Articles / Prosperity & Abundance

Desire

March 1998

First you fuel the desire, then the desire will fuel you.
-Napoleon Hill

 

The following is an excerpt from Money Success and You, a book by John Kehoe.

Knowing what one wants in life is not enough. Nor will wishing or hoping to achieve success help you. You must go one step further and add the vibration of desire to the mix. It is desire that acts as the catalyst with your thoughts and beliefs, supplying the needed emotion that the subconscious mind requires in order to translate your thoughts into reality.

All the great men and women achievers of the past have known this. They have all shared this one overwhelming similarity - a burning desire to achieve their objectives.

Thomas Edison experienced more than 10,000 failures before he perfected the light bulb. His desire to succeed never waned. Wilbur and Orville Wright suffered through years of humiliation and ridicule for daring to believe they could make a vehicle fly through the air. Yet the strength of their purpose and desire allowed them to persevere until they produced the first successful airplane. Henry Ford went bankrupt twice before the first Model T rolled off the assembly line, yet he never wavered from his determination to mass-produce the automobile.

Ted Turner also knew what he wanted. It was not a mere wish or hope that he had, but a burning desire to achieve his objective - owning and running a media and communications empire. When this thought first entered his mind, he owned a tiny billboard company in Atlanta. He began to build his dream by purchasing a small radio station, followed by a lackluster UHF (ultra-high-frequency) television station that less than half the TV sets in the area were able to receive. The year was 1968. Right from the beginning he ran into problems. The TV station was hemorrhaging money. By 1970 it was losing over $700,000 a year. "The station will bring down the whole company," said Irwin Mazo, Turner's accountant at the time, who promptly quit.

"It's pretty tough when your own accountant quits because he thinks you're doomed," said Ted. Others at this point might have backed off and been more prudent, heeding their accountant's advice. Or maybe they would have given up, thinking their dream was unattainable. But not Ted Turner. What was his response? He went out and bought another station. His rationale? It was only losing $30,000 a month! And not only did he purchase it; in the process he further assumed nearly $3 million in liabilities.

Now at this point, I would like to say to the reader that a strong desire to achieve your goal might cause a man to act in ways that seem crazy to others. So crazy that even his accountant may quit, and for Turner that was not all. Several of his top people quit as well, certain that Ted was headed for disaster. But they could not see what Ted saw. For in addition to a lightning-quick mind, Turner also possessed a sixth sense that allowed him to see beyond conventional wisdom and act accordingly.

And sure enough, within several years he had turned his struggling Atlanta station into America's first "super station," beaming its programming off a satellite into homes all over North America. Revenue began pouring in, but rather than stop while he was ahead, Turner set his sights even higher. In 1979 he borrowed over $27 million to finance CNN, an untried "all news station" that many said no one would watch. And in the beginning, it looked like they were right. CNN lost over $70 million in its first five years. During this time, Turner had a sign on his desk that read, "Lead, follow or get out of the way." He knew what he wanted, and nothing was going to stop him. His burning desire overcame all else. And here we come to one of the secrets of desire. A strong desire to have or do what you have set your mind to recognizes no such thing as failure. All disappointments, problems and setbacks are but temporary obstacles on the way to success.

By 1984, CNN had turned the corner and finally began to show a profit. Then in 1987 Turner made his biggest gamble to date. With a combination of junk bonds and other financing that highly leveraged his company, he bought MGM Studios for a whopping $1.2 billion. It saddled him with almost a billion dollars in debt. Most analysts at the time thought Turner had overpaid MGM's former owners by at least $300 million. One Hollywood veteran was quoted in Fortune magazine as saying, "Turner got the worst screwing in the history of American business." But they did not know what Ted Turner knew. Nor could they see the profit he would one day derive from the MGM film library of over 3,000 titles, how he would repackage this content and broadcast it on still more TV stations. His desire to have his media empire, and his sixth sense drawing upon the wisdom of his subconscious, let Ted see what no one else could. With boldness, some called it reckless boldness, he pursued his goal, never wavering.

"Turner has an uncanny ability to obliterate anything and everything peripheral to his immediate objective," said Porter Bibb, former White House correspondent for Newsweek. "This is why he is so successful."

By 1990, a mere three years later, with the media landscape changing rapidly and the cost of programming skyrocketing, Turner's instincts were again proved right. His company entered into a period of explosive growth and profits. The MGM deal was suddenly called by Institutional Investor, "one of the deals of the decade."

In 1997 Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner to become one of the largest communication and media companies in the world. Ted Turner's media empire was now a resounding international success, worth billions of dollars. He had revolutionized the broadcast industry and made Marshall McLuhan's "global village" a reality. He had rewritten the very definition of news as something that is happening rather than something that has happened. He had built the largest news gathering organization in the world. He also controlled the largest library of motion pictures anywhere, and one of the largest collections of animated films. His broadcasts reached over 120 countries.

In the merger, and for his efforts, Turner personally received over $3 billion in cash and stock. He had achieved his wildest dreams.

The same force of desire and determination that Ted Turner harnessed is available to each and every one of us. Follow these four steps and watch desire come alive within you:

Step 1 - Write down a clear and concise statement of what it is you wish to obtain.

Step 2 - Outline what you intend to do or give to achieve this objective.

There is no such thing as something for nothing. What skills, knowledge, disciplines and actions will you obtain or practice? Be clear and concise.

Step 3 - Promise yourself to let nothing stop you from obtaining your objectives.

Make a commitment to yourself to do whatever is necessary to achieve your goal. Be firm in your resolution.

Step 4 - Read this statement over twice every day.

Read it upon rising in the morning, and again before you go to sleep, and begin immediately to put this plan to work. When reading your statement, magnetize your mind to the reality of achieving your goal. See and feel yourself already in possession of that which you desire. As days turn into weeks and then months, this ritual will be the source of a great amount of power and inspiration for you.

A strong, burning desire to obtain and possess the goal you are pursuing is the starting point for all achievement.

This isn't a vague wish or a simple hope; it is something much more powerful than that. Burning desire, when properly ignited, takes on a life and power of its own and empowers you in hundreds of different ways.

There is a Zen parable that will help to illustrate what I mean. A Zen monk and his student were walking by the river when the young student begins to plead with his master, "How do I become enlightened? What must I do?" The master grabbed him roughly, pulled him into the river and pushed him under the water until the young student was completely submerged.

The Zen master continued to hold the student under water and soon the student began to thrash frantically. But still the master held him under the water. Desperately the student tried to free himself, to no avail. Finally, just at the point of drowning, the master released his grip and the student surfaced, gasping for air.

"What were you thinking while I held you under the water?" the master asked. "At first I thought of many things," the student answered. "But after a few seconds, when there was no sign that you would let me up, all I could think of was: Air! Air! Give me air!" "When you desire enlightenment with the same intensity," said the master smiling, "you will soon have it."

The same applies to achieving your goals. You must desire it with your whole being. Desire is the fuel that propels you towards your objectives and influences your thoughts and actions. Desire helps you overcome obstacles and draw inspiration from your subconscious. A strong desire combined with prosperity beliefs and continuous action towards your goal will attract to you the people, circumstances and situations you need to be successful.

John Kehoe