Page 46 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

was because I thought it might help teach me to develop my self-discipline. But

somehow I had not been aware of the “self” in self-discipline. I wanted
discipline to be given to me by someone else. I found out in boot camp that
others do not give willpower and self-discipline. The drill sergeant might have
been persuasive and inspiring (or at times terrifying), but he couldn’t make me
do anything until I decided to do it. Nothing happened until I generated the will
to make it happen.

Make a promise to yourself to be clear and truthful about your own
willpower. It is always there.

30. Perform your little rituals

See yourself as a shaman or medicine man who needs to dance and sing to
get the healing started. Make up a ritual that is yours and yours alone—a ritual
that will be your own shortcut to self-motivation.

As you read through these various ways to motivate yourself, you might

have noticed that action is often the key. Doing something is what leads to doing
something. It’s a law of the universe: An object in motion stays in motion.

The great basketball player Jack Twyman used to begin each practice
session by getting to the court early and taking 200 shots at the basket. It always
had to be 200 shots, which he counted out, and it didn’t matter if he already felt
tuned up after 20 or 30 shots. He had to shoot 200. It was his ritual, and it always
got him into a state of self-motivation for the rest of the practice session or
game.

My friend Fred Knipe, an Emmy award-winning television writer and
comedian, did something he called “driving for ideas.” When he had a major
creative project to accomplish, he got in his car and drove around the desert near
Tucson until ideas began to come to him. His theory was that the act of driving

gave the anxious, logical left side of his brain something to do so the right side
of his brain could be freed up to suggest ideas. It’s like giving your child some
toys to play with so you can watch the evening news.

In his book about songwriting, Write from the Heart, John Stewart writes
about composer and arranger Glenn Gould, who had a ritual for finding a new
melody or musical idea when he seemed to be stuck and nothing was coming.
He’d turn on two or three radios at the same time, all to different stations. He’d