What is the most important thing you NEED if you want to achieve anything in your life?
We’ve all heard the term, ‘You can do anything you put your mind to.’ And sure, I am a huge believer in the fact that mindset matters when you set out to achieve something, whether it be big or small. But what if there is something even more important than mindset in order for anyone to successfully achieve any goal?
When you ask most people what they think is important when setting goals and actually achieving them, most people will talk such things as mindset, determination, effort, hard work, discipline and persistence.
And sure, all of these are just as equally important as each other.
But what if I told you that there is one thing that underpins all of the above and will always ensure success?
Well I know exactly what is needed no matter what, in order for any one to achieve anything they set their mind to.
And you won’t believe where I found it.
You see, the answer to this very question lay hiding underneath my husband’s mustache.
Yep, right underneath my husband’s big, ginger, old man, SLUG.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I think my husband is the most gorgeous man on the planet. I often refer to him as my very own Brad Pitt/Chris Hemsworth look alike. But when he came upstairs a few weeks ago, with his newly shaved big ugly 1950’s porn-star mustache, slugged to his face, I almost died right there on the spot.
For the record, some people (like really old men) can pull off a mustache without looking like a salty pedophile. But every time I looked at my husbands new face, it just made me cringe and I couldn’t seem to hold back on poking fun and throwing out as many insulting descriptions as I could in hope that would encourage him to shave the thing off again.
Which of course, due to his stubborn nature only seemed to encourage him to keep it. I realised that I had no control here. He had decided he wanted a change and that the mustache was going to stay.
Note: This pure dislike for his mustache had nothing to do with how I thought other people would perceive him, or me when I was out with him for that matter. I’m pretty good now at not giving much attention to what other people think any more. The problem I was facing here, was in my own perception of what I saw when I looked at his face. And I was finding it hard to shake. So although it may seem a bit shallow of me here, that truly was not my intention. And I can guarantee that a mustache is not a preferred option for most women looking for a husband these days.
But at the end of the day, it was his choice.
Fair enough.
And the only way I could see him getting rid of it at that point was to shave the damn thing off in his sleep. (Seriously thought about this strategy by the way).
What came about next is purely entertaining.
We both discussed the fact that I just couldnt stand him with a mustache and that I desperately wanted it gone. So we brainstormed, all the things in the world that my husband dislikes to the same extent. To which we came to the conclusion that bananas fitted that bill.
Yep, my husband loves food. But for the life of him he cannot stand eating bananas.
So, I asked him, “What if you had to eat a banana every single day, for the rest of your life? How would that make you feel?”
Cringe. He cringed. And at this point, I thought I had him.
I should really know my husband better than that because he is never one to back down from a challenge. So instead, he agreed to eat a banana everyday for as long as he could keep the mustache on his face.
It was clear. The mustache wasn’t going anywhere.
There was nothing I could do about it, and unless I heavily sedated him and waxed it off before he woke up, I was going to have to get used to it.
So, knowing full well that humans are incredibly capable of changing our thoughts and creating new possible perceptions, both of us agreed that every day we were going to work on rewiring our thoughts about mustaches and bananas and learn to love something that we both currently detested. Goals set.
MY GOAL: To learn to like my husband’s mustache.
HIS GOAL: To learn to love eating bananas.
Now I have been known for doing complete u-turns on old thoughts and unhelpful thinking. I’ve literally talked myself around ideas that I have had in the past, that I thought were completely impossible for myself to believe. There have been circumstances in my life that I have worked really hard to change my perception on and done just that. Almost to the point where it was like I originally saw blue and changed my mind to see yellow instead.
So, we shook on it. I went for a run. And by the time I got back I had already managed to rearrange my thoughts to change my thinking about my husbands new face.
Here is an overview of how I rewired some of my thoughts I was having about his dreaded mustache.
Thought change # 1: I gave the mustache a name. I called it SMAUG, like the fire breathing dragon from The Hobbit (a movie we had watched recently with the kids) and it stood for Sexier Man As U Grow! It made me smirk that I had not only personified the mustache into a character from a movie I enjoy watching but that I had also attached to it a positive meaning. That the longer he has his mustache, the sexier he will get. If you tell your brain something enough, then it is proven that you will start to believe it.
Thought change # 2: I began to see the delight in the fact that actually, a mustache is really, well, pretty funny. And I love fun. I love laughter. And I love being silly. Part of the reason that I fell in love with my husband in the first place is because he is such a character. He is gregarious, funny, outgoing and doesn’t care what anyone thinks about him. And the mustache certainly represented all of the above.
Thought change # 3: I felt proud that my husband wanted to be a little different. That he had wanted to step out of the box and create his own style. Not wanting to be like every other John Smith of this world.
Already I could see a change in how I felt about the Smaug that inhabited my husbands face, simply by trying to view it from a new perspective.
And my initial reaction when I got back from my run as I looked at my husband, was no longer to cringe or make fun of his new style choice.
He too had also eaten his banana while trying to think thoughts that might just trick his brain into believing he actually liked it.
A couple of days later, I was doing well. He was doing well. And I even heard him state in a loud overzealous voice one morning, “Mmmm that banana was delicious!”
I no longer seemed to have hard feelings about his mustache anymore. When I looked at him I no longer felt any animosity about the slug that was occupying territory on his face.
Well, long may that didn’t last.
Thoughts began to creep back in. I started to say things again in order to manipulate my husband into thinking he should get rid of the mo. I started to feel the cringe again every time I looked at his face.
And eventually, one 4a.m. in the morning, when feelings are heightened tenfold, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I had been woken up early by one of the kids and couldn’t get back to sleep. And we all know that sleep deprivation can be a bitch.
And can also turn me into one.
So I let it out. I let it all out. I told my husband the truth.
And the truth still was that I just didn’t like the mo. I had tried. I tried so hard to change my thinking on the idea. And to be fair, I had been successful there for a little while. But after weeks of trying to change my perspective, I had snapped back into the same thinking that I had initially felt in the first place.
But WHY? Why had I not been able to change my perspective on this one?
You see often when we set goals for ourselves, it can be easy to start off fierce and encouraged.
Losing weight is a typical example for most people. They start off strong and motivated. Only to fall into the trap of exercising like a mother fucker, barely eating, they go so incredibly hard at it for the first few weeks but then give up and end up right back where they started.
This is what is called the rubber band effect.
We want something! We try really hard and initially feel like we are so determined to change. And then we pull the rubber band so tight and suddenly snap, eventually we let go of our grip and we get pinged right back to where we started.
So why does this happen?
What was the most important thing here that I was missing in order to get myself to love my husband’s mustache?
Well, have you ever heard of a little thing called
DESIRE.
It’s actually not little at all. It’s HUGE.
What was pretty clear was that I had little …. no wait, absolutely no DESIRE to even WANT to like the mustache. I was kidding myself in thinking that I could ever like a mustache on my husband’s face because the simple truth was, that it wasn’t MY desire for me to love the mo.
It was his.
As with anything you want in life. Any goal you ever want to set yourself or for anything you ever want to work toward and succeed at……. your DESIRE must outweigh everything else in order for you to achieve it.
Desire is what drives a successful mindset. It’s the very reason successful people follow their dreams to the end and don’t give up. It is what encourages all other traits such as discipline, persistence, hard work and effort that are important for success. And without it, it is almost impossible to achieve anything you set out to.
When desire, overwhelming wants or reasons to do something outweigh the reasons not to, nothing will stop you from taking action, overcoming obstacles, tackling challenges and becoming whoever you want to be. It must outweigh all suffering, desire to quit or any fear that wants to hold you back.
And without it, I have no current ability to change my thinking about my husband’s mustache. It’s pretty clear that I don’t like it. And that I probably never will.
And as it turns out ……. my husband confessed in those same early hours of that morning ….. that he still doesn’t like bananas.
The mustache is gone now. Hallelujah. He exterminated the slug soon after our 4 am conversation.
I’m not sure if the reason was out of understanding for my complete lack of desire for his mustache.
Maybe it was in fact that he could actually see that there was desire there. But for totally opposite reasons. That I so desperately wanted his beautiful face back.
Or maybe my power of persuasion finally took hold in the middle of that 4 a.m. discussion when I dropped the idea that, he looked very much like his father. And although I love his father very much, I certainly do not want to have sex with him. Or anyone that looks like him for that matter.
Slug exterminated. New desire reignited. Victory for both of us in the end perhaps.
So maybe it’s time to find out what you desire most? Or for you to reassess what you really want in life? If there is a certain goal, or achievement that you’ve been working toward but feel like you’re just not getting there …. maybe desire, or lack of, might just be the thing that’s holding YOU back.
Because the story of any successful achiever only lies within their true DESIRE to go out and get it.