Page 142 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

thing I thought I feared most in life was somehow mastered. And I repeated to

myself the principle I had used to make it happen—the more I sweat in
peacetime, the less I bleed in war.

I often look back on who I was when I first encountered the words, “I am a
coward,” in A Walk With Love and Death. And I realize that today I have
something that I didn’t have back then, the knowledge that courage can be
created. I still have fears, but I no longer am fear. I no longer think of myself as
a coward. And when people compliment me on something I’ve done that they
think was courageous, I don’t dismiss them as being crazy or stupid.

There is a way I use to motivate myself to overcome any fear that’s in my
way today. It’s a way I’ve never told anyone about until now, because it has a
strange name. I call it “walk with love and death.” When I need to get through
something, face something, or create a courageous action plan—I take long

walks. When I walk long and far enough, a solution always appears. I eventually
get oriented to the most creative course of action.

“When you walk,” writes Dr. Andrew Weil in Spontaneous Healing, “the
movement of your limbs is cross-patterned: the right leg and left arm move
forward at the same time, then the left leg and right arm. This type of movement
generates electrical activity in the brain that has a harmonizing influence on the
central nervous system—a special benefit of walking that you do not necessarily
get from other kinds of exercise.” I call it “a walk with love” because love and
fear are opposites. (Most people think love and hate are opposites, but they are
not.) The ultimate creativity occurs from a spirit of love and, as Emmet Fox
says, “Love is always creative, and fear is always destructive.”

I call it a “walk with death,” because it is only the acceptance and awareness
of my own death that gives my life the clarity that it needs to be exciting.

My walks often last a long time. Somehow, whatever challenge I’m facing
appears to me from many different angles as I’m walking. I know that one of the
real values is that while walking, I’m truly alone with myself—there are no
phones to answer or people to talk to. I create so little of that kind of time in life,
that it’s always surprising how beneficial it is.

Take your own challenges out for a walk. Feel your self-motivation growing
inside you, as the electricity in your brain starts to harmonize your central
nervous system. You’ll soon know for a fact that you have what it takes. You
won’t have to pray for the courage to change the things you can—you will