Loser visualize the penalties of failures and winners visualize the rewards for success. Without advertising our goals to ourselves, we can lose sight of them all together. Draw 4 circles on the blank piece of paper in the beginning of the day. The 4 circles represent goals for my day, my month, my year, and my life. Inside each circle, write down what I want. It can be a dollar figure, it can be anything. And the goals can change from day to day. By writing the goals down, I'm like an airline pilot with a radar. I'm orient my mind to what I'm up to in life. I'm reminding myself of what I really want. If I don't make a map, basically I'm saying "just take me anywhere."
52. Don't stop thinking.
Motivation comes from thought. Everything we do begins with a thought. And when we quit thinking, we lose the motivation to act. We eventually slip into pessimism and the pessimism leads to even less thinking. So a downward spiral of negativity and pessimitivity starts to feed on each other. Pessimists thinking so negativity about doing the whole thing perfectly that they end up doing nothing and become passive. The optimist on the other hand always does something, they always take some type of action, always feel like some type of progress is made. Pessimists continually use their imagination to visualize worse case scenarios and then concluding that those scenarios are so hopeless, they don't take any action. Therefore, pessimism always leads to passivity. Imagination should be used not to escape from reality, but to create it. Start a habit to yourself in start saying no to negativity. When negative thoughts start forming in your mind, which it will happen, even for optimists, don't stop thinking. Real creative thinking is going to lead to optimism. And optimism is always self-motivating.
53. Debate your dark side.
Negative thinking is something we all do. The difference is that the optimists becomes a "good debater." You can learn to debate your pessimistic thoughts. If you catch yourself being pessimistic, build a case of the optimistic view. Pretend your an attorney and your job is to prove the pessimists in you is wrong.
54. Make use of trouble.
We hear stories of bad events, when looking back, were strokes of great fortune. A person that breaks their leg skiing meets a doctor in the hospital, falls in love and marry that person. What seems horrible becomes a great event in their life. "Every problem carries a gift inside it." Now by choosing to make use of what seems to be a "bad event," by asking yourself "how can I use this?" "what might be good about this?" You can get to the gift inside the problem a lot more quickly.
55. Learn to brainstorm by yourself.
Put a goal on the top of a page and put numbers 1 through 20 on that page and begin your brainstorming session. List 20 ideas. They don't have to be well thought out or reasonable. Just make sure you flow. Your only objective is to have 20 ideas out in a certain amount of time. If you do this for one week, you will end up with 100 ideas. They will probably not all be usable, but who cares. Your beginning the process and you'll have more than you started out with.
56. Create your own voice.
You can create your own voice by practicing. Use audio cassettes in your car and sing out loud, even when you don't feel like singing. Practice. Force your practice. The point is don't let your feelings ruin your life. Keep thinking. Strategy. Plan. You can create anything you want. You can even create your own voice.
57. Live on the frontier.
The information age is our new frontier. Employers are not as interested as job history. They are more interested in current capabilities. Times has changed. It's all about what you can do now, not what you have done.
58. Replace your habits.
Self-motivation is mentally harder to achieve when we're held back by mentally bad habits. But here's the catch. Bad habits can't be gotten rid of because they exist for good reasons. Their there to do something for us even if that something ends up being self destructive. Down deep, even a bad habit is trying to make us operate better. That's why bad habits has to be transformed and built upon. They can't be killed. They can't be eliminated. What we're trying to do is "habit replacement" and where bad habits lives, replacement is the only thing that works. i.e. running replaces smoking because of the breathing. Subconsciously you don't even think a habit is bad because it's fulfilling a perceived need. The way to strengthen yourself is to identity the need and build on it. Honor the need by replacing the current habit with one that is healthier and more effective for you.
59. Paint your day.
Self-motivation is much more difficult to achieve when we're held back mentality by certain bad habits. When you wake up try picturing your day as a blank painter's canvas. Ask yourself, "Whose the artist today? Me or blind circumstance?" If you choose to be the artist, how do you want to paint your day?
60. Swim laps under water.
Prepare big challenges by swimming laps under water. Build your brain by building your lungs. Sometimes all you need is the air that you breathe just to motivate yourself. Going for a run or a walk or simply deep breathing gives the brain the fuels it needs to alive.
61. Get some coaching. ****
Get someone that can stand back and watch you objectively. Ask someone you admire to watch you and coach you for a while. Let them tell you want they see. It's a courageous thing for you to do and it will always lead to growth.
62. Leave home. ****
You do things that are holding you back because it feels like home. When you do these things, you do them because that's what your comfortable doing so you make yourself right at home doing them. As they say, there's no place like home. Home can an ugly place if it's not kept up and consciously made beautiful. Home can be a dark, damp, prison. Smelling for bad habits and laziness. But we think we're safe there. However when we inspect the wore out house more closely, the safety we think we're experiencing is pure self limitation. You might want to identify the habits that keeps you trapped. Identify what you decided is your final personality. Understand that it might be a hasty construction built only to keep you safe from risk and growth. Once you done that, you can leave home. You can get the blue prints out and create a home you really want.
63. Perform rituals.
Ask you listen, you might notice that ACTION is always the key. Doing something always leads to results. An object in motion stays in motion. One great ritual for activating the brain is walking. When you have problems in your life that seems too overwhelming but use the ritual of walking and take the problem out for a long, long walk. Time and time again during the course of the walk something comes out of nowhere. Some idea for an action that would solve the problem. Try to make a ritual for yourself. Anything that will act as an self starter. Rituals will start an action before you feel like getting into the action. Rituals always override your build in laziness. They always get you motivated in a predictable, controllable way.
64. Start your life over. ****
If you catch yourself thinking your too old to start something you want to do please recognize that your not listening to the pessimistic voice inside of you. It's the voice of a liar. Remind the voice of all the people that started their lives over again at any age they wanted to. Don't listen to the voice inside, you can start your life over right now.
65. Keep all your promises. ****
One way to motivate yourself is to keep some usual promise. To go to someone I cared about either personally or professionally and make a real big promise to them. Something that takes all the creativity and effort I had to make it happen. Although some of these promises I made weren't kept, it's not really an intelligent way to self-motivate. Instead make commitments to other people, but know that these commitments are ones you know you can keep. But to motivate yourself, replace promising to others to promising and setting goals to yourself. The power goals is that they can be outrageous and huge. They can be really wild possibility thinking. Without setting large goals internally, you will just end up living a life of what you think you HAVE TO do.
66. Give some luck away.
You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. There is one way to make sure you can't get repaid and that's to do something for someone who won't know who did it. You can create LUCK in your life by giving it away.
67. Draw your universe.
You can create your own goal directed universe by using the 4 circle goal setting discussed earlier. Label the 1st circle "Life long dream." Circle 2 label "My year." 3rd circle "My month." Circle 4 "My day." Each circle if done successfully guarantees the success of the next circle. If you hit your daily goal everyday, your monthly goal will be hit. And similar for month to year, year to life. The system itself is not the motivator. It is your understanding of your responsibility to be a creative planet that's what the motivator is.
68. Get up a game.
Competition is great for motivation. Competition teaches a valuable lesson that no matter how good you think you are, there's always someone else better than you. That's the lesson in humility that everybody needs. And it teaches you by trying to beat somebody else, you reach more inside of you. Trying to beat somebody else puts the game by into life. If it is done optimistically it benefits both competitors. It teaches them sportsmanship and it gives you a beach mark for measuring you own growth. So in your life, let the games begin. Have fun winning and losing. When someone has insulted you or under rated you, don't just get even, get better. Use your victory, not to hurt them, but to create you.
69. Try your mother down.
We first learn how to explain to world to ourselves from our parents, more especially our mothers. This can be a disaster if the child has a pessimistic mother. The disaster can only be temporary. Optimism can be learned at any age. It's not self motivating to blame mom if your a pessimists. Blaming others is never self motivating because it strengthens the belief that your life is being influenced by forces outside of yourself. Love your mom. But change yourself.
70. Face the sun.
"When you face the sun, the shadows always fall behind you" - Helen Keller. This is her way of recommending optimistic thinking. When you look at what you face grows in your life, what you ignore falls behind you. If you turn and only look at the shadows, they become your life.
71. Look inside.
Most of us wait to discover who we are from the impressions we get from other people. "Oh do you think I'm like that..." If we get positive feedback, that's great. It helps build us up. But ideally, your journey should be internal. Travel deeper and deeper inside to find out your own potential. Your potential is your true identity. It only waits for self motivation to come alive.
72. Go to war. *
Research shows during times for war suicide rates go down. We don't to wait for something tragic. We don't have wait until we go to war to attack us from without. We can get the same vitality by challenging ourselves from within. "All battles are first won or lost in the mind." Joan of Ark. Ask yourself what would you do if you had only one year to live. How would I live differently? What exactly would I do? This exercise can reveal skills inside of you that your not using today.
73. Make small change.
When practicing self motivation, it can be common that you get a lot of different type of mood swings. Sometimes you'll be on a real high on the idea of who you can be and set up to change yourself overnight. Then your old habits will pull you back to who you use to be and then you become demoralized. You have eventually accept the idea that great things are created slowly. Great painting, great building. So why can't you see that great people are also created slowly. So if you willing to see yourself as a masterpiece in progress, then you'll love small changes. You'll be excited by a tiny thing you did differently today. You should celebrate because your moving in the direction of self creation.
74. Do something badly. ****
Sometimes we don't do things because we not sure we cannot do them well. We feel that we are not "in the mood" or our energy levels is not are the right state to do that task that we have. So we put it off or wait for inspiration to arrive. We're so afraid to do things until we're sure we can do them well, we end up not doing anything. This is the source of all writers block btw. "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly." If your not motivated to do something you know you need to do, just decide to do it badly. Add a little self deprecated humor. Be comedic about what your doing. And then enjoy what happens to you once your in the process.
75. Be a visioneer.
