Something extraordinary happened in the last seven days since I published the The Habit of Deciding What’s Truly Important blog.

For that last 22 years since I started coaching clients to achieve different results in their lives, I wholeheartedly believed the role of a coach was to help the client transition from where they are to where they want to be. I believed this so much that it was the theme upon which all of my coaching programs and processes were based.

Well, this week I learned I was wrong.

If I ask you to make a list of everything you want, your list would probably include things like: more money, bigger house, newer car, more vacations, better job, lose weight, get in shape, get promoted at work, upgrade education, better relationships, learn a new skill and a host of other things.

Get What You Want

Now, if I were to ask you to take that same list and place each item on a continuum of urgency. On the one end of the continuum you would place those things that would be nice to have – you’re not willing to make any real effort to obtain them and, if through sheer lack, they happen to fall into your lap, you would gladly accept them – on the other extreme you would list those things that you not only want but, absolutely, unequivocally must have, no negotiation.

All the other items fit comfortably somewhere between those two extremes.

When you examine your list, how many of those wants from your original list are right at the extreme end where they are not only what you want but are things you cannot, and will not, live without?

You see, that life-changing lesson I learned is that I cannot help or coach anyone to transition from where they are to where they want to be, but I most certainly can coach anyone to catapult themselves from where they are to where they unconditionally must be.

We seldom get what we want, but we almost always get what we must have.

The difference is in The Habit of Deciding What’s Truly Important. It is by being very careful of how we assign importance that we truly determine what we must have and, well, when we absolutely must have something, we will move heaven and earth to make it happen.

It’s About Intensity

The difference is not in the difficulty of the challenge, but in the intensity of our desire. And until we want something so badly, so desperately, so completely that it occupies our every waking minute and we are consumed with getting it, the “it” that we want is little more than a daydream.

Success comes with effort and effort is fueled by desire. The inextinguishable flame that burns furiously inside the person who is driven towards what they must have dims only when the success has been achieved.

This discussion began around the topic of weight-loss. The person who merely wants to lose weight, seldom does, and when they do, it invariably comes right back. The person who absolutely, must lose weight will do whatever is necessary to accomplish this and to ensure the changes they make to do so become a permanent part of their everyday life.

And it all starts with The Habit of Deciding What’s Truly Important.

Remember, the next decision you make can change your life forever or it can prevent you from ever becoming what you want to be.

Choose wisely.

Let’s make a habit of meeting like this.