How to Get What You Want
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In order to “have” you must “do,” and in order to “do” you must “be.“
Terry Crews
“What do you want?”
As children, we answered this with things we wanted to have.
We generally assumed that Mom and Dad would buy them for us.
As we got older, we discovered that to have something we needed to do something to earn money so we could buy the things we wanted to have.
Occasionally, we wanted things that could not be bought.
If we wanted to have good grades in math class, there also was something we must do.
We had to study.
As we grew still older, we learned the importance of relationships.
We learned if we wanted to be respected by others, we needed to treat them with respect.
To consistently act that way, we needed to be the kind of person who treated others the way they wanted to be treated.
Wherever we are on our journey to become the person we were meant to be, we want to have a wide variety of things we could buy and things that must be earned in a different way.
In every instance, we must do something to get what we want.
To be able to routinely do what we need to do we need to be the kind of person who does those things.
When we were in school, our parents made sure that we studied our math.
But if we want to learn something as adults, we must manage our own study habits.
The only way we can do that long-term is to be the kind of person who values learning.
If not, other wants and needs will crowd out what we “really ought to learn.”
In light of that, you may want to consider the following questions.
What are the two or three things you really want?
What do you need to do to be able to have those things?
What kind of person do you need to be so you can do those things and get what you want?
Now for the tricky part.
What kind of habits do you need to establish to become that person?
What attitudes do you need to cultivate?
What sources of inspiration and information do you need to give your attention to?
What unproductive influences do you need to reduce or eliminate from your life?
As you answer these questions, you may discover you want something different than you thought.
Now you can start the process again with a new, stronger desire.
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