I always announce my big plans, loud and proud.

“One day, I’m going to write a best seller.”

“In three years, I’ll move into this super expensive neighborhood.”

Did I really mean them? In my mind, yes. Deep down, no. I was trying to talk myself into these pipe dreams if anything.

But isn’t that what many of us do? Set insane goals and not follow through. Swearing to lose 20 pounds in a month and give up after a week.

It’s all talk.

What we think we want doesn’t always equate to what we actually want.

How to figure out what we truly want

The subconscious mind is a big, deep ocean, no one knows what’s buried down there. The only way to find out our real intention is to see how we react in moments of truth.

Moments like getting in front of a crowd, signing the divorce papers, or nearly crashing into a tree. How we respond to danger reveals our deepest, truest thoughts and feelings.

So, you might say you aren’t afraid of bungee jumping and you aren’t lying. But you won’t know how courageous you are or aren’t until you stand on the board with sweaty palms and shortness of breath, staring down the river from hundreds of feet up, your heart is pounding so fast you might pass out. At that point, you aren’t thinking with your brain anymore, your subconscious autopilot(your true self)is taking over and it might tell you to scream “fuck no I’m not jumping down!”

You might say you love your wife and want to marry her. But you won’t know how serious you are until the wedding bells start to ring and you watch her walking down the aisle. You start reading the marriage commencement speech and you might realize “uh oh, I’ll be committing to her for the rest of my life from now on.”

I bet a ton of people wrote “I will become a millionaire” on their list, but how many of them make a plan and stick to it?

My family doesn’t believe me when I tell them how successful I will become one day. And rightfully so. To be honest, I don’t buy it either, I only want to sound ambitious so they can think higher of me.

But about two years ago, I returned from a trip to China feeling like a loser. All my peers back home were way ahead of me. I couldn’t stand any other second of it so I wrote a to-do list for 2018. I was determined to turn my life around and I didn’t utter a word to a single soul. I simply put my head down and went to work. Early mornings plus late nights every single day. I ended up accomplishing all but one task in the year, out of nine. I wasn’t joking around this time because my goals were internalized.

And that’s how we know our real intention. When we’re dead serious about making a change, we keep it at the bottom of our heart and do whatever it takes. When it’s fake, we tell the world about it.

How to have ultra-conviction in our goals

The strongest driving force of human beings is fear. This’s why hate and anger can make us do crazy things, they are extreme forms of fear.

Fear isn’t always bad. If used correctly, it’s the most powerful source of motivation there is.

Look, being sick and tired of someone or something is great. It means we’re finally willing to improve at all costs.

Think about it, if Michael Jordan didn’t fear losing, he wouldn’t be so obsessed with winning.

If Oprah Winfrey didn’t fear being a less-than as a poor African-American woman, she wouldn’t be so powerful today.

Everybody wants success, but the only people that’ll achieve it are the ones who are terrified of being unsuccessful. The allure of money and attention alone isn’t enough, there has to be a healthy level of disdain. I’m not talking about hating your life. I’m talking about dissatisfaction.

There’s a difference. Despise for life is pessimistic, but discontent for life means having a high standard.

Do we always need to hit rock bottom to change? No, but sometimes we do need to get smacked in the face really hard to prevent it from happening again. So avoiding or denying negative emotions isn’t always the answer, if we’re unhappy, there’s a good reason.

How to find a challenging yet realistic goal

Once we know our desire and we’re serious about committing, it’s time to figure out the level of difficulty. Goals too big are easy to give up on, goals too small sells us short.

So, who do we find to be a good target? Elon Musk is impossible, and our high school teacher is too low of a bar. Maybe it’s the entrepreneur who broke through and became the owner of a million-dollar business after fifteen years of grinding. Maybe that’s who we could become, and deserve to become if we put in the work.

I’ve seen so many people, successful or not, chasing after the expectation of society instead of their own dreams. Many of them don’t even know what their own dreams are.

What are yours?