Page 151 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

We can sit and ponder philosophical concepts forever, but it won’t help our

lives. What really helps is to test things, experiment, try things out and take the
conceptual excitement and put it into immediate action!

A lot of times, a fire starts internally when I read something (Bruce Lee’s
Jeet Kune Do, for example). It starts in my mind and my heart, and I get all
excited. Then what I always want to do after that is put some kind of process in
place in which I monitor myself to make sure I’m going to do some application.
So, in a funny way, when somebody says, “I have a problem with application,”
my answer is, “Well, then do more application.”

There’s really no problem, unless you’re being hypnotized by circumstance.
Let’s say I read a book about Bruce Lee and exercise and I get real excited and it
says that if a person takes 10,000 steps a day, his blood pressure… and all these
biomarkers (or vital markers?) improve. He’s going to live 10 years longer and

have a better quality life than the average person who only takes 3,000 steps a
day. When I read about that, the motivational fire starts inside me and I think
that would be fun. I’m starting to get excited. But application is everything here.

So I buy a pedometer. I put a chart on my wall and I start tracking how many
steps I take each day. How long is it going to take me to find my path to 10,000
each day? So I create a game around it, and I do some tracking and I keep score.

I don’t keep score because I need to be a competitive alpha male winner, but

because the game element has a paradoxical effect on human beings. It
introduces accountability (because you’re counting things), which is really
needed. And it also adds a playful game element. In charting how many steps I
take, I created a little game that challenged me to take more steps in December
than I took in November. I created a contest between “Me in December” versus
“Me in November”and I found out one December morning that I won. It’s over.
I can take a knee, the game’s over, I’ve beat my last month’s number!

The game element in anything that you put into application adds a wonderful
sense of play. You’ve got accountability, there’s a scoreboard, and you also have
a sense of gamesmanship. It’s fun, and I’m winning. That’s true for anything.
Not just physical exercise.

It’s really true for people who sell or market their services. The minute they
start accounting for how much time they put into sales and marketing, their sales
and marketing results get better.

So, to the person who says “I have a hard time applying,” my answer is,