We’ve all been there, when we feel a hunger so bad we get light-headed and feel like we need to vomit. When we are this hungry, most of us turn pretty angry too. Your brain is critically dependent on glucose, which your body gets from fats, proteins, and carbs. So when it begins to run low, it treats the situation as life-threatening. Your brain begins to shout, “Feed me!”

Suddenly, you have a short fuse and have a hard time concentrating on your tasks. Everything else takes a back seat to your need for nourishment, and you become what we call “hangry” (hungry and angry). You will compromise your rules of “normal” social behavior until you get something to eat. You may be rude, snap at people, and skip people in line to get your meal faster. There will be very little that you’ll let get in the way of you getting some grub.

Get “Hangry” for Success: Why Your Lack of Ambition is Starving You

Be hungry for success, hungry to make your mark, hungry to be seen and to be heard and to have an effect. And as you move up and become successful, make sure also to be hungry for helping others.

– Arnold Schwarzenegger (read more quotes)

Take it from the Kit-Kat thief. You can’t help but feel for this guy’s hunger pains!

 “Saw Kit-Kat in your cup holder. I love Kit-Kats so I checked your door and it was unlocked. Did not take anything other than the Kit-Kat. I am sorry and hungry.”

This was a note left on the seat of a college kid’s car after someone broke in and stole his Kit-Kat. I’m pretty sure I have experienced this level of hunger before. There is nothing more disorienting and distracting than an empty stomach.

Snacking through life

When we are this hungry, you can bet we will do anything that’s necessary to get what we desire. So why is it then that when we desire success in any area of life, be it money, health, wellness, or in our relationships, we settle?

Why don’t we behave like the Kit-Kat thief, and take from life what we want? What stops us from breaking all the rules to find the success we so desperately claim to seek?

Perhaps we never get to that level of hunger for success because we “snack” through life. When you get bits and pieces of satisfaction here and there, from the little accomplishments, you never develop a hunger that is strong enough to provoke massive action.

You have a “safe” job, so you never take the leap to start that business.

You have a boyfriend or girlfriend that “treats you nicely,” so you never meet that person that your soul craves.

You aren’t as fat as some of your friends, so you never take those gym sessions seriously.

You get a decent paycheck, so you never strive to bring more value than is required for payment.

You get just enough from the ordinary to temporarily keep the hunger pains away, and so you never seek the extraordinary.

The hunger pains I speak of are those pains that will drive you so angry, you will do whatever it takes to succeed. They are the pains that have propelled many of history’s highest-achieving men and women to new levels of greatness.

Yet, you and I continue to be sedated with our little “snacks” of success.

Hunger leads to action, action leads to success

Hunger is the greatest motivator of action, and action is the key to success.

When you are dying of hunger, you will do whatever it takes to get yourself a meal. And if you don’t succeed, you will die trying.

If we truly want to be great, to do great things, to find success in life however it might look to each of us, we need to stop snacking and let those hunger pains push us a little harder.

We can’t keep munching on the little things while our biggest dreams draw further away.

What does “hangry” for success look like?

Being hangry for success is when you sit on the toilet with a pen and notepad writing new ideas instead of scrolling on your phone. It’s reading books instead of watching TV shows. It’s following thought leaders instead of celebrities, and meeting like-minded people instead of party people.

If we want to succeed, we can’t be killing our appetites. We must stay hungry. We must not settle for the little victories of life which only temporarily subdue our search for greatness.

We must want it bad enough that everything else becomes a distraction, and the lack of success becomes life-threatening.

We have to get hangry for success.

There is a better way to live!