Why Desire Holds the Key to Self-Help and Living Life

Desire is nature's motor power, the propulsive force that pushes everything forward in its evolution. Desire stimulates you to action. As you obtain your original desire, a new one replaces the old and lures you onward.

If you were beginning a business, at first you'd only want to buy a nice house. But then you decide you want a bigger house. Soon afterwards, you want your dream house to be a mansion. Then you decide you want several of them--on the beach, in the city, in the mountains.

You're satisfied with the Kia in the beginning. Then you demand a Ferrari. And before you know it you want to purchase a Cadillac and a Mercedes to fill up your new four-car garage.

You set out to earn a livelihood and welcome a small salary from a job. But the desire for money pushes you into business for yourself. You feel that a small fortune should satisfy anybody. When you get it though, you want to become a millionaire. If you succeed in that, then you desire to become a multi-millionaire.

Whether your desire is for wealth, or for fame, or for power, the same result follows. When you satisfy that desire, a greater one takes its place and spurs your ambition still further. You grasp the prize, believing it'll completely satisfy you, only to discover that while you were pursuing it, your desire had grown beyond to something bigger. And so your real goal is always farther ahead of you.

But the objects of desire aren't really what is most valuable to you. The real reward for your efforts is two-fold: how those objects of desire change your life for the better, and what you gain by having the objects of your desires.

Most of the time when you want something, you want it because of how it will make you feel. Wealth that gives you more freedom and less stress about your financial life. Owning your own home to give you more self-confidence and self-esteem. An expensive car that gives you a feeling of admiration from others, a feeling of belonging.

These objects of desire also give you new powers that you didn't possess before. Powers that wouldn't have come forward had you not had nature's great propulsive force, desire, to guide you. The power of knowledge, of action, of knowing how to get back on your feet again if you should ever find yourself back in your old, undesirable situation. Just like the millionaire who loses everything but gets back up to his standard of living within a year or two.

Without desire you would be in a death-like and dangerous condition -- a condition in which further progress would be impossible. But by transforming your lower desires into higher ones, you move steadily forward and upward without losing the power that urges you forward forever.