100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

by Steve Chandler

A useful exercise for self-motivation is to ask yourself what you’d do if you had Anthony Burgess’s original predicament. “If I had just a year to live, how would I live differently? What exactly would I do?”

As the weeks went by, I finally caught on to the idea that great things are often created very slowly,

If you brought 5 percent more purposefulness to your life each day, it would only be 20 days before you had doubled your sense of purpose.

Huge things can be accomplished by focusing on one small action at a time.

Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

The cure for writer’s block—and also the road to self-motivation—is simple. The cure is to go ahead and write badly.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts,” says Lamott. “You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper.”

We’re often afraid to do things until we’re sure we’ll do them well. Therefore we don’t do anything. This tendency led G.K. Chesterton to say, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

To get them to complete the exercise, I say, “Put anything down. Make something up. It doesn’t even have to be true. They don’t even have to be your goals, just do it so you can understand the exercise we’re about to do.” The point is to just do it.

“Yes, you can,” said Margie. “You just have to believe you can.”

“Michelle,” said Margie, “listen to me. Will you just try it my way?”

“Michelle, I want you to keep saying, very softly, ‘If I can dream it, I can do it’ and then I want to see you dive in.”

The principle is this: You won’t do anything you can’t picture yourself doing. Visioneering is just another word for picturing yourself. Once you make the picturing process conscious and deliberate, you begin to create the self you want to be. We dive into the pictures we create.

Pick a frightening problem. Then do the following: talk about it with someone, draw an illustrated map of it on a huge piece of paper, make “Top 10” lists about the problem, tell yourself some jokes about the problem, sing about the problem, and, finally, dance a dance that expresses the problem.

Humor is the highest form of creativity.

Your own motivational level will always be lifted by humor.

Any time you are stuck, ask yourself to take things lightly.

77. Serve and grow rich

One good way to motivate yourself is by increasing the flow of money into your life.

“Our first duty,” said George Bernard Shaw, “is not to be poor.”

The road to not being poor always travels through your professional relationships in life. The more you serve those relationships, the more productive those relationships will become, and the more money you will make.

“Money is life energy that we exchange and use as a result of the service we provide to the universe,” wrote Deepak Chopra in Creating Affluence. When you understand that...

understand something even more valuable: Unexpectedly large amounts of money come from unexpected...

The way to generate unexpected service to the people in your life is to ask yourself, “What do they expect?” Once you’re clear on what that is, then ask, “What can I do that they would not expect?” It’s always the unexpected service that gets talked about. And it’s always getting talked about that increases your professional value. As Napoleon Hill repeatedly pointed out, great wealth comes from the habit ...

It is almost impossible to enjoy a life of self-motivation when you’re worried about money. Don’t be embarrassed about giving this subject a great deal of thought. Thinking about money a little bit in advance fr...

Never hesitate to sit down with yourself and make lists. The more you write things down, the more you can dictate your own future. There is an unfortunate myth that lists make things trivial. But lists do the opposite—they make things come alive.

I have a friend who made a list of all the positive things about himself that he could think of. He listed every characteristic and accomplishment that he could remember in his life that he was proud of. He keeps the list in his briefcase, and says he often reads through it when he’s feeling down. “By seeing all those things written down, and letting myself read them one at a time, I can change my entire attitude from being discouraged to feeling positive about myself,” he says.

If you’ve ever tried grocery shopping for a large event without a shopping list, you are aware of the nightmare it can be. Most people have learned not to shop that way. I’ve learned by hard experience that it can mean additional trips to the store to pick up forgotten items.

Friendship is so precious, why let it be forgotten?

A goal gains power when you write it down, and more power every time you write it down. What motivates you most in life ought to be in your own handwriting. People all too often look for motivation in what others have written. If you become a good list-maker, you will learn how to motivate yourself by what you’ve written.

Most people are surprised to learn that the reason they’re not getting what they want in life is because their goals are too small. And too vague. And therefore have no power.

Your goals will never be reached if they fail to excite your imagination. What really excites the imagination is the setting of a large and specific power goal.

Usually, a goal is just a goal. But a power goal is a goal that takes on a huge reality. It lives and breathes. It provides motivational energy. It gets you up in the morning. You can taste it, smell it, and feel it. You’ve got it clearly pictured in your mind. You’ve got it written down. And you love ...

“If you can dream it,” he said, “you can do it.”

It’s not what a goal is that matters; it’s what a goal does.

Don’t change other people. It doesn’t work. You’ll waste your life trying.

“I’m not listening to what you say, I’m listening to what you do.”

“You must be the change you wish to see in others,” said Gandhi.

Nobody really wants to be taught by lectures and advice. They want to be led through inspiration.

“Let There Be Peace on Earth.” The song’s words went, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me….”

Finally, Henry suggested to his son that he try entering a wrestling match with his own attack plan—a series of moves that he would initiate no matter what his opponent tried. The boy agreed, and the results were remarkable. He began winning match after match, pinning opponent after opponent.

He didn’t have a problem setting goals. But what had to be added was a plan of action.

“A goal without an action plan is a daydream.”

Brown didn’t just give that advice to his son because he bought into it theoretically. His own Brown and Brown Chevrolet dealership had been the number-one Chevy dealership in the nation many times because he planned his company...

Before any adventure, take time to plan. Design your own plan of attack. Don’t just counter what some other wrestler is doing. Let life respond to you. If you’re making all the first moves, you’ll be surprised at how often you can pin life down.

But I finally decided to have no mean—“Can’t you be more creative than that?”

McAuley later told me that the letters did the trick. “First of all, they showed me that you could write,” he said. “And second of all, they proved to me that you wanted the position more than the other candidates did.”

Never accept no at face value. Let rejection motivate you to get more creative.

Knowing what you’re up to, and why you’re up to it, gives you the energy to self-motivate. Not knowing your purpose drains you of all motivation.

When our purpose is great, so is our strength and energy.