Page 41 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

Recognition of the power of this genius in all of us prompted Napoleon to

say, “Imagination rules the world.” As a child, you instinctively used your
imagination as it was intended. You daydreamed and made stuff up. If you go
back into that state of self-confidence and dream again, you’ll be pleasantly
surprised at how many innovative and immediate solutions to your problems you
come up with.

Einstein used to say, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
When I first heard he’d said that, I didn’t know what he meant. I always thought
additional knowledge was the answer to every difficult problem. I thought if I
could just learn a few more important things, then I’d be okay. What I didn’t
realize was that the very thing I needed to learn was not knowledge, but skill.
What I needed to learn was the skill of proactively using my imagination.

Once I’d learned that skill, the first task was to begin imagining the vision of

who I wanted to be. Dreaming, in its proactive sense, is strong work. It’s the
design stage of creating the future. It takes confidence and it takes courage. But
the greatest thing about active dreaming is not in the eventual reaching of the
goal—the greatest thing is what it does to the dreamer.

Forget the literal attainment of your dream for now. Focus on just going for
it. By simply going for the dream, you make yourself come true.

26. Run toward your fear

The world’s best-kept secret is that on the other side of your fear, there is
something safe and beneficial waiting for you. If you pass through even a thin
curtain of fear, you will increase the confidence you have in your ability to
create your life.

General George Patton said, “Fear kills more people than death.” Death kills
us but once, and we usually don’t even know it. But fear kills us over and over

again, subtly at times and brutally at others. But if we keep trying to avoid our
fears, they will chase us down like persistent dogs. The worst thing we can do is
close our eyes and pretend they don’t exist.

“Fear and pain,” says psychologist Nathaniel Branden, “should be treated as
signals not to close our eyes but to open them wider.” By closing our eyes we
end up in the darkest of comfort zones—buried alive.