the young man’s head under the water and holds him down.  Holds him down until he’s just about to pass out and then he drags him up.

He says, I’ve got a question for you…‘When you were underwater, what did you want to do?’  The young man says, ‘I wanted to breathe’

And the guru tells him…‘when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful’

If anyone has had asthma they’ll know what it’s like when you have an attack…you’re fighting for breath…wheezing…gasping for air…the only thing you wanna do is breathe.  You don’t care about no basketball game, you don’t care what’s on the tv, or who’s calling you on the phone..the only thing you care about when you’re trying to breathe is to get some fresh air…that’s it.

And when you get to the point when all you want to do is be successful as bad as you wanna breathe…then you’ll be successful.

And I’m here to tell you that most of you say you wanna be successful, but you don’t want it bad…you just kinda want it.  You don’t want it badder than you wanna party…you don’t want it as much as you wanna be cool…hell, most of you don’t want success as much as you wanna sleep!  If you wanna be successful then you gotta be willing to give up sleep…cos if you go to sleep you might miss the opportunity to be successful.  That’s how bad you gotta want it.  Don’t go to sleep until you succeed!”