In talking with many people, they will tell me that they want this or that, but do they really?  I recently talked with a gal that said she wants a better job and in another city.  When I asked her where she would want to live, what kind of job and her reason why, all she said told me was that the place had be nice, the job nice and she’d would be more happy.  That is quite vague.

The great majority of the population thinks this way.  Heck, they might be college and yet, very rarely do they know what they really want once they graduate.  It’s always about finding some job with enough money and living in a decent place.  This is not even a new phenomena.  For thousands of years, the majority of people have quietly did what was asked of them with no focus on what they really wanted.  Many would make up some sort of excuse of why they can’t do what they want.  And well-meaning family and friends encourage them to live less than what they are truly capable of.

Those that are successful in whatever endeavor they are engaged in, do so because they had a razor-sharp focus and obsession.  They took the necessary action towards a certain goal and did even the small things in order for them to reach the big thing.  It was their absolute passion.  Thomas Edison would lock himself in his workshop for days on end so that he could turn his ideas into reality.  Michelangelo spent over 4 years (1508-1512) working on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  The best scientists will spend an obsessive amount of time working to find the answer to a problem.

If you’re not passionate, obsessed, clear on what you want and you don’t take action, then you really don’t want it.  It takes a lot of sacrifices to get it.  Most people are not willing to do that.  They want the simple way out.  They want easy.  Even if it means to do a job they don’t like and live in a place they hate and earn less than they are capable of earning.

Let me leave you with this poem by Berton Braley called Success: