“You gotta want to! You gotta want it!” Many of us have heard this from parents, coaches, mentors and the ever present guru. “You can be anything you want to be. You can have anything you want to have.”

Just the other day I listened to a friend, Brenda R., explaining “relaxing” black women’s hair. She stated it was the same process white women use to get a “perm” to make their hair curly. She went on that black women have kinky hair and white women have straight hair and both want what they don’t have. That is what Brenda said. Hmm. Okay, before I get sexist, men seem to have much the same problem though in different areas of interest.

I suggest we have plenty of “want.” I want to eat ice cream. I want a lean, fit and svelte body. I want to stay out all night. I want to have an income which supports my party and my ice cream. We have enormous amounts of “want.” Why don’t we have?

Is more than “want” needed? If more than “want” is needed then what is missing? I have pondered this with my simple logic.  According to my recent reading of Thomas Sowell’s “Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One”, (Economics has become my new fascination.) my understanding is that life is about trade-offs. You really cannot “have your cake and eat it too.” The question then becomes, “How do we manage our competing “want?”

My theory is we need to add “more.” Correct, “more.” More helps define priority. I “want” this “more.” I may have been misleading in my introduction since most parents, coaches, mentors and gurus really mean “You gotta want to more than…” In our efforts for brevity, sound bite information, we often just say, “You gotta want to.”

What I have learned in my experience as a trainer is that we act the way we are trained to act. There is a saying which I mentioned in my previous post, “You got to die of something…,” which applies here, “Train like you fight, fight like you train.” While training firefighters we used to allow them to wear their breathing apparatus without fully engaging and breathing from the unit. This is a convenience because, being similar to Scuba equipment, if you actually use it then you must refill it. Yes, a short cut in training which can result in firefighters forgetting to engage their breathing air.

In effect, what I am thinking is that if we repeatedly say “You gotta want to” we are likely to forget the “more.” I want ice cream more than I want a lean, fit and svelte body. Did I get that backward? You be the judge when you see me; the results rarely lie. Without the “more” we become distracted with the “less” and never achieve the “most.” What is it you “want?” Do you want it “more?”

ST2