Page 129 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

thought about who I was when I was 25, and what a difficult time I would have

had being a good father back then. Soon I took this “weakness” to be a great
strength. Then one day while watching The Little Mermaid with my kids, I saw
myself as the father in that movie—vigorous, strong, and wise, with flowing
white hair. It was the perfect image. I now see my age as a major strength in
raising my kids. The only “weakness” was in the way I was looking at it.

There isn’t anything on your weakness list that can’t be a strength for you if
you think about it long enough. The problem is, our weaknesses embarrass us.
But embarrassment is not real thinking. Once we really start thinking about our
weaknesses they can become strengths, and creative possibilities emerge.

92. Try becoming the problem

Whatever type of problem you are facing, the most self-motivational
exercise I know of is to immediately say to yourself, “I am the problem.” Once
you see yourself as the problem, you can see yourself as the solution. This
insight was dramatically described by James Belasco in Flight of the Buffalo.
“This is the insight I realized early and return to often,” he wrote, “In most
situations, I am the problem. My mentalities, my pictures, my expectations, form
the biggest obstacle to my success.”

By seeing ourselves as victims of our problems, we lose the power to solve
them. We shut down creativity when we declare the source of the trouble to be
outside of us. However, once we say, “I am the problem,” there is great power
that shifts from the outside to the inside. Now we can become the solution.

You can use this process the same way a detective uses a premise to clarify a
crime scene. If the detective says, “What if there were two murderers, not one?”
she can then think in a way that reveals new possibilities. She doesn’t have to
prove that there were two murderers in order to think the problem through as if

there were. The same is true when you become willing to see yourself as the
problem. It is simply a way to think.

In The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden writes, “To feel
competent to live and worthy of happiness, I need to experience a sense of
control over my existence. This requires that I be willing to take responsibility
for my actions and the attainment of my goals. This means that I take
responsibility for my life and my well-being.”