What Do You Want?

Sixty years ago this week, President Kennedy told The US Congress that the US:

”should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

When President Kennedy told Congress this was the goal, no one at NASA knew how they could ever achieve that goal. Just one month prior, Yuri Gagarin had become the first person to orbit the earth. The thought of being able to send a person to the moon, land on it and bring them back safely in less than ten years was laughable.

(The word “lunatic” comes from a derogatory term given to people who dreamed of walking on the moon. In the early 1900s, Landing on the moon was considered impossible, so anyone dreaming of it was considered mentally unstable.)

Yet, on the 20th July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon. It wasn’t impossible after all.

The story about the first moon landing is not just about the incredible achievement; it is about a group of amazing people coming together to achieve a seemingly impossible goal. It galvanised NASA’s thinking. It forced them to think the unthinkable and develop new technologies — technologies we take for granted today — and taught the world that we can achieve anything with the right attitude when we have a clear goal with a specific time frame.

Later in 1962, at Rice University, President Kennedy explained:

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”

That quote encapsulates the reason you must decide what you want to accomplish with your life.

It doesn’t matter what it is you want. It could be big or small, although the bigger, the better, all that matters is you have something to aim at.

It’s that purpose that will give you the direction you need to go. It’s that purpose that will provide you with the energy to jump out of bed, start your morning routines and give you a reason to plan the day.

For those of you who have read the brilliant Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, everything in your life begins with knowing what you want. Once you know what it is you want, it doesn’t matter whether you know how you will achieve it or not. Once you have clarity, you will find a way to achieve it.

You see, when you set yourself an “impossible” goal and commit yourself to achieve it within a specified time frame, that’s when you find your true potential. That’s how great things happen.

It’s how morbidly obese people can go from being dangerously overweight to completing a marathon in less than a year. It’s how two college kids can start building computers in a garage and create the world’s biggest company in less than fifty years.

Back in 2001, I decided I wanted to go and live in Asia for a year. When I first dreamed of that goal, I had no idea how I would do it. All I knew was I wanted to spend some time working in an entirely different culture. It took me six months to figure out how to do it. And on the 29th June 2002, I boarded a flight to Korea, and my whole life changed.

The’ secret’ is not knowing how to do it — NASA didn’t know how they would put a person on the moon in 1961 — the’ secret’ is committing to figuring it out and doing whatever it takes to make it happen.

The sad thing is most people will never set themselves a challenging goal. Most people will drift through life, trying to be “normal” and being miserable, finding solace in TV entertainment shows and complaining to anyone who will listen about how unfair life is.

It’s those people who envy people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, yet people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates were not “lucky” or became successful because they were the “chosen ones”. They are successful because they knew what they wanted, and they acted to make it happen. They decided to make it happen.

When Jeff Bezos started Amazon in July 1994, he wanted to build the world’s largest internet retailer. Back in 1995, the internet was a shadow of what it is today, and the vision Jeff Bezos had would have been ludicrous. Just think of the things Amazon had to overcome. Online payment processing, the idea of buying books through your computer. We don’t even think of all these today, yet in 1995 nobody knew how to do it.

But Jeff Bezos had a vision, and he committed himself to make it happen.

And that’s what you need to do. Imagine how you will feel once you have a vision and a purpose. How you will feel every morning when your alarm goes off because you have another twenty-four hours to work on making your vision work.

I can promise you, once you have that vision and you make a commitment to yourself to make it happen, you will no longer feel envy. You will be so focused on making your life a success that you will look at people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and see them as role models. They will inspire you to push beyond your limitations and never to give up when things become difficult.

So, what do you want? Decide and commit to achieving it “before the decade is out.”

Thank you for reading my stories! 😊 If you enjoyed this article, hit those clapping hands below many times👏 It would mean a lot to me and it helps other people see the story.

My purpose is to help as many people as I can live the lives they desire. To help people find happiness and become better organised and more productive so they can do more of the important things in life.

If you would like to learn more about the work I do, and how I can help you become better organised and more productive, you can visit my website or say hello on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook and subscribe to my weekly newsletter right here.