Page 106 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

of the fascinating aspects of Branden’s sentences is the “5 percent” part. It seems

like an awfully small amount of change when you look at it, but think of how it
would play out. If you brought 5 percent more purposefulness to your life each
day, it would only be 20 days before you had doubled your sense of purpose.

Huge things can be accomplished by focusing on one small action at a time.
Novelist Anne Lamott recalls an incident in her childhood, the memory of which
always helps her “get a grip.” She remembers:

Thirty years ago, my older brother, who was 10 years old at the time,
was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to
write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in
Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by
binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by
the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him,

put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird,
buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

When we stay the same, it’s not because we didn’t make a big enough
change, but rather because we didn’t do anything today that sent us moving
toward change. If you continue to think of yourself as a great painting you are
going to paint, then wanting to instantly change is like wanting to finish your
portrait in 10 minutes and then put it up in the art gallery.

If you see yourself as a masterpiece-in-progress, then you will relish small
change. A tiny thing you did differently today will excite you. If you want a
stronger body, and you took the stairs instead of the elevator, celebrate. You are
moving in the direction of change. If you want to change yourself, try making
the changes as small as they can be. If you want to create yourself, like a great
painting, don’t be afraid to use tiny brush strokes.

74. Do something badly

Sometimes we don’t do things because we’re not sure we can do them well.
We feel that we’re not in the mood or at the right energy level to do the task we
have to do, so we put it off, or wait for inspiration to arrive.

The most commonly known example of this phenomenon is what writers
call “writer’s block.” A mental barrier seems to set in that prevents a writer from
writing. Sometimes it gets so severe that writers go to psychotherapists to get