Getting Yourself Addicted To Success, Step 1

““Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.”” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life

A few weeks ago, I talked about what I call the “junkie’s secret power.” I said I’ve always marveled at the ingenuity and assertiveness of the typical urban drug addict. In the 1980s, I lived in what is sometimes referred to as a transitional neighborhood in Washington D.C. For several years, I had the opportunity to observe the incessant, almost compulsive moneymaking routines of junkies. Day in and day out, these illiterate, uneducated, dirty, destitute, drugged-out, and degenerate creatures would go out into a very unfriendly world and hustle more money than most high-school principals.

Yes, they were panhandling. Yes, they were stealing. Yes, they were running card games and cons at every possible opportunity. But that didn’t make their accomplishments any less impressive. Quite the contrary. These were people whose primary goal in life was to get themselves in a stupor. Yet they could do something – go out and drum up about $200 to $300 a day – that I couldn’t.

What the junkie has that I am missing – his secret power – is an actual physical need to succeed. His quotidian objective is not a preference. It is not a goal. He must – absolutely must – get his fix, and he knows it. For him (to paraphrase the commander of the Apollo 13 mission), failure is not an option.

If you could somehow drum up a physical need to achieve your primary goals – if each day you could approach your primary success-building tasks with the same intensity a junkie gives his crack habit – absolutely nothing could stop you.

So do this right now. Pretend for a moment that you ARE a junkie and that getting your fix depends on accomplishing the one goal that escapes you. What – if your physical well-being depended on it – would you do to absolutely, positively (failure is not an option) succeed?

Set aside your qualms. Ignore your fears, at least for the moment. If nothing else mattered, what is it that you would do?

Got it? Good.

Now ask yourself, honestly, why you are not doing that. Do you have a moral objection? A doubt? A fear of failing? Get those feelings out and take a hard look at them. That’s what’s keeping you from what you desire.

Face your feelings squarely. Think about how they are blocking you. If you do that fully and honestly today, you will have accomplished a lot. I’ll talk about how to overcome those feelings – and addict yourself to success in a positive way – in a future message.