I wasted three entire years chasing the wrong goals. Obsessing over metrics that looked impressive but left me feeling empty inside. Building a career that earned nods of approval at dinner parties but made my stomach churn every Sunday evening.
Looking back now, it’s so obvious. I was prioritizing goals that belonged to someone else – goals I thought I should want. Not goals that made me leap out of bed at 5 AM without an alarm.
This is exactly what we’ve been exploring all week in our “Power of Desire” series. When you prioritize goals that genuinely ignite your passion, success becomes almost inevitable. Not because it’s easy, but because your emotional connection to those goals creates an unstoppable force.
When You Chase Everything, You Catch Nothing
So many of us keep a running list of 27 different goals we’re supposedly working toward. Get promoted. Start a side business. Learn Spanish. Write a book. Renovate the kitchen. Meditate daily. Run a marathon.
But our energy isn’t infinite. And passion can’t be divided into tiny fragments and still maintain its power.
Real talk: when you try to prioritize everything, you end up prioritizing nothing. Your focus gets scattered, your energy diluted. You make incremental progress on multiple fronts but breakthrough progress on none.
I learned this lesson the hard way after spending months juggling five major projects. I was working harder than ever before but feeling less fulfilled. One Thursday night, completely burnt out, I grabbed a notebook and forced myself to answer one question: “If I could only work on ONE of these projects for the next year, which would make me feel most alive?”
The answer was immediately clear. And terrifying. Because it wasn’t the prestigious one or the profitable one. It was the one that made my heart race when I thought about it.
Burning Desire vs. Lukewarm Interest (They’re Not Even Close)
Napoleon Hill didn’t call it “the power of mild interest” or “the power of casual curiosity.” He named it “the power of DESIRE” for a reason.
There’s a massive difference between:
“I should probably work on this because it would be good for my career.”
And:
“I MUST make this happen because my soul won’t let me do otherwise.”
This distinction matters enormously when you’re trying to prioritize goals. True desire creates a burning, almost obsessive focus. You think about these goals in the shower. They pop into your mind right before you fall asleep. You talk about them until your friends roll their eyes.
When you prioritize goals backed by this level of desire, you tap into resources you didn’t know you had. You work harder, persist longer, and bounce back from setbacks faster. Not because you’re forcing yourself, but because you can’t imagine doing anything else.
Ask yourself honestly: Which of your current goals generate this kind of emotional response?
The Three Questions That Cut Through the Noise
Figuring out which goals truly ignite your passion isn’t always straightforward. External validation, financial incentives, and social pressure can cloud your judgment.
Here are three questions we’ve found incredibly effective at helping people prioritize goals aligned with their deepest desires:
1. If money and status weren’t factors at all, which goal would you still pursue?
2. Which goal, if achieved, would make the other goals either easier or less important?
3. Which goal makes you lose track of time when you work on it?
The answers might surprise you. Sometimes what we think we want isn’t what we truly desire.
One of our community members, a corporate lawyer, realized that the promotion she was killing herself for wasn’t even in her top three when she honestly answered these questions. What she really wanted was to write children’s books – something she’d been putting off for “someday” while pursuing more “practical” goals.
She didn’t quit her job the next day. But she did reprioritize her goals, putting her writing first in her limited free time instead of last. Six months later, she finished her first manuscript. And the strange thing? Her legal work actually improved because she wasn’t bringing that sense of resentment and emptiness to the office anymore.
Your Environment Either Feeds Your Desire or Kills It
Once you identify which goals truly ignite your passion, you need to protect and nurture that flame. Your environment plays a crucial role here.
Who are you spending time with? What are you reading, watching, listening to? Are these inputs strengthening your desire or weakening it?
I’ve noticed that when I surround myself with people pursuing their own passion-driven goals, my desire intensifies. But a single lunch with someone cynical about dreams can dampen my enthusiasm for days.
Be ruthlessly selective about your environment. This doesn’t mean isolating yourself from reality. It means consciously choosing inputs that fuel rather than extinguish your desire.
Some practical ways to do this:
– Schedule regular meetings with people pursuing similar goals or with the same intensity (even if in different fields)
– Create a dedicated physical space for working on your most important goal
– Start your day by reconnecting with why this goal matters to you (visualization, journaling, meditation)
– Curate your media diet to include stories of people who’ve achieved similar goals
Remember: what you pay attention to grows. When you prioritize goals that truly matter to you, then prioritize environments that support those goals, you create a powerful upward spiral.
When You Hit Resistance, You’re Probably on the Right Track
Here’s something nobody tells you about pursuing goals that ignite your passion: the resistance gets STRONGER, not weaker. And that’s actually a good sign.
When you’re working on something that doesn’t really matter to you, it’s easy to give up when obstacles appear. “Oh well, I didn’t really care about that anyway.”
But when you’re pursuing something you deeply desire, the stakes feel higher. Your ego gets more involved. The fear of failure becomes more intense precisely because it matters so much.
I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly, both in my own life and with others. The goals that generate the most resistance, procrastination, and self-doubt are often the ones closest to our hearts.
So if you find yourself coming up with elaborate excuses to avoid working on a particular goal, or if you feel unusually anxious about it, consider that this might be the exact goal you should prioritize.
As Steven Pressfield writes, “The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”
It’s Never Just About the Goal
A weird thing happens when you prioritize goals that truly ignite your passion: achieving the goal becomes almost secondary to who you become in pursuit of it.
The desire itself transforms you. It demands that you develop new skills, overcome limiting beliefs, and become more disciplined. It pushes you to grow in ways you couldn’t have anticipated.
Sharon and I have seen this countless times. People start with a specific goal – writing a book, building a business, mastering a skill – but the real transformation is in their character, their confidence, their capacity to create.
So as we close out this week on “The Power of Desire,” remember that the goals you prioritize are shaping not just your achievements but your identity. Choose ones worthy of the person you’re becoming.
And tomorrow, we’ll bring all the pieces together as we conclude our exploration of desire as a manifestation force.
Which of your current goals generates the strongest emotional response? And what’s one step you could take today to realign your priorities around this goal?