How badly do you want it?
I have definite opinions about that question. Nearly every big-name guru since the 80s has made serious bank convincing us that if we just worked harder, ground it out, and hustled until we dropped, we’d finally deserve and receive what we desire.
If you really want the business, the money, the impact, the life, then surely you should be willing to work longer, sacrifice more, push harder, sleep less, risk everything, and drag yourself across the finish line bloody enough to prove you meant it.
Fuck that!
Then there’s the new generation of coaches telling us that if we want it enough, just believe, stay in the “right” energy, and say enough mantras or affirmations, all that we desire will simply arrive.
Fuck that too!
At some point, the book has to become words on a page. The business has to make an offer. The debt has to meet a payment. The revenue goal has to encounter a sales conversation. The dream that has lived safely inside your imagination has to enter a world where other people can see it, respond to it, buy it, reject it, misunderstand it, or help you build it.
Creation of all that we desire requires our willful participation.
That can be far more confronting than just wanting and more uncomfortable than hustle and grind.
Because hustle can become a hiding place.
We can work extraordinarily hard without ever taking the action that makes us vulnerable to an answer. We can spend twelve hours perfecting the website instead of making the offer. We can research every possible way to publish the book instead of writing the next chapter. We can build the spreadsheet, rewrite the sales page, tweak the branding, take another course, get another certificate, develop another strategy, and fill every available hour with work that feels productive.
We can exhaust ourselves in pursuit of a dream while carefully avoiding the actions that allow the dream to respond.
Willful participation asks more of us than effort. It asks us to step into the places where we don’t control the answer.
We can sincerely want more clients while avoiding making offers. We can hustle for money while refusing to look at the numbers. We can want the book while endlessly researching how to write one. We can want support while obsessively holding onto every task. We can want visibility while waiting to become impossible to criticize. We can want a different business while repeating the decisions that created the one we say we’ve outgrown.
The desire can be completely real while our behavior tells a different tale.
So let’s ask a better question than: How badly do you want it?
Are you willing to actively participate in creating it?
Because participation changes our relationship with the desire itself. Wanting can remain safe and private for as long as we choose. We can imagine what happens when it works, rehearse the celebration, make plans for the money, and build entire futures around what becomes possible when the thing finally arrives.
Active participation brings that beautiful imagined future into contact with reality.
And reality gets a vote.
The book in your imagination can’t be rejected. The offer you haven’t made can’t fail. The price you haven’t said out loud can’t be challenged. The person you haven’t asked can’t tell you no. The business you haven’t started can’t disappoint you. The money you haven’t invested can’t be lost.
Dreaming gives us access to possibility without requiring us to risk the unknown beyond our comfort zone.
Action gives us information.
The offer that doesn’t sell tells us something, as does the one that sells immediately. The price someone questions gives us information, but their objection doesn’t determine the price. A no tells us something, but it doesn’t decide whether we ask again. An investment that doesn’t produce the result we expected gives us information, but it doesn’t decide what we believe is possible next.
Reality gets a vote, but you get the final say.
The trouble starts when we crowdsource our dreams.
We make the offer, and someone questions the price, so we ask ten other people what they would charge. We share the dream, and someone looks skeptical, so we start asking whether it makes sense. We tell someone what we’re building and suddenly we’re collecting opinions about the business model, the audience, the timing, the positioning, the likelihood of success, and whether anyone would actually buy it.
We tell ourselves we’re gathering information.
Sometimes we are.
Sometimes we’re looking for validation.
And the more important the desire is to us, the more tempting that validation can become. There is comfort in consensus. If enough people agree that the idea is good, the price is reasonable, the investment is smart, or the dream is possible, perhaps we can finally move without having to carry the full weight of choosing it ourselves.
Except every additional vote dilutes the dream.
One person thinks the price is too high. Another thinks the idea is too ambitious. Someone else has seen something similar fail. Someone has a strategy that worked brilliantly for them. Someone knows what “the market” wants. Someone loves the idea but thinks it would be so much better if you changed this one little thing.
Listen long enough and the dream can slowly become more reasonable, more marketable, more recognizable, more easily explained, and less yours.
That’s the danger of crowdsourcing your dreams.
The information may be valuable. The people offering it may be brilliant. They may love you deeply and genuinely want you to succeed. They may even be right about some of it. They are also bringing their own money stories, their beliefs about goodness and suffering, and their fears of being too much or not good enough into the conversation about your dreams.
Self-trust allows us to listen without automatically handing over editorial control.
You get to consider the feedback. Question your assumptions. Look at the numbers. Learn from people who know things you don’t. Change your mind. Change the offer. Change the strategy. Change the price if you decide the price should change.
And you also get to say, Thank you. I hear you. I’m still gonna do it my way.
Sometimes the most valuable conversation is one that helps you articulate your true desires.
If you’re ready to explore what’s possible, consider booking a complimentary Prosperity Breakthrough Call. We’ll look at where you are, what you want, and the possibilities in front of you so you can choose your next aligned action with greater clarity and confidence.
Active participation requires us to expose our dreams to reality. It does not require us to crowdsource what we’re allowed to create.
We can participate fully, but we can’t command the outcome. Things rarely happen when and how you expect. To keep going when nothing feels like it’s landing requires surrender.
Surrender doesn’t remove us from the creation process. It changes the question we ask while we’re inside it.
Instead of How do I make this happen? we can ask:
Given what I know now, what is my next aligned action?
An aligned action moves you toward the reality you have consciously chosen while allowing you to remain in right relationship with yourself, your values, your money, and the life your business exists to support.
Sometimes that action is asking again. Sometimes it’s making another offer, investing more money, changing the strategy, resting long enough to hear yourself think, having the conversation you’ve been avoiding, or allowing new information to change what you do next.
The action can change without requiring the desire to disappear.
And the desire can change without making everything you did in pursuit of it a mistake. We can remain fiercely committed to creating what we want while releasing our need to control exactly how, when, and in what form it arrives. We can take the next aligned action without requiring that action to guarantee the outcome.
Perhaps the deepest commitment we can make to something we desire is to participate fully without requiring ourselves to suffer for it or demanding that we control how it arrives. We take the next aligned action, pay attention to what happens, trust ourselves with what we learn, and keep enough space around the dream for possibilities we couldn’t see when we first imagined it. We stay in relationship with the desire, with reality, and most importantly, with ourselves.
Because there is something profoundly powerful about being able to say, I want this. I am willing to participate in creating it. And I trust myself enough to discover what happens next.
P.S. Profit is Protest, and so is refusing to sacrifice yourself on the altar of your ambition. Your dreams deserve your participation. They were never meant to require your destruction.
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Imagine what’s possible when you give yourself the resources to go after what you want.
I gotta admit. Surrender is one of the things I haven't wrapped myself around yet. I don't know if I know what it feels like in me or how I get into that state. Nor am I actively in a sense of resistance. Floating. But banging my head a bit on the rocks of the River of Life. 😆