Creating Desire

Do you find yourself wanting one thing and yet your actions are not aligned with what you want at all? For example, let’s say you want to lose weight, but you find yourself overeating at midnight. Or maybe you say you want to grow your business but you haven’t sent out an email in a few months. What’s going on?

It all comes down to desire. And when you learn to create desire on purpose then you will find that it’s so much easier to create your results in life. And that’s what this episode is all about. So, let’s dive in.

Welcome to the School of Self-Image, where personal development meets style. Here’s your hostess, master life coach Tonya Leigh.

What is happening, my friends? I am so excited to be talking about creating desire. So, I just wrapped up a VIP virtual cocktail party with my School of Self-Image members. These are members who have been with me for six months or longer.

And they’re super fun because they’re very casual. I get asked all kinds of questions. And we just chat for an hour about life, love, business, all the things. But one of the members asked me a question about working out. And she said, “I know you’ve developed a love for working out. And I want to love it too. But I hate it. How do I change that?”

And that leads me to what I want to talk with you about today; creating desire. We all desire different things. Some of you desire to sit on the sofa and watch Netflix. Now, you may say you want to get healthy. You may say you want to lose weight. You may say you want to go and work on your business.

But what you’re deeply desiring is sitting on that sofa and watching Netflix. How do we know that? Because that’s what you’re doing. And so, it causes us to ask the question, how do we change desire? How do I get you to desire getting up and working out more than sitting on the sofa and watching Netflix?

And that brings me to the question, what creates desire? Desire is a feeling. It is defined as a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. To strongly wish for or want something.

And so, if desire is a feeling, and it is, then it means that it’s created by our thoughts. So if you think about the example I was giving of sitting on the sofa and watching Netflix versus getting up and going to work out, in that moment, if you were to look at your thoughts, your thoughts are generating a desire in opposition of what you say you really want.

So, maybe if you were to look into your brain, your brain would say, “Working out is so hard. It’s so much more fun to sit on the sofa and watch Netflix. This show is so good. You can work out tomorrow. You hate working out anyway, don’t forget.”

So, how do we create the desire to get up and go and work out? Well, you’re going to have to start creating thoughts that create more desire to work out than to sit on the sofa and watch Netflix.

Now, of course, it’s so difficult to go from, “I hate working out,” to, “I love working out,” because your brain is going to be like, “No you don’t. You’re lying.” But we begin to create better thoughts that generate more desire using what I teach in the School of Self-Image called the thought ladder.

So, we find a better-feeling thought like, “I’m learning to love to work out. Working out is going to serve me so much more than sitting on the sofa and watching Netflix. If I continue to sit on this sofa and watch Netflix, my life in three years, five years is going to be a wreck.”

So, what I’m doing there is I’m creating thoughts that create pain around the behavior that you’re wanting to change, and simultaneously creating thoughts that create desire for what it is that you want to do.

And this is the game that we have to play and change You will need to constantly be creating desire for the thing that you want to do, like deeply want. Not what you want in the moment, but what you deeply want. And at the same time, you’re going to have to create pain around the behavior that you’re wanting to change.

This I exactly what I did last year when I started working out again. I had all the thoughts, like so many of you, of like, “This is going to be so hard. Why do I have to do this? I don’t want to do this.” Just whiney baby.

And I realized that that wasn’t serving me. It was just making it harder because I was creating a desire for sitting around and doing nothing. And so, I had to start associating pain with me not working out. and really visualizing, “What’s my life going to be like in a year, five years, 10 years if I continue down this path?” And let me tell you, it didn’t look good. Versus, “What if my life going to be like if I start working out?”

And it was difficult for me because I wasn’t coming from a completely sedentary lifestyle. I was walking. I was being active. But I wasn’t performing at that level that I knew I needed to in order for my body to feel amazing. I was going to have to push myself harder than I had been pushing myself.

And so, yeah, my brain was just telling me all the things, like, “You already work out. Just take it easy. It’s not that pleasurable.” And I was like, “You know what’s not pleasurable? Having back pain. That’s not pleasurable. Why don’t I stretch and do the work to take care of that so that I can have a more active and fulfilling life?”

And so, this was the game that I played with myself. I was constantly debunking all of my reasons and creating desire for what I deeply wanted. So, if you find yourself continually doing things that are in opposition of what you want, what you have to understand is that your thoughts are creating desire for you to continue that behavior.

And so, the only way to change that behavior and to establish a new one is to create the desire for that new behavior and to begin to create pain associated with your current behavior. And this comes down to the pain-pleasure principle. It’s how we’re driven as humans.

As human beings, we are driven to avoid pain and to pursue pleasure, to pursue desire. And so, if your desire is wrapped up in unhealthy and unproductive actions and behaviors and habits, it’s going to be very difficult for you to create what it is that you want. Unless you create different desire.

So, I want you to think about something you really want. Maybe you want to start your business. Maybe you want to lose weight, get healthy, find the love of your life. Maybe you want to pay off your debt. Maybe you want to build your wealth. Just fill in the blank of what it is that you desire.

And then, your job is to create the desire to perform the actions that are necessary to create that result for yourself. So, for example, let’s say your goal, what you really want is to pay off your debt. But right now, you have a lot of pain associated with not overspending and you have a lot of pleasure and desire associated with spending outside of your means.

Well, you can see how, because of your associations, you’re compelled to overspend and not reach your goal. So, you’re going to have to create a desire for not spending as much. You have to create a desire for paying off that debt and be excited about building your wealth.

And at the same time, you’re going to have to associate a lot of pain with overspending and going deeper in debt. Imagine where your life is going to be a year, five years, 10 years from now if you continue down that path.

And when you start to make these new associations, it becomes so much easier to reach your goals. It’s like you stop working against yourself and you start working with yourself. You no longer feel like you’re white-knuckling it, but things start to become effortless because now your desire is channeled in the right direction. You don’t secretly desire one thing while openly wanting something else.

Everything is aligned when you create desire on purpose. So, what are you creating desire for? And is it serving you? And if not, know that you can change it. Because desire is a result of our thinking. So, change your thinking and you can change what it is that you desire. Have a gorgeous week, everyone and I cannot wait to see you in next week’s episode. Cheers.

Hey, have you grabbed your free copy of the School of Self-Image Manifesto? If not, what in the world? Head over to schoolofselfimage.com/manifesto and get a copy that teaches you how to think and show up in the areas of mindset, style, and surroundings so that you can transform your self-image.