100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

by Steve Chandler (on High Bridge audio cassette)

The choices we make for our thinking either motivate us, or they don't, and while
clear visualization of a goal is a good first step, self-motivation demands more.
To truly motivate yourself, action is required. As psychologist Nathaniel
Brandon has written, "A goal without an action plan is a daydream." Self-creation
happens once self-motivation is mastered. One flows directly from the other. Motion
creates the self.
1. Create a vision of who you want to be and then live into that picture as if it were
already true. This is not the same as waiting until you receive a vision. In other
words, you can make it up.

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2. Tell a true lie. Imagine the potential in yourself. Begin by expressing it as a

fantasy. Without a picture of your highest self, you cannot live into that self.
3. Leave your comfort zone. Only challenge will test you and make you better.
Only challenge, and the self-motivation to engage the challenge, will really transform
you. It's up to you to find challenges, and it's up to you to recognize when you are
buried alive in a comfort zone. Break free and fly away.

4. Find your master key. Build (or re-build) your own thinking, thought by
thought, with energetic attitudes instead of passive ones. Napoleon Hill, in his
book The Master Key to Riches, says the key is the self-discipline necessary to
help you take full and complete possession of your own mind. After all, it is
profoundly significant that the only thing you can completely control is your own
mental attitude. As in the game Zelda, many keys, clues and tools are available if
you look for them.

5. Plan your work. You can move out of sorrow and disappointment if you take
action. Go. Do. Move. Check your progress and correct your course along the way
as needed, but get going. Explicitly planned work is the path to self-motivation and
contains the energy of purpose. One hour of planning saves three hours of doing.
Most of us spend most of our time reacting to crises, and most crises are the result
of a failure to plan. It is impossible to work passionately and with a sense of
purpose and feel depressed at the same time. Successfully completing planned
work will motivate you to do more and more than you ever thought possible.

6. Move your goalposts. You may not be getting what you want if your goals are
too small or too vague and therefore have no power, if your goal does not excite your
imagination. What really increases motivation is when you set a large and significant
power goal. A power goal is a dream that drives you. With a power goal, you are
living on purpose. You know what you are up to in life. Observe the effect your goal
has on you. It's not what a goal is; it's what the goal does.
7. Dribble with your other hand. Bat facing the other way. Play a different
position. It's not that you can't, but that you haven't. Reprogramming your thinking
is just like bouncing a ball. Think optimistically one thought at a time, and build up
the number of bounces until it becomes an effective habit and skill.

8. Play your character. How you act is who you become.

9. Don't just do something; sit there. Sit quietly, absolutely alone, for a long
time, all by yourself, completely relaxed, without distractions. Be with yourself.
Observe insights starting to appear. Observe your relationship with yourself. Sitting
in silence allows your true dream in life to take shape and clarity. In today's highpaced society, you are either living your dream, or someone else's. If you don't
create your own structure, you have to deal with someone else's.... (Laurence Boldt)
unless you give your dream the time and space it needs to express itself.

10. Acknowledge your body chemistry, the new surges of motivation and energy
when you have fun. Recognize and tap into the positive changes in your body and
your mind when you laugh, sing, or hug someone. Don't go out looking for new
sources of fun; they're already inside you. Once you have found a way to make a
task or job fun, you have solved the problem of self-motivation. (See Flow.)

11. Go back to being a kid. Kids have boundless energy and creativity.
Somewhere, sometime, somehow, by someone, this gets turned around, or turned
off. They begin thinking about what others think of them. They begin to fear being
embarrassed. They become reluctant to just be themselves. Don't design your life
based on what others might think. Why should the way you feel depend on what
someone else thinks?

12. Lose face once in a while. You can motivate yourself by leaving the pain of
self-consciousness behind. Show me an athlete who is afraid to look bad, and I'll
show you a person you can beat every time. Don't be tentative. Don't judge
yourself in the midst of action. Do what you do wholeheartedly; evaluate the results
afterward and make the necessary adjustment then. Ready, fire, aim.

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13. Become a performer. Act like you already feel what you want to feel.
14. Kill your TV (and your Nintendo, and your Internet connection). Which side of
the glass do you want to live on? What's going on on the other side of the glass is
someone else's dreams, structure, life or power goal; you're outside it, watching it
passively. They're getting money; you're paying them. These "tubes" are
motivational if you go find something else to do related to your power goal.

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15. Read important things to yourself aloud. You'll remember twice as much,
for longer.
16. Write your obituary. Don't pretend that the game has no end. Don't plan to
do great things someday, when you feel like it, or when you get that thing you need
to do it. You can be re-born if you write down how you would like to remembered,
your most meaningful accomplishments, what you stood for when you ran out of life.

17. Be lazy to begin with. Break your work, your goals and your tasks down into
small parts, and allow some room for laziness at the start. What's important is not
how fast you get there, but simply that you are on your way, that you are doing it.
The slower you start something, the faster you'll be finished. When you first start
something big and overwhelming, you are very aware of the fact that you may fail,
so it becomes easy to avoid moving in that direction. If you start out furiously, you
will tire and lose your motivation. Starting slowly is easy, and the little task gets
finished. With a few tiny successes, you begin to build the foundations for the bigger
ones.

18. Leave your "friends". Politely walk away from those people who do not
support your goals; find and stay close to those who will support and encourage you.
Possibility evaporates in an atmosphere of pessimism and cynicism.

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19. Plan your game. Make the game respond to you. Create; don't react.
20. Find your inner Einstein. To experience the highest levels of creative thinking,
all you have to do is commit to using your imagination. Don't use your energy of
visualization for worst-case scenario thinking. Worry is a misuse of the imagination.
Dreaming is the design stage of creating the future.

21. Feel good first. Most people think they will feel good once they reach some
goal. By linking happiness to something you don't have yet, you are denying
yourself the power to create it. Make the journey fun on the way, not just the end.

22. Run toward your fear. The world's best kept secret is that, on the other side
of your fear, there is something safe and beneficial waiting for you. When you work
through your fears, you increase your self-confidence and the ability to create a
better life. Death kills us but once, but fear kills us over and over again, a little bit at
a time. Overcoming fear is very energizing. When you do the most difficult task on
your "to do" list first, or when you do what you are afraid of doing immediately,
everything else becomes easy.
23. Just be unexpected. Being creative has nothing to do with originality;
it has everything to do with being unexpected.

24. Create your relationships. "We, each of us, angels with only one wing, so we
can only fly embracing each other." We cannot create our truest selves without
creating relationships in the process. When there is a relationship problem to be
solved, feel your feelings, and notice your feelings, but solve the problem with the
most creative you in your mind.

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25. Be where you are. We often feel some psychic chaos because we are always
thinking of too many things at once. Focus on what you want, and it will happen.
26. Act like a hero. We need heroes. They are a source of strength. Heroes show
us what's possible for humans to accomplish. But don't just find a hero to passively
adore. Don't look up to heroes; look into them, and act like them.

27. Accept your willpower. The first step in developing your willpower is to accept
its existence. The second step is to know that it can be developed like a muscle. The
third step is to be clear and truthful about your willpower; it's always there.

28. Say no to yourself. A lot of people are afraid of self-discipline. At the root of
the word discipline is the word disciple. When you are self-disciplined, you have
simply decided, in matters of the will, to become your own disciple, or to believe in
yourself. Once you make that decision, your life's adventures get more interesting,
you start to see yourself as a more capable person, and you gain self-respect and
self-dignity. When you say no to yourself, when you bypass a temptation, you stay
powerfully aware of your own willpower.

29. Make new word connections. If you associate willpower with negative things
such as self-denial and punishment, you will weaken your resolve to build it. To
increase your resolve, think of new word connections. Weightlifters know that failure

is success. Unless they lift a weight to a point of failure, their muscles aren't
growing. Program yourself through repetition to use words like failure in a positive
sense. Be conscious of the positive mental potential in all of the language you use,
and guide your language towards more personal power.

30. De-program yourself. Be aware of how you listen to the media. Program out
all the negative, cynical and skeptical thoughts that can flow into your mind. Once
you've gotten good at detecting and factoring out the negativity, make your own
news. Don't listen to others to find out what's happening. Be what's happening.

31. Open the present. Practice being aware, awake, alert, grounded and centered
in the present moment. Don't live in the past, unless you like guilt. Don't live in the
future, unless you like fear. Stay focused on now, and watch what happens to your
motivation.

32. Serve, and grow rich. Motivate yourself by increasing the flow of money into
your life. Some people don't want to be thought of as greedy, or they don't want to
appear obsessed about money. Some people think that, in order to make money,
you have to take it away from someone else. Your financial well-being derives from
the degree to which you serve others. Allow yourself to link financial well-being with
an increased capacity for compassion for others. If you are living in poverty, how
much love and attention can you give to your children, your spouse, your family, or
others? How much help can you be to others if you are always worried about
meeting your own essential needs for food and shelter?

33. Imitate Columbo. Think of yourself as a bumbling, friendly detective. Be

curious. Ask questions. By asking questions in your relationships, you are already
creating the relationship. By asking questions about your power vision, you are
creating it. Don't wait for someone else to make it happen.

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34. Give away some power. Motivate yourself by giving someone else the ideas
for self-motivation. You can have any experience you want in life simply by giving
that experience away. John Lennon called it instant karma. If you want to be
motivated, shift your inspiration to someone else. Point out their strengths. Offer
encouragement and support. Watch what it does for you.

35. Talk to yourself. Plato said "Thinking is the soul talking to itself". There's no
one better to talk to than yourself, if you really want to get things worked out. No
other person has as much information about your problems than you do. No one
knows your skills and capabilities better. Get your creative thinking going each
morning by asking yourself two questions: Whats good in my life? What remains to
be done? Because thought always preceeds action, talking to yourself is a proven
way to get motivated.

36. Schedule your comebacks. Progress toward your goals is never going to be a
straight line. Most people get discouraged when they have a setback. They think
they're failing, that they've lost. Actually, they are simply in step with the natural
rhythm of progress. When you understand this rhythm, you can plan the time to
refresh, renew and recover. Schedule your comeback when you're on top. Build in
periods of time to get away, even from that which you love, because coming back is
much more exciting when you've been renewed.

37. Live your true life. When you say you fear death, you are really saying that
you have not lived your true life. How do you know what your true life is, or how to
live it? First, find out what makes you happy, and then start doing that.

38. Get up on the right side of the head. You can have a great day if you get up
on the right side of the head or, to be more precise, the right side of the brain.
Dreams, and energy, and creative insight come from the right side; linear, logical,
short-sighted thinking comes from the left side. (See Frankenstein's Castle by Colin
Wilson, and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.) What
stimulates the right side of the brain most is a high purpose. Self-motivation
increases when the right brain gets good at telling the left brain what to do.

39. Use Your Magic Machine. If you wait for a crisis of some sort to kick in your
whole-brain thinking, it will lead to a life of reaction instead of creation. The three
best ways to activate whole brain thinking are: 1) Goal Setting; 2) Joyful Work;
3) Revitalizing Play. You can create an internal challenge of your own through goals
and games, which motivate you more than anything else.

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40. Get Your Stars Out. Let the universe that is in you shine freely.
41. Be a Finisher. Research shows that fatigue does not come from working too
hard; it comes from not finishing your work, "the hanging on of an unfinished task".
The best way to change your belief system is to change the truth about you.
For example, to believe that you are a good finisher, build a record of finishing.

42. Invent Games. Whenever you have a tedious, difficult or long task ahead of
you, turning it into a game will always bring you higher levels of energy and
motivation. (See Flow.)

43. Interact. There is a huge difference between active relaxation and passive
relaxation. Active relaxation refreshes and restores the mind, and keeps it flexible
and toned for thinking. Winston Churchill painted to relax while he managed a
nation at war. Albert Einstein played the violin. You can relax one part of the brain
while stimulating another. Passive relaxation dulls our creativity, and makes it hard
to come back to a point of conscious and mental exertion. When we find ways to link
thinking to recreation, our lives get richer. We become players in the game of life,
not just spectators.

44. Live a whole life today. John Wooden, who coached UCLA to 10 national
championships in basketball in 12 years, built his success around a thought passed
on to him by his father when he was 9. Make each day your masterpiece.
Wooden's practices were always as important as the championship games. Using his
approach, there is no reason not to make today the proudest day of your life. Today
is the microcosm of your entire life. It's your whole life in miniature. You've got
eternity in the palm of your hand. Life is now, life is not later on. Don't miss it.

45. Welcome your problems. Every solution has a problem. Problems are tough
games for the athletes of the mind, and true athletes always want to get a game
going. If you learn to love the opportunities your problems present, then your
motivational energy will always rise.

46. Drive a library. One of the greatest ways to motivate yourself today lies in the
way you use your drive time. With a huge variety of audio tapes, you can educate
and motivate yourself at the same time. If you leave what you think about to chance

or an R-rated disc jockey, then you lose a large measure of control over your own
mind. Audio-based learning is one of the surest ways to re-program your
subconscious mind. It is one of the best ways to design an action-oriented belief
system.

47. Rewind your thoughts. Perhaps you have noted some idea that you want to
hold on to, even a single phrase. If you place it prominently somewhere in your lifespace and daily schedule, it can have a huge impact on your life. Write things down.
Put things up. Make your own audio tape. Create a poster. You can use all of your
senses in this way. Use synesthesia.

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48. Make yourself up. One way to get started making goals and action plans is to
just make them up. Think of creating in simple terms. Be a kid and "pretend".
49. Get small. Large and specific goals, long-term goals and thinking big all seem
like they would lead to success because they are ambitious, but daily goals, little
improvements and small wins will help larger objectives come to reality much faster.

50. Get out of your box. We tend to look at our challenges from within our own
little world; all we seem to know is what's already happened. This approach limits us
to getting only a new and better past, an improved little box. To create the best
possible future for yourself, don't look at it through the eyes of where you've been.
Think from the place where you want to be. Create your future from nothing.

51. Advertise to yourself. Sports psychologist Roger Gilbert says "Losers visualize
the penalties of failure; winner visualize the rewards of success." Without
"advertising" our goals to ourselves, we will not "buy" them. Draw four circles on a
piece of paper to represent your day, your month, your year and your life. Inside
each circle, write down what you want. By writing down your goals, you are like an
airline pilot looking at your map before take-off. You are orienting your mind to what
you're up to in life. You're reminding yourself of what you really want, where you
want to go. When you get on a plane, do you say to the pilot "Just take me
anywhere?" Make a map, figure out the stops along the way, and go on.

52. Don't stop thinking. Motivation comes from thought. Everything we do begins
with a thought. When you quit thinking, you lose the motivation to act, and slump
into pessimism. The pessimism leads to less thinking, and so it goes.... a downward
spiral of negativity and passivity, feeding on each other. Optimists always take a
little action, make just a little progress. Worst-case scenario thinking leads to
inaction. Colin Wilson said "Imagination should be used not to escape from reality
but to create it." Build the habit of saying no to negativity and pessimism. Creative
thinking leads to optimism, and optimism is always self-motivating.

53. Debate your dark side. Negative thinking is something we all do. When it
happens, pretend you're an attorney, raise objections, and create an argument
against the negative thought.

54. Make use of trouble. When adversity occurs, ask yourself "What might be
good about this? How can I use this?" Pay attention to the interesting people, the
opportunities, the possibilities within the moment. "Every problem carries a gift
inside it." (Richard Bach)

55. Learn to brainstorm by yourself. Put a goal on top of the page and then put
numbers 1 through 20 down the page. List 20 ideas. Give yourself permission to

flow. If you do this five times a month, you will have 100 ideas; more than a few of
them will be usable. Read something about how to brainstorm. Learn how to be a
creative problem-solver.
56. Create your own voice. Sing out loud. Make a speech. Write a newsletter.
Paint a picture. Make a photograph. Cook a new meal.

57. Live on your frontier. Have an adventure. Discover new things. Explore new
territory. Make a date with yourself to do something different. Eat a new food.
Listen to a different type of music. Eat lunch with somebody new.

58. Replace your habits. Self-motivation is more difficult to achieve when we are
held back mentally by bad habits, but habits are there to do something, and you can
not get rid of them. You can replace them, however, by looking at the beneficial
impulse behind a bad habit, and restructuring something to replace it. Identify and
honor that need by finding something that's more effective for you.

59. Paint your day. Self-motivation is much more difficult to achieve when we are
held back mentally by certain bad habits. When you wake up, try picturing your day
as a blank artist's canvas. Ask yourself; "Who's the artist of my day, me or
circumstance and habit?" If you chose to be the artist, how are you going to paint
your day?

60. Swim laps under water. As the contest of life wears on into the late innings,
the player with the most oxygen getting to his brain has a mental advantage. Build
your brain by building your lungs. Even simply taking a deep breath will give your
brain the oxygen it needs to stay sharp and creative.

61. Get some coaching. After a disappointing round on the golf course, Jack
Nicklaus would take a golf lesson. Wait a minute: Who could give him a lesson in
golf? Understand the value of coaching: Your coach is someone who can see your
moves objectively. Ask someone you admire to be honest with you and coach you
for a while; let them tell you what they see. It's a courageous thing to do, and it will
always lead to growth.
62. Leave the safety of your harbor. We all feel at home with our habits. Take a
look at what seems to be your natural self and style, and ask yourself or your coach
how it limits you from risk and growth. It's never stormy in your harbor, but you
won't go anywhere unless you unfurl your sails.

63. Perform rituals. Action is always the key. Doing something is what leads to
doing something. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Develop rituals to
jump-start yourself. Rituals will have you acting before you feel like acting. Rituals
will override your built-in stagnation. They will get you going in a predictable,
controllable way.

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64. Start all over. Go back to the beginning. Write new goals. Recreate yourself.
65. Keep all your promises by not making promises you can't keep.
Unreasonable promises, or goals, often can't be kept. Telling someone else that
you'll accomplish a huge task that will demand lots of time, energy and creativity in
a short period of time is not an intelligent way to motivate yourself. Small
commitments to yourself or others can be kept. Keep the big goals inside yourself,
and make that long and difficult journey a few steps at a time.

66. Give some luck away. Do something for someone who will not be able to
repay you. Do something for someone anonymously. You can create luck and love
and opportunity for yourself by giving it away.

67. Draw your own universe. Use the four-circle technique for each significant
goal. First circle: Long-term goal. Second circle: Where you want to be at the end
of the year. Third circle: Your month. Fourth circle: Your day: What do you need to
do everyday to have a good month? If you hit your daily goals, you'll hit your
monthly goal, and so on. The motivator here is your understanding of what it takes
to be a creative planner.

68. Get up a game. There is nothing more fun than competition. It teaches you a
valuable lesson: There is always someone better than you. Trying to beat someone
else makes you reach deeper inside yourself. It gives you a benchmark for
measuring your own growth. Even without other competitors, you can create a
game by setting specific challenges to yourself. If you're hitting 70% of the 50 free
throws you do every day, shoot 60 a day, and aim for 75%.

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69. Don't blame your parents. Change yourself.

70. Face the sun; the shadows will always fall behind you. What you embrace will
grow in your life and become part of you; what you ignore will fade away.
71. Look inside. Many people define themselves by the impressions and opinions
they get from other people. Your potential is your true identity. The poet e.e.
cummings wrote "to be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night
and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any
human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

72. Go to war. Anthony Burgess was diagnosed with brain cancer and was told he
had a year to live. He wanted to leave an income for his young wife, and so he
decided to write a novel. He attacked the problem energetically, and within a year
had written not one novel, but five, and his cancer had gone into remission.
Joan of Arc said "All battles are first won or lost in the mind."

73. Make small change. The temptation to make huge and immediate changes in
an effort to create dramatic change will likely lead to emotional mood swings, falling
into old habits, and demoralization. Great things are often created slowly. If you are
willing to see your self as a masterpiece in progress, then you'll love small changes
and be excited by just a little something you did better today than you did yesterday.

74. Do something badly. Sometimes we don't do things because we don't feel we

can do them well, and so we don't do anything at all. This is a source of writer's
block. If you're not motivated enough to do something, just decide to do it badly.
Make fun of yourself as you do it. Be comically bad at it, and then watch what
happens once you get into the process.
75. Be a visioneer. Engineer your dreams into reality by the use of active mental
imaging (Dr. Dennis Deaton). You can't do anything that you can't picture yourself
doing. Once you make the picturing process conscious and deliberate, you can create
the self you want to be.

76. Shine your light. Taking things (and yourself) lightly is the most spiritually-

advanced thing you can do to improve your effectiveness in life. Your own
motivational level will always be improved with humor. Come up with some funny
solutions. When you are laughing, you are open to anything.

77. Be a list writer. The more you write down what it is you want, the more you
can dictate you own future. A goal gains power when you write it down, and it gains
more power every time you write it down.

78. Be the change. Don't try to change other people; it doesn't work and you'll
waste your time. But if you be what you want others to be, you'll lead by inspiration.
Self-generated change is contagious.

79. See the gold. In every circumstance, we can look for the gold, or we can look
for the filth. What we look for, we'll find. Opportunities will appear before us when we
choose to be alert and open to them.

80. Simplify. Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach, was once
asked why, with his collection of multi-talented players, he ran only basic plays.
He answered "It's hard to be aggressive when you're confused."

81. Pin life down. A wrestler who is only very good at reacting to and countering
his opponent will not win many matches. He's got to be good at the takedown; he's
got to have a plan to pin his opponent. If you are making all the first moves, you'll
be surprised at how often you can pin life down.

82. Strengthen your purpose. If the left side of the brain tells the right side that
there is a sufficient crisis, the right side sends energy (sometimes superhuman
energy). Energy comes from purpose. Boredom and confusion are the two greatest
enemies of energy. Because we are solely responsible for the purpose in our life, we
are also totally responsible for the energy in our life.

83. Go on a news fast. Watch what happens to your energy and your optimism
when you give up watching or reading the news for a week or two. Your mind is
yours, to fill with whatever you want; the more you accept responsibility for what
you put into your mind, the easier it will be to build an effective, optimistic mind set.

84. Choose an action. When you find yourself worrying about something, always
ask yourself an action question "What can I do about this right now? and then do
something, any small thing. Even small actions start to chase away your fears and
your doubts, and put you back in control of creating what you want. If you've ever
had the experience (or the training) of losing control of your car on ice, you'll know
that the worst thing you can do is to hit the brakes. The proper response is to steer
in the direction of the skid and to apply gentle pressure to the gas pedal.

85. Be a thinker and a problem-solver, instead of whining and complaining.

When you become a self-motivator, you will follow naturally into the realm of the
thinker.

86. Choose enjoyment. There is a huge difference between pleasure and

enjoyment. This does not mean that we need to forego pleasure, but when we
become clear about how enjoyment involves using a skill to meet a challenge, we
can consciously put enjoyment into our lives and grow much faster toward who we
want to be. (See Flow.)

87. Read mystery novels and brain-teasers, those, elegant, clue-filled puzzles
solved by paying attention and drawing conclusions. Of course, you should also read
the best material you can find about the challenges that you encounter in meeting
your goals.

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88. Express your thoughts. Go ahead and feel your feelings, but when it's time to
talk, be thoughtful, and express your thoughts.
89. Use your weaknesses. Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses, on
separate pieces of paper. Please the list of strengths where you will see it again,
because just looking at it will always pick you up. Now, look at your list of so- called
weaknesses, and study them for a while. Stay with it, until you feel no shame or
guilt about them. Allow them to become interesting characteristics, instead of
anything negative. Ask yourself how each characteristic could be useful to you.
Ask yourself how each characteristic can be turned into a strength.

90. Try becoming your problem. Whatever type of problem you're facing, say to
yourself "I'm the problem." Once you see yourself as the problem, you can see
yourself as the solution. When you see yourself as the victim of your problem, you
lose the power to solve them. Take two essential steps: Own the problem. Create
the solution.
91. Inflate your goal. Double it. Put it up ten notches on the ladder. And then
ask yourself, quite seriously, what would you have to do to achieve that goal?
As a mental exercise only, it will move your thinking to a different plane, and you will
more assuredly achieve the original goal. Remember that the inflated goal is just a
self-contained game, not a promise to yourself or anyone else. It's a fun game,
though, because it works.

92. Rescue yourself. Sometimes we find ourselves in places where we seemed

surrounded by fears, doubt and failure, and no one is coming to our aid. But if
we introduce ourselves to these devilish scoundrels and get to know them better,
we become aware of their simple tricks and transparent powers. If we blend
with these monsters and villains, we can defuse their negative energy. If we can
get them to joke and dance with us in the sunshine, they will become our
playmates and helpers. No one is coming to help. Sounds like abandonment,
doesn't it? Sometimes we all revert to "I want my mommy." But if you value
independence and self-responsibility above dependence on someone else, you'll
be much happier and much more effective. It means that you're enough; you
can handle your own problems. You can grow, get strong, generate your own
happiness and, paradoxically, from that position of independence, truly great
relationships can be built because they are not based on dependency, or fear.
See how much better you get at self-motivation once you begin to celebrate the
news that you're enough.

93. Push your own buttons. Motivation never has to be accidental. For example,
some people like to motivate themselves with music, but you don't have to wait until
that certain song comes on the radio that picks up your spirits. You can control what
songs (and voices) you hear. Create a motivational "greatest hits" tape with your
favorite music, a reading (in your voice) of appropriate goals, inspirational quotes,
motivational reminders, and more of your favorite music. Play it before you go to
bed. Play it when you get up in the morning. Play it in your car. Make that
Walkman work for you. Learn to push your own buttons.

94. Strengthen your rehearsal. The harder and more effective you practice,
the easier the game will be. The harder you are on yourself, the easier life will be on
you. There isn't anything your opponent can throw at you that you can't throw at
yourself in advance. If you have to give a speech in front of someone who scares
you, practice giving it in front of someone who scares you more. If you've got
something hard to do and are hesitant to do it, find something even harder to do
first.

95. Improve your vision. "It's not what a vision is, it's what a vision does".
Is your vision powerful and effective? Does it give you energy? Does it make you
smile? Does it take you that extra mile when you're tired? A vision should be judged
by these criteria. If your vision isn't doing these things for you, then picture another
one, or color this one differently. Keep working on your vision until you have one that
puts you in action just to think about it.

96. Build your power base. The more awake and conscious you are, and the more
you pay attention to how your own efforts at self-motivation are succeeding, the
more powerful you'll become. Your knowledge of self-motivation is power, in and of
itself. Respect your knowledge, talent and skill, and build on them.

97. Link truth to beauty. The best case for honesty is how beautiful it is, how clear
and clean it makes the journey from current reality to the dream. Truth leads you to
a more confident level in your relationships with others, and with yourself. It
diminishes fear, and increases your sense of self-mastery. Lies and half-truths will
always weigh you down. Truth will clear up your thinking and give you the energy
and clarity needed for self-motivation.

98. Take "no' for a question. Ask the universe for what you want. Don't take "no"
for an answer. Take "no" for a question. When you ask for something and it is denied
to you, imagine that the "no" you heard is really the question Can't you really be
more creative than that? Never accept "no" at face value; let rejection motivate
you to be more creative.

99. Walk with love and death. Whenever you need to get through something,
face something, or create a courageous action plan, try taking a long walk. If you
walk long and far enough, a solution always appears. You will get oriented to the
most creative course of action. When you walk, move our arms and legs in a
cross-pattern: right arm and left leg move together, and vice versa. According to
Andrew Weil, M.D., in his book Spontaneous Healing, this generates electrical activity
in your brain that has a harmonizing influence on your central nervous system, a
benefit that you don't normally get from other types of exercise. It's called a walk of
love, because love and fear are opposites; love is always creative, and fear is always
destructive. It's called a walk of death, because acceptance of your own eventual
death gives your life the clarity it needs to be exciting and joyous. Take your
challenges out for a walk. As you feel your body's energies, you'll come to know that
you have what it takes. You can walk courage into existence.
100. Buy yourself flowers. Whenever you look at them, let them be a reminder of
how colorful your future is going to be, how fresh your thoughts are, how easy it is
for your to honor yourself, how much power you have to make your environment
beautiful, and how sweet the smell of the universe can be.