Page 114 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

great animated films. But what I believe was his greatest gift was the summing

up he did of his life’s work: “If you can dream it,” he said, “you can do it.”

A power goal is a dream with a deadline. The deadline itself motivates you.
People who have created power goals start living on purpose. They know what
they’re up to in life. How can you tell if you’ve got a big enough and real
enough power goal? Simply observe the effect your goal has on you. It’s not
what a goal is that matters; it’s what a goal does.

80. Change yourself first

Don’t change other people. It doesn’t work. You’ll waste your life trying.
Many of us spend all our time trying to change the people in our lives. We think
we can change them in ways that will make them better equipped to make us
happy. This is especially true of our children. We talk to our children for hours
about how we think they should change. But children don’t learn from what we
say. They learn from what we do. Today’s children, upon hearing us talk to them
about how they should change, will often say, “Yeah, right.” It’s shorthand for
“I’m not listening to what you say, I’m listening to what you do.”

Gandhi was especially tuned in to the futility of changing other people. Yet
Gandhi was probably responsible for more change in people than any other
person in our era was. How did he do it? He had a profoundly simple formula.
People would often come to Gandhi to ask how they could change others.
Someone would say, “I agree with you about nonviolence, but there are others
who don’t. How do I change them?” And Gandhi told them they couldn’t. He
said you couldn’t change other people.

“You must be the change you wish to see in others,” said Gandhi. In my own
seminars, I probably use that one quotation more than any other. I am always
asked, “How can I change my husband?” Or, “How can I change my wife?” Or,

“How can I change my teenager?”

People who take the seminars on self-motivation, at some point during the
workshop, agree completely with the principles and ideas. Then, they start to
think about the people who don’t buy in. In the question-and-answer period,
their questions are about those poor people. How do we change them? I always
quote Gandhi. Be the change you wish to see in others.

By being what you want them to be, you lead by inspiration. Nobody really