#2: What Everyone Who Achieves Insane Goals Has That You Don’t
What does everyone who achieves insane goals have that you don’t?
What is the SECRET SAUCE of success that’s absolutely critical?
Today, Dr. Steve Orma explains the powerful concept of a 'life or death desire' and why it's critical for reaching your biggest goals. This isn't just about wanting something; it's about having an unshakable commitment and an urgent need to make it happen NOW.
Dr. Orma shares inspiring stories from Michael Phelps and Elon Musk, who embody this intense drive. He also gets personal, telling us about his own journey to radically change his diet in an instant. Plus, he introduces a simple but powerful tool to help you measure your current level of commitment to what you want.
Dr. Orma emphasizes that pairing this deep desire with belief is the key to achieving any goal.
In this episode you’ll learn:
The critical importance of a life or death desire for the thing you want
How to know if you have a Life-or-Death desire for your goal
Examples of a Life-or-Death Desire from Michael Phelps, Elon Musk and Dr. Orma
The “0 to 100 Tool” for measuring your current level of desire
Remember, you can achieve ANYTHING you want!
Steve Orma
SUBSCRIBE
00:00 Introduction: The Power of Choice
00:35 Key to Achieving Insane Goals
01:43 Life or Death Desire Explained
02:51 Real-Life Examples of Life or Death Decisions
07:05 The Subconscious Mind and Immediate Action
12:52 Personal Transformation Stories
18:26 Conclusion and Next Steps
RESOURCES
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to Life-or-Death Desire
To have an amazing, exciting life, you need to achieve the things that are your biggest dreams in every area of your life without settling for anything less. And when you settle for less than that, when you settle for okay, average, it's all right, you're living in a kind of half life. You're living, you're not dead, but you're not fully alive because you're not feeding your spirit with the life, the work, the wealth, the health, whatever it is that will actually make your life incredible.
Welcome to the Insane Goals Podcast
Welcome to the Insane Goals Podcast. I'm Dr. Steve Orma, clinical psychologist and goal achieving specialist. Each week I discuss how to achieve massive goals, smash conventional thinking, and give you a radically different vision of what's possible for your life right now.
The Secret Sauce of Success
In today's episode, I want to talk about a key ingredient that people have who achieve insane goals that most other people don't have and it's kind of the secret sauce of success. Last week I talked about that belief in the thing that you want to achieve [00:01:00] is one main key thing you need to have. That if you don't believe that you can achieve something then obviously you're not going to achieve it or even go after it to begin with.
The other key thing is what I'm going to talk about today.
What is a Life-or-Death Desire?
And that is a life or death desire for the thing that you want. First of all, what is a life or death desire? Well, it's not just, I want this thing. I want a billion dollars. I want to win an Olympic gold medal. I want to start a successful business.
Most people want lots of things, but that is not the same as having the desire to be willing to take the actions and stick with that thing to get it.
A life or death desire is when you want something so bad that you are unwilling to settle for anything less for another second. And you mean it. It's not just a wish or a dream or a desire or you're stuck in frustration. It's almost like a calm clarity, that you will have where you feel like I am done [00:02:00] with this shit and I want this other thing instead.
I am done settling for making this amount of money and I want to make five million dollars next year. I am done being unhealthy or just in okay shape and I want to get in incredible shape and feel amazing. I am done with this job that is unfulfilling, it's uninspiring, I'm not doing the thing that I want to do, and I am going to not settle for that anymore and I'm going to go for the thing that I want starting today.
Until you have a desire that is that strong and you mean it, it's not just talk, it's not just frustration. When you make that decision, a switch goes off and nothing is going to stop you now from getting the thing that you want.
Living Death: The Consequences of Settling
What it means is that you're not willing to live without it for another second longer because living without it is like a living death.
And what a living death is, is that you're alive, you're physically alive, but your spirit is dead because you're in a job that you hate, or [00:03:00] you're not making enough money to live the way that you want to live. Or you don't feel good in your body because you're not healthy, and you lack energy. You just don't feel good and going through every day in that body feeling that way is like a living death. You're like a zombie. You're alive in some sense, but you're not really alive.
Your spirit isn't alive.
Achieving Insane Goals
So the goal of this podcast is to teach you how you can achieve insane things in your life. Massive, big, exciting, dream-like goals that will radically transform your life. Not only how to, but that it's possible for you to do it. And the reason for that is to have an amazing, insane, incredible, exciting life.
To have an amazing, exciting life, you need to achieve the things that are your biggest dreams in every area of your life without settling for anything less. And when you settle for less than that, when you settle for okay, average, it's all right, you're living in a kind of half life. You're living, you're not [00:04:00] dead, but you're not fully alive because you're not feeding your spirit with the life, the work, the wealth, the health, whatever it is that will actually make your life incredible. And in that sense, you're in a living death. You're physically alive, but your spirit is dead or half dead or only partially alive.
Now, if you're okay with that, then probably this podcast isn't for you. But if you are not okay with that, if you're tired of that, if you want something better, then you need to have a life or death desire for what you want.
Recognizing a Life-or-Death Desire
So how do you know when you have a life or death desire? There's a few different ways to think about it. The first way is that you want the thing NOW. Whatever it is you want, you're done with the old way and you want the new thing and you want it now.
That means not tomorrow, next week, next year, when you're going to set a New Year's resolution, you want the thing now and you mean it and you're not going to wait another second before you start pursuing it or before you start doing it.
[00:05:00] Literally something in your mind and in your soul switches to where you're done with the old thing and you are going to go after the new thing or even make that new thing happen immediately because some things can be changed instantly by just making a decision.
And there's almost a calmness. It's not about getting all fired up and getting all pumped. In fact, when you have a life or death desire for something, there's like an inner calmness that happens because you know you're going to honor what you want.
You know you're going to get it. It's just a matter of time. It's basically a done deal when that switch goes off. So you don't have to be all pumped up. You just need to go do the thing that you need to do to get there until you get it. And you know in your mind with certainty that you're going to get it because you've made the decision you're going to get it and you mean what you say.
Examples of Life or Death Desire
So I want to give you a few examples to concretize this. So the first one is Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer. In 2008 Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in swimming and that's the most anyone has ever won in [00:06:00] one Olympics. And what allowed him to do that? Well, yes, he had to believe that he could do it.
He had to have the belief that he was good enough to be able to go into the Olympics and win eight Olympic medals. But the belief alone was not enough because he had to have the drive to do the training and get into the frame of mind that would set him up to be able to actually achieve that physically, mentally, and emotionally.
In an interview, Michael Phelps once said that his daily routine when he was training for these Olympics was, wake up, get in pool. That's it. That was his day. He would wake up and he would be in the pool for hours and hours all day long, just swimming and maybe taking breaks to eat and to do other kinds of training and to rest.
But his entire focus and life was dedicated to achieving that goal. That is a life or death desire for the thing you want. And for him, he was aiming for this very specific thing. A lot of Olympic athletes train really hard and they [00:07:00] believe they could achieve something great, but they don't believe they could achieve eight gold medals and they don't aim for that because either they don't believe they could do it or they just don't have the desire.
It's not important enough for them to win eight gold medals. Gold Medals. Maybe it's just, I want to qualify for the Olympics. Maybe it's just, I want to win one gold medal. That's an insane achievement too. But for Michael Phelps, for whatever reason that drove him, it was life or death for him to win eight gold medals, which was, the most anyone's ever won.
So there was probably something in doing something that no one had ever achieved that drove him.
Another example is Elon Musk. Now, if there's one person on this earth that is driven, it's Elon Musk. If you look at what this guy has achieved, it's incredible. And he has this insane desire to achieve the things that he wants to achieve.
So the example I want to give here is his goal with SpaceX. Elon Musk has a goal of colonizing Mars and putting a million [00:08:00] people on that planet by the year 2050. That is an insane goal. Now some people might even call him insane for having a goal like that. And I think people do call him that, but I don't think he's insane. If you look at what this guy has achieved in reality with other companies like Tesla, He knows how to build a successful company.
And what drives this guy is a life or death desire for the thing that he wants. Colonizing Mars is an insane goal because of how massive it is, because it's something not even close to what anyone has ever done.
Now, what gives him that life or death desire? That's another question that we'll get into. But, you could see that this guy is driven by a life or death desire, and nothing is going to stop him from achieving that goal.
How Dr. Orma Transformed His Diet Instantly
The last example I'll give you is from my own life, and that is in 2012, I radically transformed my diet in basically an instant I had eaten a certain way for 44 years, [00:09:00] which was what would be considered the typical American or Westernized diet of, you know, mix of everything, fruits, vegetables, but also processed foods, sugar. I was eating three meals a day and snacks, that kind of thing.
Just kind of what the typical person eats these days. And I loved what I ate and I never thought I could give up any of these foods like, desserts or cheese or pasta.
But I got to a point where I noticed I did not feel good after I ate. I would have two bowls of cereal in the morning that I really enjoyed. I loved cereal, but I started noticing that I didn't feel good after I ate it. I felt a little sick. And I think this happens to a lot of people, but they just brush it off as, Oh, that's just how you feel , when you finish eating, you're full.
And that feeling goes away, which it does. And I had been feeling that way before, but for some reason on that day, it really struck me and I did not like the feeling. And I was tired of feeling that way after I ate. I thought there's something wrong with this. If this is actually healthy and good for my [00:10:00] body, why do I not feel good?
And I made a decision that I was going to completely give up any kind of processed sugar or processed foods. Processed grain-based carbohydrates. That includes cereal, pasta, crackers, cookies, cakes.
And I was only going to eat fruits, vegetables, beans, animal protein, and a little bit of dairy. And that's it. Everything else I was going to cut out of my diet. And that stuff was an intricate part of my diet. I ate cereal for breakfast. I had sandwiches for lunch with bread. I had dessert after lunch and dinner every day. I ate pasta and pizza and burgers and all kinds of things.
And in one day I cut out completely cold turkey, all sugar, all those processed foods and instantly radically transformed my diet. And I have maintained that for 12 years. Now, the diet has evolved and changed and gone through different stages over that time. And I'll talk about this in more detail in another [00:11:00] episode. But what I wanted to highlight today was what was it that made me able to give up those foods instantly and stick with that for the last 12 years. Well, it was a life or death desire. I did not want to live another second feeling the way I felt after I ate that food. I was done with it and I meant it. And because of that, I was willing to make a radical shift in my diet that once I had that commitment, it was easy to give up those foods.
And basically after a few weeks, once I got that stuff out of my system, I essentially lost my craving for those foods.
And I enjoy what I eat now way more. I feel amazing after I eat it. I never have that sick, crappy feeling after I eat. I naturally lost weight. I'm way healthier. And it was just making that one but radical shift in the way that I was eating, driven by the life or death desire to not feel that way anymore, but also that I wanted to feel really good and I wanted to be [00:12:00] healthy.
So if you want to achieve something really big and massive in your life, to do it you need to have a life or death desire for the thing. Now, what if you don't have that right now? Well, most people don't have it if they haven't achieved the goal yet, because if they had the life or death desire, they would have already achieved the goal or they'd be well on their way to going after it.
So how do you know whether you have the life or death desire? I think sometimes people think they have it. They'll say, yeah, I want this thing really bad. And they might even be taking action. Like when people set New Year's resolutions, they're pumped up. They mean what they say. I'm going to go join the gym and I'm going to start exercising and I'm going to go on this diet.
And then three weeks later, they give it up. Why did they give it up? Because they never had a life or death desire. They had a desire. They had a want. There was some emotion attached to it. There was motivation. But as soon as things got tough, they gave up because they didn't want it badly enough. It wasn't a life or death desire.
And again, I want to emphasize this is not about [00:13:00] getting all pumped up and using like insane willpower to force yourself to do things that you really don't want to do. No, every part of you wants the thing and is fully committed to it. And it almost in a sense becomes easy. You get pulled toward the thing you want because every part of you wants it.
And there's no contradiction. There's no conflicting desire. When someone goes after a goal and then they give up like a New Year's resolution, what's going on there is part of them wants to do it, part of them does want to eat healthier or exercise, and part of them doesn't. Part of them wants to be able to sleep in and not have to go through the effort of doing the exercise or making the changes, and they want to be able to continue eating the way they're eating, etc. And that desire is stronger than the desire to make the change. And that's why they go back to the old behavior. To be able to override that, there has to be no positive, thing that you're getting from the old behavior or from the old situation, whether it's the job, your financial [00:14:00] situation, your health, whatever it is.
Measuring Your Desire: The 0-100 Tool
And a good way to measure this is a tool that I've developed called the zero to 100 tool. And what's amazing about this tool is it could be used for a lot of different things. And it's a very simple tool. And it cuts right to the truth. So the way you use this tool with the Life or Death Desire is you just ask yourself, you say, okay, what do I want?
Well, I want to make a lot more money. Let's say I want to make a million dollars in the next two years. Assuming this is an insane goal. Some people are already millionaires and they want to make a hundred million dollars. It depends on where you are and what to you an insane goal.
But let's say, you're making a hundred thousand dollars a year right now, or 50,000 dollars a year, and you want to make a million dollars a year, two years from now. You got to ask yourself from zero to 100, how much do I want that right now? And it has to be right now because if you don't want something right now, then it's not life or death.
The subconscious mind, which is what controls us. That's where all of our emotions are generated.
The [00:15:00] subconscious mind only understands two things: now, and not now. If it's not now, if you don't want it right in this moment, then it puts it into the box of not now, and it won't give you that drive, that emotional drive to get the thing, because it thinks, you don't really want it now, so look, we're not gonna make it a priority. We're gonna put you on the things that are actually a priority, which is probably the things that you've been doing. So you ask yourself on a scale of zero to 100, how much do I want to be making a million dollars two years from now? How much do I want that NOW?
And for this tool to work, number one, you have to be honest with yourself. This is not an intellectual or a logical exercise where logically, yes, you want it now. If someone were to come up to you and say, Hey, you want me to give you a million dollars a year? Of course you would say now. Okay, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that it's a hundred percent where you are fully committed and you're ready to start taking action immediately to go after the thing you want and you're not going to stop [00:16:00] until you get it and there's no conflicting feelings in you that are getting in the way of that.
That is 100 percent. If you're anything less than that, then you're not at a hundred percent. So you might be at 20, it might be 30, it might be 70, it might even be 90. But if it's not a hundred, you're not at a life or death. It has to be a hundred. This is a black and white thing. Either you're fully committed or you're not. And again, you need to be honest with yourself. There's no wrong answer here. It's more about being honest with yourself about where you actually are. And that's going to help you. The more honest you are about where you are, then at least, you know, Oh, I'm only at a 50. No wonder. I'm having a hard time finding time to prioritize this goal or to put in the effort, or I keep giving up. It's because I'm only at a 50. It means it's not a complete priority in my life right now. That tool will tell you, it's a gauge and it's very accurate. Even though it's a qualitative measure, it is very accurate because your subconscious knows at an emotional level where you are with [00:17:00] anything.
And it's telling, it might surprise you. It might be higher than you think you thought it was, but most likely it'll be lower than you think it was or around where you thought it was. Now, what do you do with that number? Well, if it's anything less than a hundred, you got to get it to a hundred. And in future episodes, I'll go into more detail about how do you turn something that isn't a life or death desire now into a life or death desire where that number is 100, where you want the thing now? That requires a lot more in depth explanation for how you actually create the life or death desire if you don't have it. You do not have to wait. You do not have to wait for inspiration to kind of somehow overtake you. When you do that, you'll be waiting forever.
There is a way to generate that, and we'll talk about that in a future episode.
Next Steps
But for now, what I wanted to communicate to you in this episode is that this is critically important to achieving any kind of insane goal and all the examples I gave and all the great achievements in history came from that person having a life or death desire to achieve the thing [00:18:00] that they wanted.
And when you have that and you have the belief that I talked about in episode one, nothing will stop you from getting anything that you want. It's essentially done when those two things are in place, it's a done deal. You're going to get the goal. It's just a matter of time.
So that's all for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the show, so you're notified every time a new episode comes out . And make sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts to let me know what you think about the show. And another thing you could include in that review is, What are the insane goals that you're going after right now or that you've already achieved in your life?
I think it's really inspiring to hear other people talk about the insane goals, the big, massive, inspiring goals that they're going after in their life or that they've already achieved because it makes other people see that they could achieve it too.
Thanks for listening to the Insane Goals podcast. You can find all the resources and links for this episode in the show notes at https://www.drorma.com/podcast. And remember, you can achieve ANYTHING you want in life. No limits, no BS, and no excuses. I’ll see you next time.