It has been said by philosophers that human desire is the fundamental motivation of all human action, and all of my experience so far tells me this premise is right on the money. I have absolutely no doubt that if you’re on the path looking to merge who you are and what you do into a symbiotic relationship, where passion, purpose, and your career meet, the depth of your desire is the key element that will either initiate a call to action, or put it on the preverbal back-burner. There is no in-between in this scenario. What’s unsettling in this matter is, statistically speaking, (and illogical as this may sound) it looks like conjuring up a life-changing desire for most is a dying art at best. To wit:
The Problem
Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report had grim findings, including that 70% of those surveyed either hate work or are completely disengaged. Another recent Gallup poll stated only 13% of employees are “engaged” in their jobs, focused on helping their organizations improve.
A survey taken by Right Management stated that 85% of employees are planning on searching for a new job. CNN had an article up titled Why Half of America Hates Their Job. That comes out to about 80 or 90 million seriously disgruntled employees. What’s being missed out there when we know, or maybe the word is assume that fundamentally, most everyone has a desire to end that plight?
The Solution
I believe that most people truly “do” have a desire to change their circumstances. But I also believe that too many times, that “desire” has been misguided, and its redirection is the cause of the lack of motivation needed for the next step, to take action on it. It’s not so much a disconnect, as it is a misplacement of intention. Author Steven Covey shares this observation.
“Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival, to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.”
Here’s why this quote is apropos to the subject at hand. Your desire to change your circumstances is not the core issue, and possibly why it fails so dramatically as the statistics clearly point out. You need to build a burning, unrelenting desire to understand yourself better (the why behind your actions), to learn the art of self-appreciation, to validate your worth (irrelevant of your circumstances), and most importantly to develop a desire to believe you’re better than what’s presently surrounding you.
This is the key to the psychological survival that Covey referred to, and logic would seem to dictate that when you’re truly sound with yourself, the possibilities for change greatly expand. Conversely (and obviously) if you fail to believe you have worth, why would anything change? It’s just too easy to blame the boss, or the company, or the economy – and for the record, yes there are some seriously twisted people and entities out there. But as I stated, that’s not the issue, or better said, that’s not the place to put the focus of your desire on – leaving them (it) behind. Keep the focus on you! Let me use a famous statement from comedian Steve Martin to bring clarity to my thrust here.
Put all of your desire toward being able to hold the mindset of; I’m going to believe in myself, and “be so good, they won’t be able to ignore me”!
Some Thoughts
So, what actually is a burning, unrelenting desire? It almost sounds like a trick question. Let me give you a stellar example of what I feel that represents. This story was something I experienced watching a television show in the 60’s. It was the Phil Donahue Show, and his guest was a cancer survivor, and my apologies for not being able to remember her name. This real life story was eventually made into a feature film, which I also got to watch.
Our cancer survivor explained to Phil how the doctors had told her to literally get her things in order as they predicted her demise was inevitable, and could happen at any time. She was told, multiple times, there was literally no hope. She stated that she absolutely refused to accept the reality given to her and decided to take action into her own hands.
On her search, she ended up finding someone who said she could be cured even in this late stage by using visualization. Now remember, this was a half century ago and visualization was not nearly as commonplace as it is here in the new millennium, and there are still those who question its validity. As you can probably guess, she went full bore into the process of visualization. Day in and day out she visualized killing her cancer cells. And to everyone’s astonishment, she ended up achieving total remission from her disease, literally no more cancer in her body after being examined.
She then happily stated how she went back to the doctors that had signed her death warrant to look them straight in the eye with her results, to receive nothing more from them than a shrug of the shoulders, an admitted lack of understanding, and the occasional “miracles happen” quote. I was quite moved by watching the emotion she shared in the telling of this story, and have never forgotten it.
This in my humble opinion would represent the pinnacle of creating a desire that literally transcends everything, and the very point I’m trying to get to. It is this kind of desire that is the necessary first step to begin to open you up to the change you feel worthy of, an unrelenting, impassioned, transcending desire that far surpasses mere hopes and dreams. As she told Phil Donahue, her desire to live and be able to see her children grow up was beyond words, and there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that she could achieve that goal. So, the question now remains; how bad do you want it?
