Page 152 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

“That’s because you’re not applying. That’s why you have a hard time

applying.”

If somebody says, “I just joined a new health club but the problem is I have
a hard time getting myself to go.” My answer would be, “Well, go.” Go to the
club. There isn’t really a lot in between wanting to go to the club and going to
the club. We think there’s a lot between those two things, but we are wrong, and
we pay a terrible price for that miscalculation. We put phony barriers between
wanting it and doing it, and that’s where the hypnosis of circumstance comes in.

That’s why I believe coaching is such a powerful profession, because if you
know you’re going to go see your coach in a week, and if you know that you and
your coach agreed that you’d take certain actions this week to see how they
turned out, you’re going to make sure you take those actions. Because when you
sit down with your coach again, you’re going to be reporting in on how they

worked. It introduces the accountability, the game element. The word “coach”
comes from sports, it doesn’t come from any kind of psychological or spiritual
field. Once you see all of this you can become the director of the movie of your
life. You choose your activity, and then you yell, “Action!”

108. Do what you can do today

Sometimes people e-mail me to see if they can work with me for a year to
have me be a coach and partner to their big dream that they have committed to
just now. I’m not against dreaming big, but a problem emerges when this big
goal is all you’ve got and there’s no way you can have a great day because as
you live through your day, and you’ve made so little progress toward the big
dream, it feels like a bad day. Or it feels like a hopeless ambition, and the goal
ends up actually hurting your self-esteem. It ends up reminding you, every time
you look at it, of how far away you are from where you want to be.

Then the goal starts to reinforce the idea that you’re not enough, or you’re
not there yet, or you haven’t arrived. You haven’t made it. You’ve got a long
way to go. All of those thoughts are demotivating and demoralizing. They don’t
help. So, here I’ve got this beautiful goal; I’ve put it on my wall, and it only
reminds me that I’m not there yet. I’m not enough. The air goes out. I am
deflated by what was meant to inspire me. And, so, if my programming or my
identity becomes I’m not there yet, it’s hard to fire up and have a great day from
that position.