100 Ways to Motivate Yourself by Steve Chandler

#26 Act like a hero - We need heroes in our lives. They are not a sign of weakness, they are a source of strength "Without heroes, we are all plain people and we don't know how far we can go" - Bernard Malamud.

Heroes show us what is possible for a human being is able to accomplish, therefore are very useful for anyone interested in self motivation. You don't have to have just one hero, choose a number of them. Put their pictures up. Become an expert in their lives. Collect books about them. Let your heroes lives inspire you. They're only people like we are. 

What distinguishes them from us is their great level of self motivation. To passively adore them is an insult to our potential. Instead of looking up to our heroes, it's much more beneficial to look into them.

Watch and listen to Stan Lee on The Late Show in 1992 "If you write well for children, they will learn those words" - Stan Lee 1922 - 2018

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself by Steve Chandler
Is packed with techniques for breaking down negative barriers and pessimistic thoughts that prevent you from fulfilling your goals and dreams. It's easy to get stuck in a humdrum life and only fantasize about what "could have been."

Motivational speaker Steve Chandler helps you change that way of thinking to what "will be." His ideas will help you create an action plan for living out your vision, it is one of the simplest of them all and a great place to start for anyone looking to make small changes to get more out of life.

Listen to 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself by Steve Chandler

Action is required, goals are not enough, you have to take Action...

1. Create a Vision
Create a vision of who you want to be and then live into that picture as if it's already true. You create it; you don't wait until you receive it. You can make it up. I'm going to be the number #1 box office star in all of Hollywood - Arnold Schwarzenegger

2. Tell a True Lie
Make up a lie about how great you are to make yourself sound unbelievably wonderful. Think of a picture of who you want to be. Without that picture, you can't live up to that self.

3. Leave your Comfort Zone
Our society encourages us to seek comfort. And yet only challenge will test our skills and make us better. Only challenge and the self motivation to engage that challenge will transform us. And every challenge we face creates a more skilful self. Look for challenges to motivate yourself. It's up to you to notice you’re stuck in a comfort zone. It's up to you to break free from it and fly away.

4. Find your key
The Master Key to Riches by Napoleon Hill is nothing more or less than the self-discipline necessary to take complete full control of your own mind. Remember the only thing you have complete control is your own mental attitude. Maybe the hill book is not your "key" but you'll find your own instruction book if you look for it, it's out there, waiting for you.

Watch and listen to Napoleon Hill discuss sex transmutation and the emotion of sex, the most powerful of all emotions and nature's great creative instrument with which all species of living things are perpetuated.

Time stamp 53:17

5. Plan your work
When you’re too depressed or when you’re too upset to start something new. But then that's the perfect time to learn life's important rule. The rule is the transmutation of those negative emotions through "definitely planned work." Definitely planned work is the path to self motivation after you create your vision of who you want to be. Definitely planned work contains the power of PURPOSE. One hour of planning saves three hours of execution. It is impossible to work passionately with a sense of purpose and feel depressed at the same time. Successfully planned work will motivate you to do more and more than you ever thought possible.

6. Move your goal posts
Most people don't realize the reason they’re not getting what they want in life is because their major goals are too small and too vague. And therefore have no power. Your major goal will not be reached if it fails to excite your imagination. What really moves you is to set a large and specific POWER goal. A power goal is a DREAM that drives you. People that create power goals are living on PURPOSE. They know what their up to in life. You know you had a power goal by observing its effect on you. It's not what a goal is that's important, it's what it does.

7. Dribble with your other hand
It's not that you can't, it's that you haven't. You need to start reprogramming your habits of thinking. You can think optimistically if you build it up slowly one thought at a time. i.e. with small persistent incremental victories.

8. Play your character 
How you act is who you become. We can get energy and motivation by doing the character who we want to be. We can become that character if we practice being that character all the time.

9. Don't just do something, sit there
Sit quietly and do absolutely nothing. Be alone for a long time all by yourself. Sitting in silence allows your true dream in life to take shape and clarity. In life today, your either living your dream or someone else’s. And unless you give your dreams the time and space it needs to express itself, you'll live the better part of your life living the dreams of other people.

10. Use the right chemicals 11:26
Use the chemicals that already exist in your system when you laugh, sing, and dance, hug someone. When you’re having fun, your body chemistry changes. Once you make a job fun, you solved the problem of self motivation.

11. Leave high school
In high school we become fearing about what others think of us. Our mission in life became not being embarrassed. We were afraid to look bad, so we made a point not to take risks. Most people designed their entire lives based on what other people think of them. But we can leave that habit behind. Emerson: "Why should the way I feel depend on the thought in someone else's head?"

12. Lose face
You can create a self that doesn't care about what other people think. You can motivate yourself by leaving the painful self consciousness of high school behind. Show me a guy who is afraid to look bad and I can show you a guy you can beat every time.

13. Sing without feeling
Become a performer. Act like you feel like you want to feel. "We do not sing because we're happy. We're happy because we sing." If you want to be happy, find the happiest song you know and sing it. It works.

14. Kill your television
If you’re watching too much television, you might find it useful to ask this question. Which side of the glass do you want to live on? When you watching television, you're watching other people do what they love to do for a living. Those people are on the best side of the glass because they're having fun and you're passively watching them have fun. They're getting money and you're the one paying. "I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go to the other room to read a book."

15. Read yourself a story
Abraham Lincoln would read the newspaper everyday aloud. He discovered that he remembered twice as much if he read aloud than if he read it silently and he remembered twice as long of a time.

16. Get on your death bed
Many of us keep pretending that our game has no end. We plan to do great things someday when we feel like it. Confronting our own death doesn't have to wait until we run out of life. In fact being able to vividly imagine our last hours on our death bed creates a paradoxical sensation.
The feeling of being born all over again and that's the first step of self motivation.

17. Be lazy to begin with
"There isn't any job that can't be handled if you break it down into small pieces" - Henry Ford. When you break a job down, remember to allow yourself some laziness in the beginning. Because it isn't important how fast you're doing it, what's important is that you ARE doing it. The irony is, the slower you start something, the faster you'll finish. When you first think about doing something hard and overwhelming, you're mostly aware of how you don't want to do it at all. In other words, the mental picture you have of doing the activity fast and furiously is not a happy picture so you think of ways to avoid doing the job all together. Thinking about starting slowly is easy. And doing it slowly allows you to actually start doing it. Therefore it gets finished.

18. Leave your friends
Stay away from so call friends who don't support your goals. When you're in a conversion with a pessimist possibilities seems to have a way of disappearing and a sense of cynicism. Remember, cynics do not create. Everyone knows that enthusiasm is contagious. And being in a conversation with an optimist opens us up to more and more of life's possibilities.

19. Plan you game
Design your own life game plan. Let the game respond to you rather than the other way around. Act on the crucial difference between CREATING and RESPONDING.

20. Find your inner Einstein
The next time you see a picture of Albert Einstein, realize that's actually you. Every human has the capacity of genius. To experience Einstein's creative level of thinking all you have to do is commit to using your imagination. This is sometimes a difficult recommendation for grown ups to follow. Grown ups become using their imagination for only one thing, worrying. Grown ups visualize worst case scenarios all day long. All their energy for visualization is channelled into colourful pictures of what can go wrong. Worrying is a MISUSE of the imagination. What people don't comprehend is that the human imagination was designed for better things. People who use their imagination to create often achieve things that worriers never dream of achieving. Even if the worriers have much higher IQ(s). Dreaming is the design stage of creating the future. Imagine yourself living a motivated life.

21. Feel good first
Most people think they'll feel good once they reach some goal. They think happiness is OUT THERE somewhere. The problem with feeling good about yourself until you hit a goal is that it might never happen. By linking happiness to something you don't have yet, you’re denying yourself the power to create it in the moment. Your happiness is your birth right. It shouldn't depend on you ACHIEVING something. Start by claiming it and using it to make your journey fun all the way and not just at the end.

22. Run toward your fear
The world's best kept secret is that on the other side of your fear there's something safe and beneficial there waiting for you. If you work through even a small fear, you'll increase your confidence in your ability to create your life. "Fear kills more people than death. Death kills us but once and we usually don't even know it. But fear kills us over and over again. Subtle at times and brutal at other times." The rush we get after running through the waterfall of fear is the most energizing feeling in the world. If you're ever in an under motivated mood, find something you fear and do it. And watch what happens.

23. Just be unexpected
Most people don't see ourselves as creative, but we all are. The reason is we associate being creative as being "original." But that's not the case. Being creative has nothing to do with originality, but it has to do with being "unexpected." If you’re willing to accept that you are creative, you can start coming up with all these different "unexpected" ways of answering all the problems life throws at you.

24. Create your relationship
"We are each angels with only one wing, so we can only fly embracing each other." We can't create our truest selves without creating relationships in the process. Relationships are everywhere. In relationships, most of us think with our emotions, not our minds. Don't think with your feelings though. Think with your mind and you'll be able to create the relationships you want in your life. They just don't "happen" to you.

25. Be where you are
Most of us don't ever focus. We're constantly feel this type of psychic chaos because we're always thinking about too many things at once. Focus on what you want and it will come into you life. Focus on being a happy and motivated person and that's who you will be. FOCUS.

26. Act like a hero

27. Accept your will power
Lot of people say they don't have will power. But if you think you don't have will power, you’re under minding your own success. Everyone has will power. To be listening to this program you got to have will power. The first step in developing your will power is to attempt its existence. The 2nd step is to know that your will power is like a muscle in your arm is yours to develop. You’re in charge of making it strong or let it become weak. Will power is not strengthened by random external circumstances. Will power is an inside game. Make a promise to yourself to be clear and truthful about your own will power. It's always there.

28. Say "No" to yourself
A lot of people are afraid of the word "discipline" but the root of the word "discipline" is the word "disciple." When your self disciplined, you simply decided in the matters of the will to become your own "disciple." Once you make that decision, your life's adventures becomes more interesting. You see yourself as a stronger person. You start to gain your own SELF RESPECT. "Self respect is the fruit of discipline. The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say 'no' to oneself." - Abraham J Heschel. "When we say no to temptation, the power of that 'temptation' passes into our will power." - Emerson. We should do 2 things everyday that we don't want to do. By doing this, we become more aware of our will power.

29. Make new word connections
If you associate the word "will power" as harsh punishment you'll weaken your resolve to build it. To increase your resolve, you need to think about "new word connections." e.g. weight lifters think failure is success. Be more aware of the language you use and guide that language to more personal power.

30. De-program yourself
If you watch/listen to news programs on a regular basis, you belong to a very hypnotic cult. You need to be de-programmed. Start by altering how you listen to the media. Program out all the negative and cynical thoughts that you now allow to flow into your mind unchecked when you hear the news, once you become better at factoring out all the negative media, make your own news. Be your own breaking story.

31. Open the present
Practice being awake in the present moment, make the most of your awareness of this moment, don't live in the past unless you like guilt. Don't live in the future unless you like fear. Just stay focused on today. Watch what happens to your motivation.

32. Serve and grow rich
You can motivate yourself by increasing the flow of money into your life. Most people are even embarrassed to think this way. They don't want to think and grow rich because they'll be thought of as being greedy. They believe to make money you have to take it away from someone else. Or they don't want to come across as being obsessed with money. You know who are the people that are really obsessed with money? People who think they don't have enough. They obsess of money all day long. It's in their family discussions, it's in their minds at night, it becomes a destructive part of their relationships during the day. "Our first duty in life is not to be poor" - George Bernard Shaw.

The road to not being poor always travels through your professional relationships. The more you serve those relationships, the more productive you'll become and the more money you'll make. Allow yourself to link financial well being with your increase compassion for others. If I live in poverty, how much love and attention can I give my children or to my fellow humans. How much help can I be to others if I'm always worrying about being in debt?

33. Imitate Colombo
In your professional life, always be CURIOUS. When you meet with someone think of yourself as a detective. Ask questions. By asking questions in your relationships, your already creating the relationship. Your already self motivated, your not waiting for the other person to make it happen. Just one more thing - Colombo 😊

34. Give away some power
Motivate yourself by giving someone else the ideas for self motivation. You can have any experience you want in life, simply by giving away that experience to someone else. It's called "Instant Karma." If you want to be motivated, shift your inspiration to someone else. Point out their strengths. Offer encouragement and support. Watch what it does for you.

35. Talk to yourself
Don't be nervous talking to yourself. We associate it with 'insanity'. But Plato said, "Thinking was the soul talking to itself." There is no one better to talk to than yourself if you really want to get things worked out. No other person has enough information about your problems. No one knows your skills and capabilities better. We get our creative thinking going each morning by asking ourselves 2 questions. 1. What's good in my life? 2. What is there still to be done? Because thought always proceeds action, talking to yourself is a proven way to get motivated.

36. Schedule your comebacks
Progress toward your goals is never going to be a straight line, It's always going to be a wavy line. You'll go up and come down a little. Two steps forward and one step back. Now most people will get discouraged when they slide a step back after the two steps forward, they think they're failing. But they really haven’t they simply in step with the natural rhythm of progress. Now once you understand this rhythm, you can look ahead on your calendar to refresh, renew, and recover. Schedule your comeback while you're still on top. Schedule a block of time to get away. Even to get away from what you love. Because coming back is going to be that much more exciting when you've been renewed.

37. Live you're true life
"When you say you fear death, you're really saying you've not lived you're true life." This fear cloaks the world in silent suffering. How do you know what you're true life is? How do you know how to live it? First, find out what makes you happy and start doing that. e.g. if writing makes you happy, start writing. Don't just wait until something is offered to you. Be proactive about your happiness. There is no goal better than this one. To know as you lie on your death bed that you've lived you're true life. You did what it was that made you happy.

38. Get up on the right side of the bed
Get up on the right side of your brain. Dreams, and energy, and creative insight comes from the right side of the brain. Linear, logical, short term, and short sighted thinking comes from the left side of the brain. The best explanation for how whole brain thinking surpasses just one sided thinking is in a book called, "Frankenstein's castle." - Wilson. We have more control in drawing vital energy and creative ideas from right brain then we ever realized. And what stimulates the right brain the most is a high sense of purpose. If you had to carry a bag of sand around town, you're left brain would say it was boring. But if you had to carry your daughter that weighed the same as the bag of sand, then you would carry her with more energy. That energy comes from the right side of the brain. Purpose gives you that energy. Self motivation increases when the left brain gets good at telling the right brain what to do.

39. Use your magic machine
Most people wait for an external crisis to finally kick in their whole brain thinking. But the leads to a life of reaction other than creation. The 3 best ways to activate whole brain thinking are through 1. Goal setting. 2. Joyful work. 3. Revitalizing play. So rather wait for some external crisis to appear, you can create an internal challenge of your own. Goals and Games. Goals and games motivate you more than anything else in the world.

40. Get your stars out
"Make sure you get your stars out." Let the universe that is in you shine freely. Don't try too hard to force things, just get your stars out and let them shine.

41. Be a finisher
Do you want to know where fatigue really comes from? It doesn't come from working too hard. All the research shows that fatigue comes from not finishing your work. "Nothing is so fatiguing than the hanging on of an uncompleted task." - William James. The best way to change your belief system is to change the truth about you. To believe that you are a good finisher, you have to build a personal record of finishing tasks. Each day make a list of small tasks and finish them. We motivate ourselves by finishing things.

42. Invent games
Whatever it is that you have to do, whether it's a major project at work a huge cleaning job at home, turning it into a game will always give you higher energy and self motivation.

43. Interact
There's a huge difference between active relaxation and passive relaxation. Active relaxation refreshes and restores the mind. It keeps it flexible and toned for thinking. Great thinkers have known this secret for a long time. Some people use to paint to relax, others play the violin. They can relax one side of the brain while stimulating the other. When they return to work, their mind is sharper than ever. Most of use simply deaden the mind when we want to relax. We rent mindless videos, read magazines, we drink, we smoke, we eat until we're foggy and blotted. The problem with this form of relaxation is that we dulls our creativity and it makes it hard to come back into consciousness. But when we find ways to link thinking into our relaxation, we become players in the game of life and not just spectators.

44. Live a whole life today
"Make each day you're masterpiece." While other people focus on some special day in the future, you should always focus on today. Practice sessions are every bit as important as any championship game. There is no reason not to make TODAY the proudest day of your life. Today is the macrocosm of you're entire life. It's your whole life in miniature. You got eternity in the palm of your hand. Life is now. Life is not later on. And the more we hypnotize ourselves into thinking that we have all the time in the world to do what we want to do, the more we sleep walk and the more we miss life.

45. Welcome your problems
Every solution has a problem. You can't have one without the other. So why do we say we hate problems. Why do we claim we want a hassle free existence? Deep down, where our wisdom lives, we know that problems are not to be feared. Problems are simply tough games for the athletes of the mind. And true athletes always want to get a game going. If you learn to love the opportunities your problems present, then your motivational energy will always rise. Every solution has a problem.

46. Drive a library
One of the greatest opportunities you improve yourself lies in your drive time using audio tapes. Use audio tapes to educate and motivate yourself while you drive. If we leave what we think about to chance or to an R-rate disk jockey then we lose a large measure of control of our own mind. Audio learning is one of the surest ways to learning from your subconscious mind. It's one of best ways to design an action orientated belief system. The kind you need to inspire on going self motivation.

47. Rewind your thoughts
Perhaps you noted some idea in this program or book you've read that you want to hold on to. Even a single phrase, if you place it prominently in your home or your office, can have a huge impact in your life. So write things down, put things up. Write down what motivates you and put it up where you can see it.

48. Make yourself up
One of the ways to get started creating goals and action plans is just start making them up like you did when you were a kid. Think of creating in simpler terms than that. Think of creating as something that all human beings do very easily. Always think of what you have to do as EASY and it will be - Émile Coué

49. Get small
Most people participating in the free enterprise system have been convinced in setting large and specific long range goals for themselves. Career goals, yearly goals, and monthly performance goals are always on the mind with a person with ambition. But many people over look all together the power of small goals. Goals set during the day that give energy to the day and a sense of achieving a lot of small wins along the way. By increasing your conscious use of small objectives, you'll see the larger objectives coming into reality much faster than you thought they would.

50. Get out of the box
All of us tend to look at our challenges from inside a box. We take what we've done in the past and put it in front of our eyes and then envision what we call "the future." But you see, that restricts our future. With that kind of restricted view, the best the future can possibly be is a new and better past. Great motivational energy occurs when we get out of that box and realize that the possibilities for creative ideas are infinite. To create the best possible future for yourself, don't try to look at it through a box containing your own past. Create the future from nothing.

51. Advertise to yourself
Losers visualize the penalties of failure and winners visualize the rewards of success. Without advertising our goals to ourselves, we can lose sight of them all together. Draw 4 circles on the blank piece of paper in the beginning of the day. The 4 circles represent goals for my day, my month, my year, and my life. Inside each circle, write down what I want. It can be a dollar figure, it can be anything. And the goals can change from day to day. By writing the goals down, I'm like an airline pilot with a map. I'm orienting my mind to what I'm up to in life. I'm reminding myself of what I really want. If I don't make a map, basically I'm saying "just take me anywhere."

52. Don't stop thinking
Motivation comes from thought. Everything we do begins with a thought. And when we quit thinking, we lose the motivation to act. We eventually slip into pessimism and the pessimism leads to even less thinking. So a downward spiral of negativity and pessimitivity starts to feed on each other. Pessimists thinking so negativity about doing the whole thing perfectly that they end up doing nothing and become passive. The optimist on the other hand always does something, they always take some type of action, always feel like some type of progress is made. Pessimists continually use their imagination to visualize worse case scenarios and then concluding that those scenarios are so hopeless, they don't take any action. Therefore, pessimism always leads to passivity. Imagination should be used not to escape from reality, but to create it. Start a habit to yourself in start saying no to negativity. When negative thoughts start forming in your mind, which it will happen, even for optimists, don't stop thinking. Real creative thinking is going to lead to optimism. And optimism is always self-motivating.

53. Debate your dark side
Negative thinking is something we all do. The difference is that the optimist becomes a "good debater." You can learn to debate your pessimistic thoughts. If you catch yourself being pessimistic, build a case for the optimistic view. Pretend you’re an attorney and your job is to prove the pessimist in you is wrong.

54. Make use of trouble
We hear stories of bad events, when looking back, were strokes of great fortune. A person that breaks their leg skiing meets a doctor in the hospital, falls in love and marries that person. What seems horrible becomes a great event in their life. "Every problem carries a gift inside it." Now by choosing to make use of what seems to be a "bad event," by asking yourself "how can I use this?" "what might be good about this?" You can get to the gift inside the problem a lot more quickly.

55. Learn to brainstorm by yourself
Put a goal on the top of a page and put numbers 1 through 20 on that page and begin your brainstorming session. List 20 ideas. They don't have to be well thought out or reasonable. Just make sure you flow. Your only objective is to have 20 ideas out in a certain amount of time. If you do this for one week, you will end up with 100 ideas. They will probably not all be usable, but who cares. You’re beginning the process and you'll have more than you started out with.

56. Create your own voice
You can create your own voice by practicing. Use audio cassettes in your car and sing out loud, even when you don't feel like singing. Practice. Force your practice. The point is don't let your feelings ruin your life. Keep thinking. Strategy. Plan. You can create anything you want. You can even create your own voice.

57. Live on the frontier
The information age is our new frontier. Employers are not as interested in job history. They are more interested in current capabilities. Times have changed. It's all about what you can do now, not what you have done. Keeping up with technology needn't be challenging, confusing or intimidating, watch and listen to The Internet Revolution and become more tech savvy and up-to-date with the latest digital trends from Barclays Digital Wings.

58. Replace your habits
Self-motivation is mentally harder to achieve when we're held back by mentally bad habits. But here's the catch. Bad habits can't be gotten rid of because they exist for good reasons. Their there to do something for us even if that something ends up being self destructive. Down deep, even a bad habit is trying to make us operate better. That's why bad habits has to be transformed and built upon. They can't be killed. They can't be eliminated. What we're trying to do is "habit replacement" and where bad habits lives, replacement is the only thing that works. e.g. running replaces smoking because of the breathing. Subconsciously you don't even think a habit is bad because it's fulfilling a perceived need. The way to strengthen yourself is to identity the need and build on it. Honor the need by replacing the current habit with one that is healthier and more effective for you.

59. Paint your day
Self-motivation is much more difficult to achieve when we're held back mentality by certain bad habits. When you wake up try picturing your day as a blank painter's canvas. Ask yourself, "Who’s the artist today? Me or blind circumstance?" If you choose to be the artist, how do you want to paint your day?

60. Swim laps under water
Prepare big challenges by swimming laps under water. Build your brain by building your lungs. Sometimes all you need is the air that you breathe just to motivate yourself. Going for a run or a walk or simply deep breathing gives the brain the fuel it feeds on and motivation comes easy.

61. Get some coaching
Get someone that can stand back and watch you objectively. Ask someone you admire to watch you and coach you for a while. Let them tell you what they see. It's a courageous thing for you to do and it will always lead to growth.

62. Leave home
You do things that are holding you back because it feels like home. When you do these things, you do them because that's what your comfortable doing so you make yourself right at home doing them. As they say, there's no place like home. Home can be an ugly place if it's not kept up and consciously made beautiful. Home can be a dark, damp, prison, smelling of bad habits and laziness. But we think we're safe there. However when we inspect the worn out house more closely, the safety we think we're experiencing is pure self limitation. You might want to identify the habits that keep you trapped. Identify what you decided is your final personality. Understand that it might be a hasty construction built only to keep you safe from risk and growth. Once you done that, you can leave home. You can get the blue prints out and create a home you really want.

63. Perform rituals
As you listen, you might notice that ACTION is always the key. Doing something always leads to results. An object in motion stays in motion. One great ritual for activating the brain is walking. When you have problems in your life that seems too overwhelming but use the ritual of walking and take the problem out for a long, long walk. Time and time again during the course of the walk something comes out of nowhere. Some idea for an action that would solve the problem. Try to make a ritual for yourself. Anything that will act as a self starter. Rituals will start an action before you feel like getting into the action. Rituals always override your built in laziness. They always get you motivated in a predictable, controllable way.

64. Start your life over
If you catch yourself thinking you’re too old to start something you want to do please recognize that you’re now listening to the pessimistic voice inside of you. It's the voice of a liar. Remind the voice of all the people that started their lives over again at any age they wanted to. Don't listen to the voice inside, you can start your life over right now, watch this before you feel pressure - by Jay Shetty.

65. Keep all your promises
One way to motivate yourself is to keep some usual promise. To go to someone I cared about either personally or professionally and make a real big promise to them. Something that takes all the creativity and effort I had to make it happen. Although some of these promises I made weren't kept, it's not really an intelligent way to self-motivate. Instead make commitments to other people, but know that these commitments are ones you know you can keep. But to motivate yourself, replace promising to others to promising and setting goals to yourself. The power of goals is that they can be outrageous and huge. They can be really wild possibility thinking. Without setting large goals internally, you will just end up living a life of what you think you HAVE TO do.

66. Give some luck away
You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. There is one way to make sure you can't get repaid and that's to do something for someone who won't know who did it. You can create LUCK in your life by giving it away.

67. Draw your universe
You can create your own goal directed universe by using the 4 circle goal setting discussed earlier. Label the 1st circle "Life long dream." Circle 2 label "My year." 3rd circle "My month." Circle 4 "My day." Each circle if done successfully guarantees the success of the next circle. If you hit your daily goal every day, your monthly goal will be hit. And similar for month to year, year to life. The system itself is not the motivator. It is your understanding of your responsibility to be a creative planet that's what the motivator is.

68. Get up a game
Competition is great for motivation. Competition teaches a valuable lesson that no matter how good you think you are, there's always someone else better than you. That's the lesson in humility that everybody needs. And it teaches you by trying to beat somebody else, you reach for more inside of you. Trying to beat somebody else puts the game by into life. If it is done optimistically it gives energy to both competitors. It teaches sportsmanship and it gives you a beach mark for measuring you own growth. So in your life, let the games begin. Have fun winning and losing. When someone has insulted you or under rated you, don't just get even, get better. Use your victory, not to hurt them, but to create you.

69. Turn your mother down
We first learn how to explain the world to ourselves from our parents, and more specifically our mothers. This can be a disaster if the child has a pessimistic mother. The disaster can only be temporary. Optimism can be learned at any age. It's not self motivating to blame mom if you’re a pessimist. Blaming others is never self motivating because it strengthens the belief that your life is being shaped by forces outside yourself. Love your mom. But change yourself.

70. Face the sun
"When you face the sun, the shadows always fall behind you" - Helen Keller. This is her way of recommending optimistic thinking. When you look at what you face grows in your life, what you ignore falls behind you. If you turn and only look at the shadows, they become your life.

71. Look inside
Most of us wait to find out who we are from impressions and opinions we get from other people. "Oh do you really think I'm good at that..." If we get positive feedback, that's great. It helps build us up. But your journey should be internal. Travel deeper and deeper inside to find out your own potential. Your potential is your true identity. It only waits for self motivation to come alive.

72. Go to war
Research shows that during times of war suicide rates go down. We don't have to wait for something tragic; we don’t have to wait for a war to attack us from without. We can get the same vitality by challenging ourselves from within. "All battles are first won or lost in the mind." Joan of Ark. Ask yourself what would you do if you had only one year to live. How would I live differently? What exactly would I do? This exercise can reveal skills inside of you that you’re not using today.

73. Make small change
When practicing self motivation, it can be common that you get a lot of different type of mood swings. Sometimes you'll be on a real high on the idea of who you can be and set up to change yourself overnight. Then your old habits will pull you back to who you use to be and then you become demoralized. You have to eventually accept the idea that great things are created slowly. Great paintings, great buildings... So why can't you see that great people are also created slowly. So if you willing to see yourself as a MASTERPIECE in progress, then you'll love small changes. You'll be excited by a tiny thing you did differently today. You should celebrate because you’re moving in the direction of self creation.

74. Do something badly
Sometimes we don't do things because we not sure we cannot do them well. We feel we’re not "in the mood" or at the right energy level to do the task we have to, so we put it off or wait for inspiration to arrive. We're so afraid to do things until we're sure we’ll do them well, we don’t do anything. This is the source of all writers block by the way. "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly." If you’re not motivated to do something you know you need to do, just decide to do it badly. Add a little self deprecated humour. Be comically bad at what you’re doing. And then enjoy what happens to you once you’re in the process.

75. Be a visioneer
The principle of "Visioneering." You can’t do anything that you can’t picture yourself doing. Visioneering is just another word for picturing yourself. Once you make the picturing process conscious and deliberate, you begin to create the self you want to be.

76. Shine your light
Taking things lightly was the most spiritually advanced thing you can do to improve your effectiveness in life. After all, it's God's angels take themselves so lightly that they are able to fly. And if his angels take themselves that lightly, imagine how much more lightly he takes himself. Your own motivational level will always be lifted with humour. Anytime you’re stuck, ask yourself to take things lightly. Ask yourself to come up with some funny solutions. Laughter will destroy all limits to your thinking. When you’re laughing, you’re open to anything.

77. Be a list writer
Never hesitate to sit down with yourself and make lists. The more you write down what it is you want, the more you can dictate your own future. A goal gains power when you write it down and it gains MORE POWER every time you write it down. Now we're always looking for motivation in what others have written. But if you become a creative list maker, you'll learn how to motivate yourself by what you've written.

78. Be the change
Don't try to change other people. It doesn't work. You'll waste your life trying. We talk to our children for hours about how we think they should change. But children don't learn from what we say, they learn from what we do. By being what you want them to be, you can lead by inspiration. What you tell people to do often goes right by them. Who you are, doesn't. The change in you is contagious. When you yourself change, watch how the people around you change.

79. See the gold
In every circumstance, we can look for the gold or we can look for the filth. And what we look for, we'll find. Opportunities are like those subatomic quantum particles that come into existence only when they’re seen by an observer. Your opportunities will multiply when and only when you choose to see them.

80. Simplify
Why run a simple set of basic plays? It's hard to be aggressive when you’re confused. When you simplify your life, it gathers energy.

81. Pin life down
Countering moves is still countering. Enter a wrestling match with a plan. A serious of moves thought out ahead of time. A goal without an action plan is a day dream. Before any adventure, take time to plan. Let life respond to you. If you’re making all the first moves you'll be surprised at how often you can "pin life down."

82. Strengthen your purpose
Energy comes from purpose. If the left side of the brain tells the right side that there's a sufficient crisis, the right side sends energy and sometimes super human energy. That's why there's such a difference between people who set and achieve goals all day and people who just do whatever comes up whatever they feel like doing. To the first person, there's always added purpose. To the other, there is boredom and confusion. The two greatest robbers of energy. Because we are totally responsible for our own sense of purpose that also means that we're totally responsible for the energy in our lives.

83. Go on a news fast
"New Fast." Stop watching the news for a few weeks. If you go for a periods of time without listening to or reading the news, you'll notice an upswing in your optimism about life you’ll really feel a lift in energy. Your mind is yours to fill with whatever you want. The more you accept the responsibility of filling it, the easier it will be to build an optimistic and effective mind set.

84. Choose an action
When you find yourself worrying about something, always ask yourself an "action question." "What can I do about this right now?" And then do something. Any small thing. Anything that worries you should be acted on. Not just thought about. Even small actions starts to chase away your fears and put you back in control of creating what you want.

85. Be a thinker
There are 2 kinds of workers, the whiners and the thinkers. The whiners were often very smart, dedicated employees who worked long hours, but when they came into the presidents office it was always to complain. They great at finding fault with other managers and telling me what's wrong with our systems., but they are a drain on me because they so negative I end up trying to make them feel better, and after that, I’m depressed. The thinkers however had a different way of coming into the office with problems. The thinkers come to me with ideas. They see the same problems as the whiners see but they’ve already thought about possible solution. When you’re committed to self motivation, you'll follow into the realm of the thinker naturally. You'll be more valuable to your organisation and to yourself.

86. Choose enjoyment
There's a huge difference between "pleasure" and "enjoyment." And when we're absolutely clear about the difference, we can grow much faster toward who we want to be. What we do for pleasure, for example, routine sex, eating, drinking, all kinds of short term stuff, that's different than what we do for enjoyment. Enjoyment always involves the use of a skill and it always involves facing a challenge. Things like sailing, gardening, golfing, any kind of activity like that involving skills meeting a challenge results in enjoyment. People who get clear on the difference begin to know how to consciously put more enjoyment into their lives.

87. Read mystery novels
The person with the highest IQ ever measured recommends reading mystery novels. They are brain builders. The brain can be built as surely and as quickly as the muscles in the body. So the next time you feel like curling up with a good mystery, don't feel guilty. You might be doing the most productive thing you’ve done all day.

88. Express your thoughts
Go ahead and feel your feelings. But when it's time to talk, be thoughtful and express your thoughts.

89. Use your weaknesses
Make a list of your strengths and your weaknesses on separate pieces of paper. Place the list of strengths somewhere where you'll see it again because just looking at it will always pick you up. Now look at your list of so called weaknesses and study them for a while. Stay with it until you feel no shame or guilt about them. Allow them to become interesting characteristics instead of anything negative. Ask yourself how each characteristic can be useful to you. i.e. Arnold's accent became a strength. Now there isn't anything on your weakness list that can't be a strength for you if you think about it long enough.

90. Try becoming your problem
Whatever type of problem you’re facing, the most self motivational exercise I know of is to immediately say to yourself, "I'm the problem." Because once you see yourself as the problem, you can see yourself as the solution. By seeing ourselves as victims of our problems, we lose the power to solve them. To activate the power inside ourselves we need to take only 2 essential steps. 1. Own the problem. 2. Create the solution.

91. Inflate your goal
This self motivator can be used as an intellectual tool. Take a certain goal of yours and double it or triple it or multiply it by ten. And then ask yourself quite seriously what would you have to do to achieve that new goal. Remember, it’s just a self contained game not a promise to anybody else. But it is a game that's fun to play. Why? Because it works.

92. Come to your own rescue
1. You can't leave a place you’ve never been. 2. No one is coming. I use to believe I can run from all my freighting thoughts and beliefs about myself. But all that ever did was create deeper internal fears and conflicts. What I really needed was to get all my fears into the sunshine and demystify them. Once I systematically began to do that, I was able to dismantle the fears like bomb squad does to a bomb. Acceptance and full consciousness of those fears was the place I'd never been. Once I was in that place, I could leave. Now the notion that no one’s coming was more terrifying.

The Brandon’s showed me that could I be much happier much more effective if I valued independence and self-responsibility above dependency on someone else. So when you accept the idea that no one’s coming, it's actually a very powerful moment. It means that you’re enough. You can handle your problems yourself. You can grow. You can get strong. You can generate your own happiness. And paradoxically, from that position of independence truly great relationships can be built because they’re not based on dependency. They are not based on fear. They based on mutual independence and love. See how much better you are at self motivation once you’ve begun to celebrate the news that you’re enough.

93. Push your own buttons
Motivation never has to be accidental. Any form of motivation. A lot of people like to motivate themselves musically for example. But you don't have to wait for hours until a certain song comes on the radio that picks up your spirit. You can control what songs you hear. If there’s certain songs that always lifts you up, create a greatest motivational hits tape for yourself. You got much more control over your environment than you’ve realized. Learn how to push your own buttons.

94. Strengthen your rehearsal
The harder you are on yourself, the easier life is on you. There isn't anything life can challenge you with that you can't challenge yourself with in advance. You can set yourself up to succeed. If you have to make a presentation in front of someone who scares you, you can always rehearse it first in front of someone who scares you more. If you got something hard to do and you’re hesitant to do it, pick out something even harder and do that first. Watch what it does to your self-motivation going into the real challenge.

95. Improve your vision
"It's not what a vision is; it's what a vision does." So what does your vision do? Does it give you energy? Does it make you smile? When you’re tired, does it take you that extra mile? A vision should be judged by these criteria. The criteria of power and effectiveness. In other words, what does it do? What do you want to bring into being? If your vision isn't giving you energy then picture another one. Keep at it until you develop a vision that’s so colourful and so clear it puts you in action just to think about it.

96. Build your power base
The more awake you are, the more conscious you are, and the more you pay attention to how your own efforts at self-motivation are succeeding, the more powerful you'll become. Your knowledge of self-motivation is power in and of itself. Respect your knowledge and build on it.

97. Link truth to beauty
The best case for honesty is how beautiful it is. How clean and clear it makes the journey from current reality to the dream. Truth leads you to a more confident level in your relationships with others and with yourself. It diminishes fear; it increases your sense of personal mastery. Lies, half-truths, will always weigh you down. Where as truth will clear up your thinking and give you the energy and clarity needed for self motivation.

98. Take NO for a question
Ask the universe for what you want. Don't take NO for an answer. Take NO for a question. When you ask for something and it’s denied to you, imagine that the NO you heard is really the question, "Can't you be more creative than that?" Never accept NO at face value. Let rejection motivate you to get more creative.

99. Walk with Love and Death
Whenever I need to get through something, face something or create a courageous kind of action plan, I always take long walks. When I walk long and far enough a solution always appears. I eventually get oriented to the most creative course of action.

Andrew Weil in his book "Spontaneous Healing" says when you walk; the movement of your limbs is cross patterned. The right leg and left arm move forward at the same time then the left leg and right arm. This type of movement generates electrical activity in the brain that has a harmonizing influence on the central nervous system. A special benefit of walking that you don't necessary get from other kinds of exercise.

I call it "A Walk with Love." Because love and fear are opposites. Most people think love and hate are opposites but they’re not. The ultimate creativity occurs from the spirit of love. Love is always creative and fear is always destructive. And I called it a "A Walk with Death" because it is only the acceptance and awareness of my own death that gives my life the clarity it needs to be exciting. Take your own challenges out for a walk. Feel your self-motivation growing inside you. Feel the electricity in your brain. Feel it harmonize with your central nervous system. You'll soon know for a fact that you do have what it takes. You can walk courage into existence.

Watch Spontaneous Healing by Dr Andrew Weil a graduate of Harvard Medical School and internationally acclaimed author. He is one of the most skilled and important leaders in the field of health healing and integrative medicine, he wrote the number one bestseller spontaneous healing translated into over 20 languages and is the founder of The center for Integrative Medicine.


100. Buy yourself flowers
Buy yourself flowers and every time you look at them, let them remind you of how colourful your future is going to be. How fresh your thoughts are. How easy it is for you to honour yourself. How much power you have to make your environment beautiful. And how sweet the smell of the universe can be.