Balancing Desire and Belief

Most people know that you need to want something badly enough to drive forward and believe in yourself enough to continue through adversity. It is the main reason why people say, “Believe in yourself!” and, “It all comes down to who wants it more!” when trying to motivate people toward their goals. Many life philosophies, such as the Law of Attraction, focus on those two things as literally the only two things you need for you to get anything that you want in life. Even so, there is a little thing called “reality” shaping your beliefs just as much as your beliefs shape your reality. So, how does one work through all of this to achieve their goals?

Well, the truth is that desire and belief exist on a continuum when it comes to things like your goals, your roadmap/plan to attain those goals, and your measures of success. The greater or more ambitious your goals, your plan, or how you define success, the greater your desire for that outcome but the less believable it is. Let’s take a couple of examples to illustrate the point:

• If you want to run a marathon and have never run in your life, then setting that goal and then signing up for a marathon that’s happening in a couple of weeks is probably not very believable.
• If you set a goal to walk around the block, that is very believable but not a really big life goal that would light a fire within you to be the best version of yourself.

Just about every goal, plan, or success measure you can think of exists on this continuum because the lower probability of something happening in reality typically makes it more desirable (whether it be due to supply and demand or social status or one’s sense of accomplishment) and less believable.  Easier things are more believable and less desired and appreciated. It’s why people take things for granted when there’s an abundance of something (e.g., water) and revere them when they’re scarce (e.g., championship wins).

Knowing this, if you want to set goals, you need to balance your desire and belief if you do find that they trade off with each other when you set goals. There are a few ways to do this:

• Set a goal high enough that you want it but stop when it begins to feel unattainable.  That is the point at which your desire and belief are in the optimal balance for you to remain motivated.
• Define and measure success using a healthy balance of measures that involve effort that is within your control (e.g., steps per day) and outcomes that involve external factors (e.g., weight, maximum fitness level). The reason for this is that things you can control tend to be more believable and things that are out of your control tend to be less believable.
• Set a huge long-term goal and then define a very believable short-term goal. This makes sure that you don’t squelch your desire but still have something believable that will keep you motivated if the long-term goal takes years to attain. It also helps you enjoy the journey, which is usually as rewarding and meaningful as the destination.
• Start with a believable first step and have no ultimate goal in mind. Some people prefer this because it frees them from holding themselves against some benchmark of progress or success and lets them just enjoy whatever it is they’re doing.

There are many more, I’m sure, but hopefully that gives you a few ideas for how to balance desire and belief in your life journey.

As I mentioned earlier, many people who live life philosophies (e.g., religions, spirituality) where miracles can happen don’t always feel the need to trade off between desire and belief because they have one powerful mechanism to break the trade off: faith. Faith is simply the belief in the ability to attain a positive outcome without or despite evidence. With faith, it technically doesn’t matter how high the goal is, as unwavering faith can keep a person going forever. The only reason that I don’t include this option above is that faith can (and often does) waver, so this balancing act is a good fallback option for if or when it does.

I hope that you achieve whatever you want in life. In case you have difficulty getting started or continuing on because of how daunting or impossible the journey seems, I hope that this helps you optimize your desire and belief so that you can break through any physical or mental adversity that you face.