Page 32 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

up to see more and more of life’s possibilities.

Kierkegaard once said, “If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for
wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye
which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility
never.”

17. Learn to play a role

Your future is not determined by your personality. In fact, your personality
is not even determined by your personality. There is no genetic code in you that
determines who you will be. You are the thinker who determines who you will
be. How you act is who you become.

Another way of seeing might be contained in these related thoughts from
Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy: “Spock had a big, big effect on me. I am so much
more Spock-like today than when I first played the part in 1965 that you
wouldn’t recognize me. I’m not talking about appearance, but thought processes.

Doing that character, I learned so much about rational logical thought that it
reshaped my life.”

You’ll gather energy and inspiration by being the character you want to play.

I took an acting class a few years ago because I thought it would help me
deal with my overwhelming stage fright. But I learned something much more
valuable than how to relax in front of a crowd. I learned that my emotions were
tools for me to use, not demonic forces. I learned that my emotions were mine to
work with and change at will.

Although I had read countless times that our own deliberate thoughts control
our emotions, and that the feelings we have are all caused by what we think, I
never trusted that concept as real, because it didn’t always feel real. To me, it felt
more like emotion was an all-powerful thing that could overcome my thinking
and ruin a good day (or a good relationship).

It took a great acting teacher, Judy Rollings, and my own long struggles with
performing difficult scenes to show me that my emotions really could be under
the complete control of my mind. I found out that I could motivate myself by
thinking and acting like a motivated person, just as I could depress myself by
thinking and acting like a depressed person. With practice, the fine line between