100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

by Steve Chandler

Playwright Noel Coward said, “Work is more fun than fun.”

Yet many of us (including myself) keep pretending that our life’s game will have no end. We keep planning to do great things some day when we feel like it.

“It’s the same process I used in bodybuilding,” he explained. “What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true.”

The lesson Rett taught me was one I’ve never forgotten. Whenever I’m afraid of something coming up, I will find a way to do something that’s even harder or scarier. Once I do the harder thing, the real thing becomes fun.

as Vince Lombardi said, “It’s hard to be aggressive when you’re confused.”

It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re confused. When you simplify your life, it gathers focus. The more you can focus your life, the more motivated it gets.

we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.

Stop worrying about what you think of yourself and start building a track record that proves that you can motivate yourself to do whatever you want to do.

one hour of planning saves three hours of execution.

Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy: “Spock had a big, big effect on me. I am so much more Spock-like today than when I first played the part in 1965 that you wouldn’t recognize me. I’m not talking about appearance, but thought processes. Doing that character, I learned so much about rational logical thought that it reshaped my life.”

Sitting quietly allows your true dream life to give you hints and flashes of motivation.

Once you have made a task fun, you have solved the problem of self-motivation.

“Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else’s head?”

If you’re watching too much television and you know it, you might find it useful to ask this one question: “Which side of the glass do I want to live on?” When you are watching television, you are watching other people do what they love doing for a living. Those people are on the smart side of the glass, because they are having fun, and you are passively watching them have fun. They are getting money, and you are not.

Groucho Marx once said he found television very educational. “Every time someone turns it on,” he said, “I go in the other room to read a book.”

You can create your own plans in advance so that your life will respond to you.

If you are ever in an undermotivated mood, find something you fear and do it—and watch what happens.

The first step in developing your willpower, therefore, is to accept its existence. You have willpower just as surely as you have life.

The development and use of willpower is the most direct access to happiness and motivation that I’ll ever have.

The power of that dead temptation passes into us. It strengthens our will.

William James recommended that we do at least two things every day that we don’t want to do—for the very reason that we don’t want to do them—just to keep willpower alive.

Make your own news. Be your own breaking story. Don’t look to the media to tell you what’s happening in your life. Be what’s happening.

Indiana’s former basketball coach Bobby Knight always said, “The will to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win.”

If you want to be motivated, shift your inspiration to someone else.

First find out what makes you happy, and then start doing it. If writing makes you happy, and you’re not writing for a living, start up a company newsletter or your own Website.

Whatever goal you want to reach, you can reach it 10 times faster if you are happy.

we cry because we know for a fact that there is something in us that could be every bit as great as what we are watching.

French psychologist Emile Coue said, “Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will be.”

Whatever it is you have to do, whether it’s a major project at work or a huge cleaning job at home, turning it into a game will always bring you higher levels of energy and motivation.

“Thinking is the hardest work we do,” said Henry Ford, “which is why so few people ever do it.” But when we find ways to link thinking to recreation, our lives get richer. We become players in the game of life and not just spectators.

start treating self-motivational ideas as if they were songs.

People who get into the swing of setting small goals all day long report a much higher level of consciousness and energy.

Nietzsche once said: “Everything in the world displeased me; but what displeased me most was my displeasure with everything.”

One of my favorite tricks for flipping my mind over to the optimistic side is to ask myself the question: How can I use this?

Self-mentoring is the best mentoring you can get because your mentor knows you so well. And although it’s often beneficial to get specific outside personal coaching, the best coaching teaches us to look within.

A pleasant, relaxed, and strong speaking voice is a priceless asset to anyone whose job involves communicating with other people.

“Learn as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow.”

Wake up and visualize your day as a blank canvas. Ask yourself, Who’s the artist today? Blind circumstance, or me? If I choose to be the artist, how do I want to paint my day?

‘How long you been sitting at that desk? Get up and get out of here! Your brain stops working after you sit in a swivel chair for 20 minutes.

You can get coaching anytime. If coaching is appropriate for your golf or tennis game, it is even more appropriate for the game of life. Ask someone to be honest with you and coach you for a while.

I needed a better home one that contained habits that would keep me focused on goal-oriented activity.

Identify the habits that keep you trapped. Identify what you have decided is your final personality and accept that it might be a hasty construction built only to keep you safe from risk and growth. Once you’ve done that, you can leave. You can get the blueprints out and create the home you really want.

If you really want to get your life worked out, there is no one better to talk to than yourself. No other person has as much information about your problems and no other person knows your skills and capabilities better. And there’s no one else who can do more for you than yourself.

Branden suggests that we get our creative thinking going each morning by asking ourselves two questions: 1) What’s good in my life? and 2) What is there still to be done? Most people don’t talk to themselves at all. They listen to the radio, watch TV, gossip, and fill up on the words and thoughts of other people all day long. But it’s impossible to indulge in that kind of activity and also get motivated. Motivation is something you talk yourself into.

Henry Ford, who said, “If you do not think about the future, you won’t have one.”

If you are interested in self-motivation, self-creation, and being the best you can be, there is nothing better than competition.

Compete wherever you can. But always compete in the spirit of fun, knowing that finally surpassing someone else is far less important than surpassing yourself.

The principle is this: You won’t do anything you can’t picture yourself doing. Visioneering is just another word for picturing yourself.

But do you know who is really obsessed with money? People who don’t have any. They obsess about money all day long.

If you become a good list-maker, you will learn how to motivate yourself by what you’ve written.