How Hungry Are You?
Today I want to talk to you about The Hunger Games. Not the way that you think of the Hunger Games though. We aren’t talking books or movies. During my career as a coach and trainer, I have found the difference that makes the difference is hunger. The Universe, God, Infinite Intelligence whatever you believe puts us all to the test in the realization of our desires. We are all called to answer this question. How hungry are you for the realization of your vision?
If there’s any one skill that I’ve been working on as a coach, it’s this one; making people hungrier. After we have determined they want the right thing the question is… How do I make them want it more? I learned early on in coaching people that achievement boils down to the two M’s. Mindset and Mechanics. Mechanics is knowing what to do and how to do it. It’s understanding the skillset necessary to achieve what it is you want. Mindset, on the other hand, is the application of those mechanics. It is constructing the mindset to employ your skillset over time. Do you believe most people aren’t achieving what they want because they don’t know what to do or how to do it? Or do you think it’s because they aren’t doing what they know, consistently over time? Since we live in the information age with answers to any question literally at our fingertips we know the latter is the case.
So why is it that some people seem to get results most of us can only imagine when all of us have unlimited access to the same information? Hunger. So what creates hunger and more importantly how do we access it? How do we activate our awesome?
I believe with every fiber in my being we all have latent forces of potential inside of us. If you aren’t familiar with the word latent the definition according to Google is lying dormant or hidden until circumstances are suitable for development or manifestation. We are capable of much more than we believe. But our full capacity is hidden until we engineer the circumstances to access it. If you want to become a winner at the game of life you will spend just as much time, if not more, stoking the fire of hunger towards a goal as you will the plan for its achievement.
One way I have found to elicit the Hunger Games in people is by using this exercise…
“Tell me about a time you really wanted something and you had no idea how you were going to get it but you knew in your heart you would and you did.”
Tell me about a time that you really wanted something…it can be big or small. Mine was when I had a friend who passed away in 2007 and at our 10-year high school reunion, we wanted to find a way to honor him. So we decided to build a treehouse in our local park and the treehouse was like $25,000. At that point, I really had two nickels to rub together. And yet, I knew we were going to build that tree house. I was committed to building that treehouse. We took one step after the other. And before I knew it, we had a concert, we raised money, we had some donated from another place, and that treehouse was built within about a year of the idea originating within us.
What is it for you?
I’ll never forget, I was coaching a lady one time and asked her that question, and she said it was buying her first home.
I asked what was significant about buying her first home and she told me she was a first-generation immigrant from Mexico. Her goal was to establish residency so she could move her parents from Mexico to Arizona, where she lived. She was in a new country, she didn’t know the language, and she started in an industry that doesn’t guarantee a paycheck. And yet she was tenacious. “I just coached myself through it, I kept myself going. And eventually, I looked up and had the down payment. I got into a loan program that helps immigrants buy homes, and bought that property.” Wow. This had another huge lesson for me. We don’t all start in the same place with the same resources. Buying a starter home for some isn’t that big of an achievement. For others, it is the goal of a lifetime. Never compare yourself to others because you have no idea where they started or what they’re carrying.
At the time of that call the lady I was talking to was struggling to reach her new current goal. When I contrasted the why behind buying the home and the goal she had for that year the two weren’t in the same ballpark. She had a burning desire to move her family to U.S. Her new goal had very little significance to her at all. The first goal tapped her latent forces of potential because there was meaning and a purpose to it. “I had to get that place for my parents. We needed a place my family could call their own” were a few of the phrases she shared with me. What she really did, is she stood in the possibility that she could and would make this happen regardless of the odds. We immediately went to work to create a similar relationship to the goal she had this year. The purpose was to again tap the forces within her waiting to be developed or manifested. Latent Forces.
Over the years, I’ve collected a series of quotes and things. And one of my all-time favorites, this is actually from page 81, in the MREA, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent book, but this is what Gary says.
“I’ve learned in life, that if you believe something is possible, you tend to focus on the constructive means necessary to make that possibility a reality. I’ve also learned the opposite. If you don’t think something is possible, you will be blinded to the ways that it could be done. It is a self imposed blind spot.”
Gary Keller
What I want you to understand is that if you’re going to elicit your hunger, if you’re going to tap deep latent forces then you’ve got to be very clear about the why behind what it is you’re doing. Start with that, versus the how. The how will always show up if the why is big enough.
To make this easier we have created a worksheet below with a scale for hunger. Of course, everything with me has to start with the same letter. So there’s pathetic, potential, possible, probable and powerful. Each one of them has a descriptive phrase under it. How hungry are you? If you’re anything other than powerful why not? What’s keeping you from doing that? What’s preventing you from tapping into your latent forces of potential and becoming the person you were always meant to become? The person you know it’s possible to become?
Now go do it. Use the worksheet. Thank you for reading. I trust that you will use this to make your life better and more powerful.
Jordan
