Page 95 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

definition of thinking was “the soul talking to itself.” If you really want to get

your life worked out, there is no one better to talk to than yourself. No other
person has as much information about your problems and no other person knows
your skills and capabilities better. And there’s no one else who can do more for
you than yourself.

A lot of people in the motivational and psychological professions
recommend affirmations. You choose a sentence to say, such as, “Every day in
every way I’m getting better and better,” and repeat it whether or not you think
it’s true. While affirmations are a good first step to reprogramming, I prefer
conversations. Conversations work faster.

The two most inspirational guidelines to productive self-conversational
exercises are in Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism and Nathaniel Branden’s
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. Seligman offers ways to dispute your own

pessimism and create the habit of optimistic thinking. Branden offers
provocative sentence stems for you to complete.

Rather than brainlessly parroting “I’m getting better and better” to myself, it
makes a longer-lasting impression when I logically argue the case and win. With
enough back-and-forth conversation, I can prove to myself that I am getting
better. Proof beats the parrot every time. It’s one thing to try to hypnotize myself
through repetition of words to accept something as true, and it’s quite another to
convince myself that it is true.

Branden suggests that we get our creative thinking going each morning by
asking ourselves two questions: 1) What’s good in my life? and 2) What is there
still to be done? Most people don’t talk to themselves at all. They listen to the
radio, watch TV, gossip, and fill up on the words and thoughts of other people
all day long. But it’s impossible to indulge in that kind of activity and also get
motivated. Motivation is something you talk yourself into.

65. Promise the moon

One frightening and effective way to motivate yourself is to make an
unreasonable promise—to go to someone you care about, either personally or
professionally, and promise that person something really big, something that will
take all the effort and creativity you’ve got to make happen.

When President John Kennedy promised that America would put a man on