Desire and Determination: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Take a look at all of the great achievement in human history and I am sure that you will find at least one common denominator: Determination!

All great achievements have difficulties associated with them. As a good friend of mine said often, “If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.”

When you look at the struggles associated with building and architecture, art and music, economics and government or any number of human endeavors, it is easy to see that if it were not for determination, very little would have been accomplished and, more important, finished.

But a question I thought of for a long time was what caused that determination. What kept these brilliant people moving forward and confidently? In other words, where did that determination come from?

I believe we can sum up the cause of determination in one word: Desire!

If we are willing to pay the price, we can achieve most of what we want. Think about situations in your own life, when you wanted something, and you wanted it very much. Did you get it? I bet you did.

If we want something bad enough, we are willing to pay the price for it. That’s desire, and desire is the key to success!

When we really want to achieve something, obstacles really don’t matter very much; we find ways around them, or through them. Pain, negative circumstances and downright challenges may exist but with desire we tend to minimize them or ignore them. Because, if we want something and are convinced we can have it, we find a way to get it.

I read a story years back about a young man who wanted to become a famous author. It just so happened that he was vacationing in a seaside town where one his favorite authors lived in a small cabin on the beach. The young man decided to invest a portion of one day of his vacation to walk to the section of beach where the author lived. He hoped to ask the author what was the key to success of becoming a famous author.

As the young man walked toward the cabin, he noticed that the author was sitting on his front porch smoking a pipe and rocking on a chair. Sheepishly, the young man approached the cabin and when he was in front of it asked the famous author the question that he longed to have answered: What is the secret of becoming a famous author?

The author put his pipe down on a small table next to his rocking chair, walked off the porch, past the young man and toward the verge of the ocean. He turned around and crooked his finger in a beckoning motion. The young man followed him. While the young man was walking toward the author, the author went into the ocean, clothes and all, and stopped when he was chest high in the ocean. The young man looked curiously at the author, who once again crooked his finger at the young man. The young man followed him into the ocean.

When they were eye to eye in chest deep water, the author said his first words. He said to the young man, “Put your head under the water.” Not sure why, but obediently, the young man did as he was told. The author grabbed the young man by the hair and held his head below the surface of the ocean.

What seemed like an hour, but was only about 20 seconds or so the author let go of the young man, who rose to the surface coughing. He looked frantically around only to see that the author was once again at the verge of the ocean and exiting it. By the time the young man got to the edge of the water the author was once again sitting on his porch, rocking, and smoking his pipe, sopping wet.

The young man, furious, went to the front porch of the cabin and said, “Why did you hold my head under the water?” The author puffed a cloud of blue smoke and asked the young man, “When I was holding your head under the water, what was the one thing that you desired the most in all the world?”

Immediately, the young man said, “Air.”

“Exactly”, said the author, “And when you desire success in authoring as much as you desire breathing, that is when you will become successful!”

Desire has a way of galvanizing our reality and eventually externalize itself in circumstance.

Reality will eventually concretize around our desire to succeed.

Think hard about what you want (Desire), then go for it (Determination)!