Page 33 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

acting and being disappeared.

We love great actors because it seems like they are the characters they play.
Poor actors are those who can’t be their part and therefore don’t convince us of
their character’s reality. We boo at those people. We call it bad acting.

Yet, we don’t realize that we miss the same opportunities in life when we
can’t be the person we want to be. It doesn’t take authentic circumstances to be
who you want to be. It just takes rehearsal.

18. Don’t just do something…sit there

For a long time, all by yourself, sit quietly, absolutely alone. Completely
relax. Don’t allow the television or music to be on. Just be with yourself. Watch
for what happens. Feel your sense of belonging to the silence. Observe insights
starting to appear. Observe your relationship with yourself starting to get better
and softer and more comfortable.

Sitting quietly allows your true dream life to give you hints and flashes of

motivation. In this information-rich, interactive, civilized life today, you are
either living your dream or living someone else’s. And unless you give your own
dream the time and space it needs to formulate itself, you’ll spend the better part
of your life simply helping others make their dreams come true.

“All of man’s troubles,” said French philosopher Blaise Pascal, “stem from
his inability to sit alone, quietly, in a room for any length of time.” Notice that
he did not say some of man’s troubles, but all.

Sometimes, in my seminars on motivation, a person will ask me, “Why is it
that I get my best ideas when I’m in the shower?”

I usually ask the person, “When else during your day are you alone with
yourself, without any distractions?”

If the person is honest, the answer is never.

Great ideas come to us in the shower when it’s the only time in the day when
we’re completely alone. No television, no movies, no traffic, no radio, no family,

no pets—nothing to distract our mind from conversing with itself.

“Thinking,” said Plato, “is the soul talking to itself.”