100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

by Steve Chandler

How could I use this incident to improve my relationship with my daughter? How could I make my rules and requests more meaningful to us both? I began to build my case for optimism. I realized that great relationships are built by

On the top of a piece of paper or blank document, you put a problem you want solved or a goal you want reached. You then put numbers 1 through 20 on it and begin your brainstorming session. The rules are the same as with a group session. You have to list 20 ideas, and they don’t have to be well thought out or even reasonable. Give yourself permission to flow. Your only objective is to have 20 ideas scrawled down within a certain short amount of time. If you do this for a week, you will end up with 100 ideas! Are all of them usable? Of course not, but who cares? When you began the process you probably didn’t have any usable ideas.

I have used this system many times with really great results. It works so well because it relaxes the normal tensions against creative, outrageous thinking. It invites the right side of your brain to play along.

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.

“We don’t sing because we’re happy, we’re happy because we sing.”

You might think, I don’t speak for a living, so such a weird practice might not be necessary for you. But we all speak. A pleasant, relaxed, and strong speaking voice is a priceless asset to anyone whose job involves communicating with other people.

You are not stuck with the voice you have now. Start singing, and soon you’ll be creating the voice you’d like to have. The stronger your voice, the stronger your confidence. The stronger your confidence, the easier it is to motivate yourself.

Bill Gates of Microsoft has said, “Our company has only one asset—human imagination.” If you took all of Microsoft’s buildings, real estate, office hardware, physical assets—anything you could touch—away from the company, where would it be? Almost exactly where it is now. Because in today’s world, a company’s value is in its thinking, not in its possessions.

This is great news for the individual—because usefulness is back in style. If you can cultivate your skills, keep learning new things, study computers, learn a foreign language, or become an expert in a foreign culture and market—you can make yourself useful.

People who smoke are trying, even through their addiction, to do something beneficial—perhaps to breathe deeply and relax. Such breathing is needed to balance stress, so their smoking is a way in which they are trying to make themselves better. Bad habits are like that—they are based on a perceived benefit. That’s why they’re impossible to just “get rid of.”

Taking all of one’s courage, relaxation, and spirituality from a bottle of alcohol is a very damaging habit. But to simply eliminate it leads to even worse problems: detoxing, fear, dread, paranoia. A total void.

Replacement is powerful because it works, and where bad habits are concerned it’s the only thing that works. I’ve known people who quit smoking without intending to. They took up running, or some form of regular aerobic exercise, and soon the breathing and relaxation they were getting from the exercise made the smoking feel bad to their bodies. They quit smoking because they had introduced a replacement. People who diet have the same experience. It isn’t staying away from fattening food that works—it’s introducing a regular diet of delicious, healthy food that works. It’s replacement.

Subconsciously you don’t think your bad habits are bad! And that’s because they’re filling a perceived need. So the way to strengthen yourself is to identify the need and honor it. Honor the need by replacing the current habit with one that is healthier and more effective. Replace one habit, and soon you’ll be motivated to replace another.

The more conscious we are of our freedom to paint whatever we want on our canvas, the less we go through life as a victim of circumstances.

we can’t manage time—we can only manage ourselves.

the player with the most oxygen going to his brain would have the mental advantage.

When he defeated Spassky, many were surprised by his astonishing wit and mental staying power, especially late in the matches when both players should’ve been weary and burned out. What kept Bobby Fisher alert wasn’t caffeine or amphetamines—it was his breathing.

“Frequently, General Patton would stop at my desk,” recalled Williamson, “and ask, ‘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. Keep the body moving around so the juices will run to the right places. It’ll be good for the brain! If

you sit in that chair too long, all of your brainpower will be in your shoes. You cannot keep your mind active when your body is inactive.’”

That one principle—an active mind cannot exist in an inactive body—became Bobby Fisher’s secret weapon in winning...

Sometimes, all you need is the air that you breathe to motivate yourself. Going for a run or a walk or simply deep breathing gives the brain the fuel it feeds on to be newly refreshed and creative.

Tiger takes a lesson not because his coach is a better player who can give advice and tips, but because his coach can stand back from Tiger Woods and see him objectively.

“The problem of distinguishing what we are and what we are not responsible for in this life is one of the greatest problems of human existence…we must possess the willingness and the capacity to suffer continual self-examination.”

Once when Steve Hardison and I were discussing a few of my old habits that were holding me back from realizing my business goals, I blurted out to him, “But why do I do those things? If I know they hold me back, why do I continue to do them?” “Because they are home to you,” he said. “They feel like home. When you do those things, you do them because that’s what you’re comfortable doing, and so you make yourself right at home doing them. And as they say, there’s no place like home.”

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?

“You cannot live a perfect day,” he said, “without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

I agree with that. But there’s a way to make sure you can’t be repaid—and that’s doing something for someone who won’t even know who did it.

Label the first circle, “Lifelong Dream.”

Your lifelong dream might be to save a half a million dollars for your retirement years. So, put that number in your “Life” circle.

Then look at circle two, the next planet in your solar system. That

circle you will label, “My Year.” What do you need to save in the next year in order to be on course to hit your life savings goal? (When you factor in t...

when you arrive at the figure, make certain that it matches up mathematically with your first circle. In other words, if you...

Now that you’ve got your first two circles filled with a number, move to the third circle, “My Month.” What would you have to save each month to hit your year’s goal? Then put that number down. Three circles are now filled.

Now go to the final circle, “My Day.” What do you need to do today that, if you repeated it every day, would ensure a successful month?

(By the way, as I said, this doesn’t have to just be about money, it can be about physical fitness, learning a language, relationship networking, spiritualit...

The power of this system lies in thinking of it as a universe. When you work the math, you cannot help but see that each circle, if done successfully, guarantees the success of the next circle. If you hit your daily goal every day, your monthly goal is automatically hit. In fact, you don’t even have to worry about it. And if your monthly goal is reached, the ...

When you study the irrefutable mathematical truth contained in this system, a strange feeling comes over you. You realize that all four circles are ultimately dependent on the success...

This is what the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke meant when he said, “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”

Remember that once you have worked out the math for this, the circle game is only a four-minute daily exercise.

“If you do not think about the future, you won’t have one.” And I also like to stress that I am only talking about four minutes a day.

Who would you want to bet on, the tennis player who has faith that she’s going to win or the one who knows she’s going to win?

There is absolutely no difference between succeeding today and having a successful life.

It was a crushing disappointment for a young boy whose heart was set on making the team, but he used the incident—not to get mad, not to get even, but to get better.

Some of us have entire childhoods filled with that experience. The most common reaction is anger and resentment.

Sometimes it motivates us to “get even” or to prove somebody wrong. But there’s a better way to respond, a way that is creative rather than reactive. “How can I use this?” is the question that puts us on the road to creativity. It transforms the anger into optimistic energy, so we can grow beyond someone else’s negative expectations.

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

“When you face the sun,” wrote Helen Keller, “the shadows always fall behind you.”

“The way we choose to see the world creates the world we see.”

Let positive reinforcement and compliments be a mere seasoning to your life. But prepare your life’s meal yourself. Don’t look outside yourself to find out who you are, look inside and create who you are.

72. Go to war