Success is different from person to person, what is important to one person may not be as important to another. What is common, however, is that everyone wants to be successful, regardless of how they define it. So what does it take, besides hard work and determination? What is the step a “not-so-successful” person needs to take to become more successful?

Hard work, determination, persistence, learning from failure… are all necessary, but there is something more important, more basic, and it comes before any of the above. It is desire.

Have desire, true and deep desire, for more. More of whatever it is that defines success for you. If it is money, want more money. If it is love and family… then want, desire, love and family. Don’t ask for these things. Want them. There is a difference. The difference is that asking means it is not up to. Wanting, desiring, is telling yourself you will attain this, it is telling yourself achieving success is up to you. Period.

Most people only talk about wanting more; or worse, they wish for more, “I wish I had more money.” That is far from true desire. Actually, it’s even worse. It is declaring to yourself that you can not attain whatever it is your wishing for. That it is not within your reach. And so, you give up on working towards that and instead you settle for fantasies. When a person does not have enough of anything, it is because they do not want it bad enough. It is as if the universe is saying, “You don’t want it, why should I give it to you!”

There is a simple reason for true desire being important. When you truly want something, you will look around for it; and when you look around, you start putting effort; when you put effort, you are bound to find a way.

Once you build desire, true desire from within you, all the other steps, adjectives, will fall into place. Your desire will help you realize how important your goals are, so you will learn to put aside what people think. Your true desire will make you realize that the alternative is not a life you want, and so you will overcome laziness and start working harder. This happens with every obstacle you may face… fear of failure will lose out to the strength of your wanting… instead of being intimidated by more successful people, you will rub shoulders with them and learn from them. True desire goes a long way, it is the foundation of success.