02-Understanding and Working Towards Your Desires

In the bustling world of startups, where every decision and action propels you towards your vision, understanding and aligning with your core desires is paramount. Jens Heitland, in a captivating session from our Live Startup Leadership Bootcamp, delved into the essence of desires and their crucial role in personal and professional growth.

The Desire Canvas: Mapping Out Your Goals

Desires act as the north star for startup leaders, guiding every step and decision. Jens introduced the 'Desire Canvas', a tool for leaders to articulate and visualize their personal and professional aspirations. This clarity is the first step towards achieving your goals, providing a clear direction amidst the chaos of startup life.

The Staircase Metaphor: Ascending Towards Your Desires

Jens used the powerful metaphor of a staircase to illustrate our journey towards fulfilling our desires. Each step represents progress, but along the way, there are behaviors that can either be stepping stones or stumbling blocks. Recognizing and cultivating positive habits can accelerate your ascent, while being aware of and mitigating negative tendencies is equally important.

Positive Behaviors: The Catalysts for Achievement

Emphasizing the importance of constructive habits, Jens highlighted actions such as relentless focus, resilience, and strategic planning as accelerators towards your goals. These behaviors not only propel you forward but also fortify your resolve against the inevitable challenges of startup life.

Navigating Obstacles: Overcoming Negative Behaviors

On the flip side, Jens cautioned against behaviors that can derail your progress, such as the tendency to please others at the expense of your own goals. Identifying and addressing these hindrances is crucial for maintaining momentum on your journey.

Conclusion: A Balanced Approach to Reaching Your Desires

In conclusion, Jens's insights remind us that the path to fulfilling our desires is a balanced act—cultivating positive behaviors while being vigilant of the negatives. For startup leaders, this balance is the key to not just achieving personal goals but also leading their ventures to success.

 Transcript:

Desire is a burning fire. What are you desiring in your life? And the fun thing is because I've used this canvas in coaching a lot of people, mostly of course, due to my history in large corporate, where people have been responsible for a lot of people.

And when you ask them what is their desire and what are they after, most of us don't have an answer to this. So it's very difficult for a lot of people to get into this. And that's why I want to have it early on for you, that you start thinking about this. And this canvas works like this. So it's a staircase.

There are things which help you getting up that staircase, which help you towards the desire you have, which is on the upper left corner. And then there are things which drag you down the staircase, which are the negative behaviors. And I call that behaviors because it's often easier for you to understand.

Going into that. So let's let me give you an example. So if we talk about desire and if we ju just take a couple of things. I want to be independent when I'm 40. If we just take this, I want,

some of you are 25 years old and independent in this case could mean I want to cover my cost. I don't want to work for someone else. I want to be free. I want to have a family. I want to have X amount of money at a certain time. So there are different desires which you can put into that box because the group of desires will help you to guide you to get there.

And if you have understood what your desire is, and sometimes that's requires you need to go deeper into yourself, questioning yourself, what are my true desires? Is it getting a car? Is it getting a million? Is it doing this? Is it doing that? You need to find this out for yourself. For me if we take my example, it's really about I want to be independent.

I want to create impact in this world. So that's a bit my desire, but this is just to get you a little bit into this. And then of course they're positive behaviors that help you to reach this. So if you want to be independent and age 40, And one of the parts is you want to run your own business.

So how do you build behaviors and habits that help you? And that can be, I get up at 6:00 AM and write my diary, this can be easy, things like this and that sometimes so sounds weird, but for example, in Barcelona I gave the example that I do this since a couple of years.

I've write down every day very early in the morning, what are my key goals in my life and how do I contribute today to get towards my key goals? We will go later into that exercise as well. So if I just know I do this every day, I know what my focus is. Which also means that everything else that is not helping me to reach that is.

Between me and my desire. So another thing might be reach out to 10 people

per day. And that can be how do I stay connected to good friends from childhood? How do I stay connected to family members? How do I get the sales engine rolling? Depending on what your desire is, there are things that help you to get closer and there are things that don't. So this gives you a little bit an example of that.

And if we just move that down here, let's make it right. And that can be

stay in bed until nine. And that's just the example to getting up at six. Of course, there are people who love to stay long in bed I'm just an early person that doesn't work for me, but there are people who are just saying, no, I, I'm not interested. I'm just watching Netflix every day, two hours.

And this two hours maybe you could use in reading a book, reading an article, connect to a good friend, helping someone helping yourself getting fit. Whatever the things are they're different things that help different people, depending on what your desire is. I already said try to stay fit. Let's do another one. Try,

try to please people, especially for young people, but as well for people that are already a little more senior. I have had people who are 50 plus who try to please their parents still, and of course, Parents and family members sometimes have a completely different desire and completely different perspective in life.

So that's then a limiting factor for you and a limiting behavior if you always try to please them. So you need to find out what are your positive things, what are your negative things, and how do you keep on track stepping up the staircase towards your desire?