Hunger…you know that gnawing, ravenous feeling in your gut of not getting what you want or need…whether what you want or need is to satisfy your appetite for food or your appetite for achievement. Hunger…a feeling of emptiness so strong that it generates a desire, a craving to do what it takes to quench what you think will replenish you.
Tony Robbins, the noted author of Unlimited Power, entrepreneur, and philanthropist believes that hunger is more important in achieving success than intelligence. Hunger is “the must have” ingredient for success.
Robbins spells out his essence of hunger.
1. Hunger will not be denied – those who are hungry are too singleminded and too determined to quit. Those who are hungry perceive setbacks as signs of proximity to success and use setbacks as motivations to keep trying.
2. Hunger is better. Those who are hungry work to get better. They already know that to reach their goals, nothing less than their best efforts will do.
3. Hunger is smarter. Those who are hungry are not content with outworking their competition…hungry ones want to outsmart their competition. This type of mindset has to do with creative problem solving and unconventional thinking, not intelligence.
Paul Arden, the late creative genius behind the success of the advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi, believed that “…it’s not how good you are. It’s how good you want to be.”
He encouraged “any hungry person” to dig deep inside themselves to find “…the one thing you absolutely have to achieve that will complete you as a person.”
Failure to Arden was inevitable. “We all fail when we try our very hardest to accomplish something…we fail over and over and over again…it’s just what happens.” Arden used whatever failure he experienced to stoke his own hunger to succeed.
And if you’re not hungry enough for yourself? Arden encouraged people to get hungry for other people. “Do it for someone else…your loved one, your mother, your father, your child…the respect you have for another person will help you get and stay hungry so you can find another gear to beat the odds.”
