Page 92 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

how stupid it is. And once you get into that way of debating your own doubts,

you start to take back control of your life.”

Many times I’d be in the middle of a large business project and ask to meet
with Steve for an hour. After he listened for a few minutes, he would almost
invariably see right away what was missing in my behavior. He would say, “Are
you willing to accept some coaching on this?” And I would eagerly say yes.
Then he would tell me truthfully, sometimes ruthlessly, what he saw. I didn’t
always like what he saw, but I always grew stronger from talking about it.

Hardison’s coaching was so jolting that sometimes it reminded me of an
incident that happened to me when I was a boy playing Little League baseball. I
had injured my knee in a play at third base, and when the game was over, the
knee was swollen and my entire leg was stiff. As I sat on the bench with my leg
straight out in front of me, a doctor whose son was on our team was kneeling

down by my leg as my father looked on.

“I’d like you to bend your leg now,” he said to me as his hands gently held
my swollen knee.

“I can’t,” I told him.

“You can’t?” he asked, looking up at me. “Why can’t you?”

“Because I tried, and it really hurts.”

The doctor looked at me for a second, and then said simply but gently,
“Then hurt yourself.”

I was startled by his request. Hurt myself? On purpose? But then, without
saying anything, I slowly bent my leg. Yes, there was tremendous pain, but that
didn’t matter. I was still mesmerized by his request. The doctor massaged my
knee with his fingers and nodded to my father that everything would be okay. I’d
have to have x-rays and the usual precautionary exam, but he saw nothing
seriously wrong for now.

But I was still aware that something very big had just happened to me. After
a boyhood that was characterized by avoiding pain and discomfort of any kind,
all of a sudden I saw that I could hurt myself if I needed to, and that I could do it
calmly without batting an eye. Perhaps I wasn’t the coward I’d always thought I
was. Perhaps there was as much courage in me as in anyone else, and it was all a
matter of being willing to call on it. It was a defining incident in my life, and it
was not dissimilar to the way Steve Hardison, as a coach, has required that I call