You were born with deep and passionate desire to taste the ecstasy of love, and to make a positive impact in the world. This desire is not just at the core of you, in many ways it is you.

I work with elite and uber-successful spouses, coaches, athletes, entrepreneurs and religious leaders. They all have one thing in common: They live from a turbo-charged deep and relentless desire to be the absolute best partner, leader, lover, encourager or community leader that they can possibly be. I have come to this conclusion: Exceptional loving, success and achievement always flow from exceptional levels of desire.

Most of us don’t live from our deepest desires because living with intense desire is also intensely painful. People lie, disappoint and betray. And bad things happen to us. Regularly. So it is tempting to kill, numb or disown our desire. We reach for the remote, or start muttering religious-sounding phrases that suffocate the human heart then paint its corpse with otherwise helpful words like “detachment”, “duty”, “purity” or “chastity”.

You were made for more. You were made for ecstasy. You were made for impact. You are designed for transformation.

Great lovers are constant learners, relentlessly learning how to sometimes nurture, sometimes prune and ultimately transform their desire.

Sometimes we need to nurture desire. Sometimes our life goes dead. We feel depressed. Beaten. Buried. At times like these we need reliable practices to stir up, enliven and spark our heart’s desire. When this happens to me I go for a run, a long swim in an open lake, play high-energy workout music, watch comedy or engage my partner positively.

Sometimes we need to prune our desire. We feel overactive, distracted, lustful, addicted or entitled. At times like these we need to cool down our desire, or prune it. When this happens to me I usually journal, pray, and practice meditation and/or yoga. These times of grasping, addiction and overactive desire are also a signal to me that I have not practiced good self-care. They are a reminder that my heart needs more gracious attention.

How about you? How alive is your heart’s desire today?

You were created from desire. You were created for desire. Can you feel it? Skillfully managed desire brings life. Mismanaged desire brings death. Few things are more important than learning to skillfully work with your desire.

What is the next step for you to transform desire?