Page 143 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

already have it.

I discovered something remarkable quite by accident one night as I was
conducting a workshop on goal achievement. I discovered the power of negative
thinking. As the people in the workshop struggled to list their goals on a piece of
paper, I ran out of patience.

“How will you get what you want if you don’t know what it is?” I asked the
room, half of which still had empty sheets of paper and empty facial expressions.

“Okay,” I said, “Let’s put these goals away. I want to try something

different. Take out a new sheet of paper and do this. Write down what you don’t
want in your life. List every major problem and source of discomfort you have.
All your worries. All the negative things you can think of, even if they haven’t
come into reality yet. Even if they are just things you don’t want to happen in the
future. Take your time and be thorough.”

What I saw happen next startled me. The entire room’s energy level picked
up, and everyone in the workshop was writing and writing and writing. It wasn’t
long before some people asked if they could use a second page.

Something strange and electric was filling the air as people aired their fears
and grievances. Pages were flooded with ink, and hands and fingers had to be
shaken out so people wouldn’t cramp up from writing so much. When I called an
end to the exercise, the room was buzzing.

I had obviously let something loose that wasn’t there before. At that moment
I got my first true look at the power of the negative. Actually, I had seen it
before. When I took the time to look back over my life, I realized that saying no
was always a stronger stand to take than saying yes. Saying no is drawing a line
in the sand. It is putting your foot down. It is passionate and powerful.
Compared to saying no, saying yes is wobbly and wishy-washy. I said yes to a
thousand drinks of alcohol in my life. But it wasn’t until one hung-over suicidal
morning when I said no that my life got completely turned around.

Saying no is powerful, because it comes from the deepest part of the soul.
There are some things we just won’t tolerate. When we fully understand the
power of those no’s deep inside of us, we can use them to motivate ourselves
like never before.

When the people filled their papers up with what they didn’t want, we got
busy converting problems into goals. You don’t want to go bankrupt? Then let’s