Page 102 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

parents represent the world. He assumes that the way his parents do things is the

way things are done.” In Dr. Martin Seligman’s studies of optimism and
pessimism, he found out the same thing: We learn how to explain the world to
ourselves from our parents—and more specifically, our mothers.

“This tells us that young children listen to what their primary caretaker
(usually the mother) says about causes,” writes Seligman, “and they tend to
make this style their own. If the child has an optimistic mother, this is great, but
it can be a disaster for the child if the child has a pessimistic mother.”
Fortunately, Seligman’s studies show that the disaster need only be temporary—
that optimism can be learned…at any age.

But it is not self-motivating to blame Mom if you find yourself to be a
pessimist. What works better is self-creation: to produce a voice in your head
that’s so confident and strong that your mother’s voice gets edited out, and your

own voice becomes the only one you hear.

And as much as you want to eliminate the continuing influence of a
pessimistic adult from your childhood, remember that blaming someone else
never motivates you because it strengthens the belief that your life is being
shaped by people outside yourself. Love your mom (she learned her pessimism
from her mother)—and change yourself.

70. Face the sun

“When you face the sun,” wrote Helen Keller, “the shadows always fall
behind you.” This was Helen Keller’s poetic way of recommending optimistic
thinking. What you look at and what you face grows in your life. What you
ignore falls behind you. But if you turn and look only at the shadows, they
become your life. When I was younger I remember hearing other kids tell a joke
about Helen Keller. “Have you heard about the Helen Keller doll?” they would

ask. “You wind it up and it bumps into things.” I’ve often thought about that
joke, and why such a joke about someone who was deaf and blind was funny. I
think the answer lies in our nervousness about other people overcoming huge
misfortunes. (Perhaps we laugh nervously because we haven’t overcome our
own small ones.)

In our own day and age, we are quick to consider ourselves victims. We are
all victims of some sort of emotional, social, gender, or racial abuse. We enjoy