Page 22 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re confused. When you simplify your

life, it gathers focus. The more you can focus your life, the more motivated it
gets.

7. Look for the lost gold

When I am happy, I see the happiness in others. When I am compassionate, I
see the compassion in other people. When I am full of energy and hope, I see
opportunities all around me. But when I am angry, I see other people as

unnecessarily testy. When I am depressed, I notice that people’s eyes look sad.
When I am weary, I see the world as boring and unattractive. Who I am is what I
see!

If I drive into Phoenix and complain, “What a crowded, smog-ridden mess
this place is!” I am really expressing what a crowded, smog-ridden mess I am at
that moment. If I had been feeling motivated that day, and full of hope and
happiness, I could just as easily have said, while driving into Phoenix, “Wow,
what a thriving, energetic metropolis this is!” Again, I would have been
describing my inner landscape, not Phoenix’s.

Our self-motivation suffers most from how we choose to see the
circumstances in our lives. That’s because we don’t see things as they are, we
see things as we are.

In every circumstance, we can look for the gold or look for the filth. And
what we look for, we find. The best starting point for self-motivation is in what
we choose to look for in what we see around us. Do we see the opportunity
everywhere? “When I open my eyes in the morning,” said Colin Wilson, “I am
not confronted by the world, but by a million possible worlds.”

It is always our choice. Which world do we want to see today? Opportunity
is life’s gold. It’s all you need to be happy. It’s the fertile field in which you

grow as a person. And opportunities are like those subatomic quantum particles
that come into existence only when they are seen by an observer. Your
opportunities will multiply when you choose to see them.

8. Push all your own buttons