In this newsletter I’m going to teach to you how to get clear on what you want, then teach you exactly how to get it.
You should want to learn this because unless you know what you want, it’s impossible to get it. (Sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed how many of my 1,000+ one-to-one students have been confused on this subject.)
‘The first principle of success is desire - knowing what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed.’
- Robert Collier (author, The Secret of the Ages)
The truth is, hundreds of millions of people spend their entire lives with ill-defined desires. This is because—
🔹They don’t appreciate the benefit of clarity
🔹They don’t know what to do when what they want is different to what society tells them to want
🔹They wouldn’t know how to get what they wanted even if they were clear on what it was
But, most importantly—they don’t know the difference between wanting and wanting to want
The Number 1 Obstacle To Knowing What You Want
When you confuse ‘wanting’ with ‘wanting to want’, you guarantee that you’ll never get much of anything.
Here’s an example that’s shown up in a shocking 90% of music students I’ve taught over 22 years—
- The student arrives for their first lesson with moderate curiosity
- Over the first few months of lessons, I demonstrate that daily practice is necessary
- Daily practice is never achieved
But here’s the important part—
- When reminded that daily practice is necessary for learning to play drums, the student insists that they want to learn to play drums
I’ve seen this pantomime play out hundreds of times. Still, I give students the benefit of doubt and continue to see if I can encourage them.
Students will sometimes insist for a whole year that they want to learn to play drums while neglecting practice.
This student does not want to learn to play drums. This student wants to want to learn to play drums.
Now, I get it: learning drums requires effort. I practised for hours each day over 5 years to reach proficiency, 5 years more to reach the professional standard, then 10 years more to reach mastery.
But it was never a chore, because I wanted to learn and, therefore, did what was necessary to learn.
'Wanting to Want' Is A Curse
Trying things out is an excellent idea. I strongly encourage you to explore your curiosities. But if you’ve been at something for 3-6 months and you’ve not found some momentum, it’s important that you move on.
You are a being of infinite potential. Your potential must be unlocked by curiosity and passion. If you linger on something for which you don’t have a natural interest, you’re robbing humanity of your greatest contributions.
When you really want something, you’re vastly more effective at getting it. How could it be otherwise? The hungrier lioness is the more effective hunter. Wasting your time on things you only want to want is a distraction.
How to Spot The Difference Between 'Wanting' And 'Wanting to Want'
If you want to learn to play basketball, you’ll be at practice 4 nights per week. If you only want to want to learn basketball, you’ll watch YouTube highlights in your Lakers jersey. And you might one-on-one your roommate when they’re free. Also, you might say that you want to learn to play basketball for a little hit of dopamine.
If you want to find a life partner you’ll get good photos onto your dating profile and use sites that allow you to write something about yourself. If you only want to want to find a life partner, you’ll check Tinder occasionally.
If you want to learn to invest, you’ll spend money on educating yourself before you risk money on the markets. If you only want to want to learn to invest, you’ll hang out on r/wallstreetbets.
Here are 4 other reasons people don’t get what they want:
- They don’t know how to examine themselves
- They don’t spend adequate time and energy reflecting on the trajectory of their lives
- They’re unaware of the cultural biases that cause them to accept certain desires and reject others
- They don’t appreciate that getting the objects of one’s desires is only a matter of process
I’m going to explain how you can overcome these problems.
Here’s how, step-by-step…
Step 1: How to Know What You Really Want
The secret to finding out what you really want is that you must look at what’s actually going on with you.
What did you do yesterday? What did you do over the past week, month, year? Are there any patterns?
I’m going to state something obvious: the things you did most—when you had freedom to choose what you did—are the things you really want to do.
But if you’re like most people, you don’t get to do those things very often.
Begin With The End In Mind (But Don’t Neglect The Beginning And Middle)
In 2017 I was deep into a 4-year course in educational theory. One of the books on the curriculum was ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen Covey.
Stephen titles one of his 7 habits ‘Begin With The End In Mind’. He encourages readers to imagine their own funeral and what they’d like speakers to say about them there.
This exercise is designed to awaken readers to their core values. I got pretty clear on mine, but I still didn’t feel totally clear on what I wanted.
I was actually in limbo for around a year, but I eventually realised that what was missing was, naturally, the beginning and the middle. So I took a look at those.
In the beginning of my story, I was the kid who was always asking ‘why?’ I wanted to know the reason behind everything, but was always dissatisfied with the answers I got from the grownups.
In the middle of my story, I’d started to find answers to these questions and test them out in my own experience by means of mindfulness practice.
It turned out that together, my beginning, middle and end painted a clear picture: what I wanted was to understand myself and the nature of existence. But this desire was so deep, and so misaligned with the way the rest of the world operates, that it had remained hidden in plain sight for 27 years.
A Different Way To Journal
If my way of going about things doesn’t work for you, I recommend a particular journaling technique.
Adyashanti developed his understanding: by only writing down what he knew to be true.
If this sounds difficult, don’t worry: there’s a cheat code. You can write ‘I don’t know if…’ in front of any sentence and boom—now you can write pretty much anything and it’s true. And now you have a brilliant starting point for deeper investigation.
So now you know what you want (or at least how to find out what you want). Great! But if you’re like everyone else, you’re going to be caught in a sinister trap…
Step 2: What To Do When What You Want Is Different To What You’re Told To Want
Values are the foundation of culture. Some values are universal, i.e. ‘murder is bad’. And some vary from one culture to another, i.e. ‘you can’t drink beer till you’re…’
The problem is that all cultures hold a narrow view about what you should want. Yet the possible alternatives for what you actually want are infinite.
If you happen to want to be a lawyer, congratulations: you can bet on a life of security, wealth and respect.
But if you want to be an acrobat, sorry: you’re going to live in a caravan (or 'trailer' for my American friends).
Most people are brainwashed in childhood to follow their culture’s narrative. Some make it as far as college but then suppress their deeper passions in exchange for a comfortable life. A few survive as starving artists, sustained by their passion when they can’t afford to eat.
Good news: there’s a better option for you in 2022.
Global Culture And How It Sets You Free
Today, millions of people are making a living online doing the most obscure things you can imagine. One guy imitates Jesus for $22,500 per year.
Another sold “real” estate on a virtual asteroid for $635,000.
And millions of people now make a living selling digital products, streaming, or earning ad revenue from social media.
On the internet there’s an audience for everything. More importantly, there are buyers for everything— if you know how to find and serve them (which can be learned).
In 2022, it doesn’t matter what you want to be, do or get—there’s a way to achieve it on your own terms.
Step 3: How To Guarantee That You Get What You Want (Whatever It Is)
Now that you’re clear on what you want, instead of struggling to fit into your culture’s little box, you can soar in the global culture’s infinite sky. There’s just one last thing to implement before you can take off…
Process-Orientation: The Cheat Code For Getting What You Want
Process-orientation is the opposite of what you and I were trained into as children. We were trained to focus on results (to the detriment of process). Schooling is the ultimate example of this.
When you were in infant school, the teacher’s main focus was getting you to junior school. In junior school, the focus was getting you through SAT’s. In high school, it was getting you to college. And in college, it was getting you employed.
Process wasn’t entirely absent, but it wasn’t the main focus. Your actual learning and enrichment was secondary to your exam scores. (How much of what you wrote on exam papers do you remember now, by the way?)
But here’s the thing: there’s actually no way to learn, do, or achieve anything without process. But when you focus on results, guess what you’re not focusing on. That’s right: process!
When you focus on process, your process is naturally enhanced. And when your process is enhanced, you’re more likely to get your result. Process-orientation is simply superior.
The Specific Code For Living Your Personal Dream
The ingredients in this newsletter leave you with a promising list of steps to follow—
- Get clear on what you want
- Plan out an enjoyable way to get it
- Document your journey online
- Create valuable products and services around what you learn
- Sell those products and services
- Benefit others
- Get the thing/s you want
This sounds too good to be true, but only because your brain is hardwired to think in terms of local communities. Of course your process will have to get more detailed as you move through it, and I’m not suggesting for a second that there won’t be challenges along the way.
But I’ll tell you this: I’m bowling through 10/10 challenges every single day right now because they’re challenges that align with those 7 steps above. I see the potential for mutual benefit and it’s fucking rocket fuel 🚀
Note that being process-oriented doesn’t mean you never think about the result. Planning is crucial, and in order to plan you have to know where you’re headed. The difference is that you won’t be obsessing over results whilst you carry out your plan.
The results-oriented traveler asks ‘are we there yet?’ The process-oriented traveler enjoys the journey.
F¥ck The ‘American Dream’, You Get To Live Your Dream (Whatever It Looks Like)
Maybe you want to teach people to hula hoop.
Maybe you want to stream your favourite video game.
Maybe you just want to earn a million bucks as fast as possible.
The people behind these projects might seem ‘special’. I guarantee you, they’re not. They’re regular people who decided to do things their own way, fucked up plenty, persevered, and eventually got their slice of abundance pie.
This Is Not Too Good to Be True
I heard about the wonderful new lives people were having on the internet for years before I took the plunge. It always seemed to make sense—why serve 100,000 people locally when you can serve 1,000,000,000 online?
Now I’ve been on Twitter for 2 months, getting involved in communities and making new friends. I’ve met people who are making a living online. I’ve even met a few people who are getting rich online. They’re just people like you and me, who did a certain process (with a lot of bumps in the road along the way.)
Here’s how Tim Denning started writing online.
Here’s how Jon Brosio made $6,628 in 1 month on his own.
And here’s how George Ten made $500,000 in PROFIT with no audience, without showing his face, with only an idea for a product, and $100 to his name.
The coolest thing about Twitter is that folks are sharing this information about how they make a living doing what they love every single day.
Following their advice, I’ve already made my first few bucks. I’ve started to engineer the biggest win/win arrangement I can imagine.
Join me.
dg 💙
~
2024 update: things have gone pretty damn well for me since the publication of this post.
I launched my first course for $10K revenue, I started working with Dan Koe, and I have a steady stream of coaching clients signing up for anywhere between $300 and $20,000.
If you need guidance to get through these steps as quickly as possible and start making a difference in the world, click here to tell me about your goals and hear back from me within 24 hours.
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