Page 45 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

monologues, we can now begin introducing more interactivity. In the past we

might have punctuated our sleepy listening with meaningless words and phrases,
such as “exactly” and “there you go,” but we weren’t truly listening. But that
passive approach shortchanges us and the people we are listening to.

“When we are listened to,” wrote Brenda Ueland, “it creates us, makes us
unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.”

The more thoughtful our questions are, the more interactive the
conversations. Look for opportunities for interactivity to motivate yourself to
higher levels of experience.

29. Embrace your willpower

I can’t tell you how many people have told me that they have no willpower.
Do you think the same thing? If you think you have no willpower, you are
undermining your own success. Everyone has willpower. To be reading this
sentence, you must have willpower.

The first step in developing your willpower, therefore, is to accept its
existence. You have willpower just as surely as you have life. If someone put a
heavy barbell on the floor in front of you and asked you to lift it and you knew
you could not, you would not say “I have no strength.” You’d say, “I’m not
strong enough.” “Not strong enough” is more truthful language, because it
implies that you could be strong enough if you worked at it. It also implies that
you do have strength. It is the same with willpower. Of course you have
willpower. When you accept that little piece of chocolate cake, it is not because
you have no willpower. It is only because you choose not to exercise it in that
instance.

The first step toward building willpower is to celebrate the fact that you’ve
got it. You’ve got willpower, just like that muscle in your arm. It might not be a

very strong muscle, but you do have that muscle.

The second step is to know that your willpower, like a muscle in your arm, is
yours to develop. You are in charge of making it strong or letting it atrophy. It is
not grown by random external circumstances. Willpower is a deliberate,
volitional process.

When I left college to join the army, one of the reasons I decided to sign up