100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

Love that.

This is a theme we come back to in these Notes—specifically in John Eliot’s Overachievement and The Now Habit.

In Overachievement, Eliot tells us: “I have found that the top players in every field think differently when all the marbles are on the line. Great performers focus on what they are doing, and nothing else… They are able to engage in a task so completely that there is no room left for self- criticism, judgment, or doubt; to stay loose and supremely, even irrationally, self-confident; to just step up and do what they’re good at, concentrating only on the simplest nature of their performance.”

Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit is an extraordinary book. If you experience challenges with procrastination, I highly recommend it. He uses the same metaphor of walking over the board. Fact is, if you’re focused on all the things that can go WRONG with a project, odds are you’re going to be paralyzed.

Here’s how Fiore puts it: “To better understand how you learned to procrastinate, I invite you to use your imagination and to accept for a few minutes a metaphor in which the test, job, or task in your life is to walk a board. Situation A. The task before you is to walk a solid board that is thirty feet long, four inches thick, and one foot wide. You have all the physical, mental, and emotional abilities necessary to perform this task. You can carefully place one foot in front of the other, or you can dance, skip, or leap across the board. You can do it. No problem. Take a minute to close your eyes, relax, and imagine yourself in that situation. Notice how you feel about this task. Are you scared or blocked in any way? Do you feel any need to procrastinate? Fear of failing or making a mistake cannot be an issue here, but you might find that you delay starting out of a need to assert your independence and to resist being asked to do even a simple task such as walking a board. Situation B. Now imagine that the task is just the same, to walk a board thirty feet long and one foot wide, and you have the same abilities; only now the board is suspended between two buildings 100 feet above the pavement. Look across to the other end of the board and contemplate beginning your assignment. What do you feel? What are you thinking about? What are you saying to yourself? Take a moment to notice how your reactions in this situation differ from those you had in situation A. Notice how rapidly your feelings about the task change when the height of the board changes and the consequences of falling are greater.”

So… What are you focused on?

If you’re finding yourself all freaked out and procrastinating, see if you can change your focus from the *results* of your project to simply being fully engaged in what you’re up to!

As we learned in our Notes on the Bhagavad Gita, “The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.”

“Intention Deficit Disorder.”

Love it. :)

What are you up to? What are your goals and what plans have you developed to achieve them?

Get clear and go rock it, yo! Don’t want to fall into the dreaded Intention Deficit Disorder, now do we?! :)

Are you feeling depressed? Know that, as Chandler says here, it’s *impossible* to work with a definite sense of purpose and be depressed at the same time.

As we know, happy people have goals and projects! I’ve quoted this passage from Sonja Lyubomirsky A LOT. But, I’m gonna do it again b/c it brings the point home so nicely: “In 1932, weighed down by the sorrows and agonies of his self-absorbed and aimless clients, an Australian psychiatrist named W. Béran Wolfe summed up his philosophy like this: ‘If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.’ He was right. People who strive for something personally significant, whether it’s learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project.”

What’s YOUR project?

“Creation” and “reaction.” I never knew they had the exact same letters in them. Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to slip out of one and into the other! :)

As you know if you’ve read many of these Notes, moving from a reacting Victim into a proactive Creator is a H.U.G.E. part of what Optimal Living is all about.

Where are you hanging out these days?!

What a great line: “The greater part of courage is having done it before.”

Emerson also tells us (see Notes): “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.”

Plus: “Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do.”

And: “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”

Powerful stuff.

So, what are you afraid of?

Know that, as Chandler says: “Fear of doing it can only be cured by doing it.”

And, of course, go do it! :)

This is Big.

Chandler used to work for a newspaper and shares stories about the deliberate efforts of the crew to feature *the* most shocking stuff. Unfortunately, that’s what sells. But let’s not pretend that just because it’s so heavily featured in our news outlets that it’s a fair description of what’s really going on in the world.

So, let’s be a little more discriminating about what we put into our minds, eh?

And, remember this: “Make your own news. Be your own breaking story. Don’t look to the media to tell you what’s happening in your life. Be what’s happening.”

Optimism. As you know by this stage, it’s Principle #1 to Optimal Living 101.

This reminds me of Alan Cohen’s great Idea in his equally great Why Your Life Sucks (see Notes): “Imagine two lawyers in a courtroom inside your head. One is arguing for your possibilities and you achieving your goals. The other is arguing for your limits and why you don’t deserve what you want. Who will win? The lawyer whom you pay the most. The way you pay these lawyers, however, is not with money; it is with your attention.”

Cohen has another great Idea from that book that’s worth sharing here as well: “Your real enemies are the self-defeating thoughts, paltry expectations, and beliefs that you must live at less than full throttle. You will experience as much pain as you are willing to accept. You do have control over how much you hurt. Pain happens; suffering is optional. You can choose thoughts that bring you relief rather than imprisonment. To find your freedom, stand at the doorway of your mind and monitor your thoughts. Notice which ones lift you and which ones drag you down. Then, like a bouncer at an exclusive party, admit only those on the invitation list and send the others back where they came from. Fate is not a net cast over you by capricious fortune; it is a garden you cultivate by the thoughts you attend to. Shift your attention and you will shift your life.”

Here’s to hiring the Optimist Lawyer and her friend the Optimist Bouncer. :)

Love that image!!

Reminds me of Rule Number 6 from The Art of Possibility (see Notes): “Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: “Peter,” he says, “kindly remember Rule Number 6,” whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by an hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: “Marie, please remember Rule Number 6.” Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for the third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: “My dear friend, I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?” “Very simple,” replies the resident prime minister. “Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so g—damn seriously.” “Ah,” says his visitor, “that is a fine rule.” After a moment of pondering, he inquires, “And what, may I ask, are the other rules?” “There aren’t any.””

Hah!

Are you taking yourself a little too seriously?

If so, lighten up and fly will ya?! :)

This is a REALLY, REALLY Big Idea.

Seriously. It’s hard to overstate how Big it is.

Are you worried about something right now?

See if you can shift that worry into constructive action by asking yourself what you can DO about it! And then, of course, do it! :)

I love the way Dale Carnegie puts it in his classic How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (see Notes): “George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: ‘The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.’ So don’t bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking—and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth—and one of the best.”

And, perhaps my favorite wisdom on this subject is from David Reynolds’ AWESOME book Constructive Living (see Notes) where he says that, regardless of how we’re feeling, the most empowering question we can ask is: “Now what needs to be done?”

He tells us: “The mature human being goes about doing what needs to be done regardless of whether that person feels great or terrible. Knowing that you are the kind of person with that kind of self- control brings all the satisfaction and confidence you will ever need. Even on days when the satisfaction and confidence just aren’t there, you can get the job done anyway.”

And, here’s a little more practical mojo from Chandler to help us rock it: “I once came up with a system for action that helped turn my worrying habits completely around. I would list the five things that I was worried about-perhaps they were four projects at work and the fifth was my son’s trouble he was having with a certain teacher. I would then decide to spend five minutes on each problem doing something, anything. By deciding this, I knew I was committing myself to 25 minutes of activity. No more. So it didn’t feel at all overwhelming.”

In Constructive Living, David Reynolds puts it this way: “Behavior wags the tail of feelings… We do, then we feel.”

To be clear, this isn’t simply a pom pom self-help pick-me-up. It’s actually one of the 12 scientifically-proven ways to boost our happiness described by Sonja Lyubomirsky in her great book The How of Happiness. She tells us to “Act like a happy person.”

Try it out. Next time you’re feeling the funk, see if you can snap out of it long enough to run a little experiment. Get up from whatever you’re doing, shake yourself out and ask yourself, “What would a super happy version of me do right now?”

And then, of course, DO IT. Stick with it for 10-15-30 minutes and lemme know how that goes.