Page 140 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

I discovered—through use of an intoxicating substance—that I could be who

I wanted to be. But soon the marvelous discovery turned to addiction, and my
life revolved around my dependency on it. They were wild times, but as anyone
will tell you who’s been through it, there was no growth or fulfillment during
those years. They soon became an intolerable nightmare.

Fortunately, I recovered. It has been more than 20 years since I’ve had to
resort to chemically based courage. During that recovery period, which was
often difficult, I came to learn a prayer that was popular among fellow
recovering people. They called it “The Serenity Prayer,” and you’ve probably
heard it: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I think it is called the serenity prayer because that’s what everyone wants
from the prayer—serenity. Abruptly ending a long period of substance abuse can

leave you far short of serene. Although with each passing day it gets better and
better, that prayer was something to hang onto.

But after being clean and sober started to work for me, I knew something
was still missing—I knew I needed more than serenity. My deep-seated self-
image of being a coward had not gone away, and so I turned my attention to the
second line in the prayer, the courage to change the things I can. In my mind, it
was no longer the serenity prayer—it had become the courage prayer. Courage
was still what I lacked, and that feeling of personal cowardice was still my entire
self-image. It shaped my whole personality.

When my friend Mike Killebrew gave me Napoleon Hill’s The Master Key
to Riches, the answer to my courage prayer began to come to me. If I didn’t have
the courage inside of me, I would create it. And at that moment, the process of
self-motivation began in earnest.

I could cite you many examples of the fears I had, but to illustrate how I
overcame them, I’ll use an example I referred to earlier—my fear of public
speaking. I’ve since learned that the fear of public speaking is not unique to me.
In fact, it’s considered the number-one fear among our population today, even
greater than the fear of death. To me, though, it was a painful manifestation of
the overall deep fear that constituted my entire personality. I laughed knowingly

once when Woody Allen said that he was “afraid of the dark and feared the light
of day.” That was me.

When I finally made myself join an acting class to face my fear of speaking,