How to increase your desire

by Juan R. Silva, Founder

Silva International Graduate Association

Have you ever noticed how sometimes it is easy to solve problems, and at other times it is very difficult?

Would you like to know about a technique to help make it easier for you to find solutions to any problems you, your loved ones and friends will ever face? Then I'll share with you a technique I've been using for more than thirty years.

To show you how this technique works, let me take you along with me on a recent trip I made to Mexico and you can see what I did to motivate myself.

For someone who used to manage a factory, as I did for several years, it is very sad to see much of a large manufacturing facility sitting idle, with 1,500 of the employees laid off. But that is what we saw in one Mexican factory.

It was a social visit. I knew the man who used to manage the factory very well when I was managing another factory in Mexico back in the 1950s. Now my friend's son was running things. He is a good manager, but with adjustments taking place in the Mexican economy at that time, things were getting difficult. So difficult that he'd had to lay off 1,500 of his factory workers.

We went to a nearby restaurant to eat lunch. As we talked, my thoughts kept going back to the idle machines in the factory, and to the 1,500 employees who were now out of work and not earning money to support themselves and their families the way they deserved.

I thought about merchants in town, such as the restaurant where we had come to eat, and how their business would be down since the factory workers had no money coming in. The restaurant should have been crowded during lunch time, but only a few tables were occupied.

Many people were suffering. How, I wondered, might I help them? Is there anything I can do to help?

I asked my friends to excuse me for a moment and I headed towards the rest room. What I wanted, of course, was time to enter my level and think about possible solutions to the problem.

When I entered my level, I again thought about all those 1,500 employees who were now out of work. I thought about the empty tables at the restaurant and the employees there who were now also out of work. And I thought about other merchants who were also suffering, along with their families, because of the economic problems.

Then I began to think about possible solutions.

After a few minutes I returned to the table. I started presenting ideas to the manager of the factory, about where he could find new markets and how he could sell to them.

The ideas made sense to him. He began to get excited. In fact, he even got me involved by getting me to agree to use some of my contacts in other countries to help him get started.

"After you came back from the rest room," he said, "you did not want to listen to me any more. You just wanted to tell me your ideas."

"That's right," I agreed. "I'd heard all I needed to hear about the problems. I wanted to offer some solutions."

"I don't know what you found in that rest room," he said. "It must have been some kind of think tank, because you sure came back with a lot of good ideas. Thank you for caring."

That's the key to the technique I use: I care.

In order for me to get a strong motivation so that creative ideas for solutions to problems will come, I need to think about all the people who will benefit. In this case it was not just my friend's son who now managed the factory; it was also the 1,500 employees, their families, local merchants and their families, and more.

I had seen things that made me want to help. I had heard the stories of hardship, and I wanted to help. I had imagined what it must be like, and how I would feel if I were in that position and was worried about my employees, their families and how they must be worried about supporting them, and I wanted to help.

Whenever you have that kind of desire to help, and you take that desire to a deep level where ideas will come to you, and then you take action, then you will help to solve any problem that exists.

It is much easier to program for a necessity than for a luxury. And when the need is as urgent as it was at my friend's factory, then you are almost always guaranteed of success in your programming.

It will still take a lot of work to build up enough new business to put everyone back to work. It will still take a lot more programming to make the correct decisions, to intuitively sense the needs and how best to fill them. But it can be done.

Whenever you want to ensure the success of your programming, use my technique: Increase your motivation by thinking about all the people who will benefit, who will be better off because of your efforts, and this will help to increase your desire.

Increase your motivation and your desire, and work on the projects that most need your attention. When you do this, you will have many successes and you will keep getting better, better, and better so that when you do program for luxuries, you will be more likely to get them.