100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

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 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.

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 skillful self. Look for challenges to motivate yourself. It's up to you to notice your stuck in a comfort zone. It's up to you to break free from it and fly away.

4. Find your key.
Book: "The Master Key to Riches" by Napoleon Hill. "The great master key to riches 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.

5. Plan your work. *
When your too depressed or when your 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 contained 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 their 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 it's effect on you. It's not was 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 elses. 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.
Use the chemicals that already exists in your system when you laugh, sing, dance, hug someone. When your 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 your 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 some 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 soul call friends who don't support your goals. When you're in a conversion with a pessimists 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 verus 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 comment 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 channeled into colorful 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 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 kill 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 your willing 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 and embarrass each other." We can't create our truest selves without creating relationships in the process. Relationships are everywhere. In relationship, most of 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 to you life. Focus on being a happy and motivated person and that's who you will be. FOCUS.

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 just plain people and we don't know how far we can go." 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 for 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 distinguish 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.

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, your 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 it's existence. The 2nd step is to know that your will power is like a muscle in your arm is yours to develop. Your 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 matter of the word to become your own "disciple." Once you make that decision, your life's adventures becomes more interesting. You see yourself as a different person. You start to gain your own SELF RESPECT. "Self respect is the fruit of discipline. The sense of dignity growths with the ability to say 'no' to oneself." - Abraham Hassel. "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." i.e. weight lifters think failure as success. Be more aware of the language you use and guide that language to more personal power.

30. Deprogram 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 be altering how you listen to the media. Program out all the negative and cynical thoughts that you 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 awareness of this moment. Don't live 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 though 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 serve those relationships, the more productive you'll become and the more money you'll make. Allow yourself to link your 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 give to others if I'm always worrying about being in debt.

33. Imitate 'Columbo'
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.

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 then yourself when 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 perceive 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 take the two steps back, they think they're failing. But they really hasn't. They really in sync 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 true 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. i.e. 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 lay in you're 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 you're 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 of 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 more 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 or a huge cleaning job a 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 than any championship game. There is no reason 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.
Ever 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 energizes will always rise. Remember, 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 cassette learning is one of the surest way 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 starting in making 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. The of creating is something that all human beings do very easily. "Always think of what you have to do as EASY and it will be."

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 maybe people over look all together the power of small goals. Goals set during the day that give energy to the day in 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 to 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 look at through a box containing your own past. Create the future from nothing.

51. Advertise to yourself.
Loser visualize the penalties of failures and winners visualize the rewards for 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 radar. I'm orient 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 optimists becomes a "good debater." You can learn to debate your pessimistic thoughts. If you catch yourself being pessimistic, build a case of the optimistic view. Pretend your an attorney and your job is to prove the pessimists 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 marry 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. Your 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 as job history. They are more interested in current capabilities. Times has changed. It's all about what you can do now, not what you have done.

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. i.e. 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, "Whose 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 fuels it needs to alive.

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 want 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 an ugly place if it's not kept up and consciously made beautiful. Home can be a dark, damp, prison. Smelling for bad habits and laziness. But we think we're safe there. However when we inspect the wore out house more closely, the safety we think we're experiencing is pure self limitation. You might want to identify the habits that keeps 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.
Ask 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 an self starter. Rituals will start an action before you feel like getting into the action. Rituals always override your build in laziness. They always get you motivated in a predictable, controllable way.

64. Start your life over. ****
If you catch yourself thinking your too old to start something you want to do please recognize that your not 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.

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 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 everyday, 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 more inside of you. Trying to beat somebody else puts the game by into life. If it is done optimistically it benefits both competitors. It teaches them 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. Try your mother down.
We first learn how to explain to world to ourselves from our parents, more especially 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 your a pessimists. Blaming others is never self motivating because it strengthens the belief that your life is being influenced by forces outside of 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 discover who we are from the impressions we get from other people. "Oh do you think I'm like that..." If we get positive feedback, that's great. It helps build us up. But ideally, 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 during times for war suicide rates go down. We don't to wait for something tragic. We don't have wait until we go to 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 your 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 eventually accept the idea that great things are created slowly. Great painting, great building. 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 your 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 that we are not "in the mood" or our energy levels is not are the right state to do that task that we have. So we put it off or wait for inspiration to arrive. We're so afraid to do things until we're sure we can do them well, we end up not doing anything. This is the source of all writers block btw. "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly." If your not motivated to do something you know you need to do, just decide to do it badly. Add a little self deprecated humor. Be comedic about what your doing. And then enjoy what happens to you once your in the process.

75. Be a visioneer.
The principle of "visioneering." You cannot do anything you cannot 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 that take themselves so lightly that they are able to fly. And if his angels takes themselves so lightly, imagine how lightly he takes himself. Your own motivational level will always be lifted with humor. Anytime your stuck, ask yourself to take things lightly. Ask yourself to look for some funny solutions. Laughter will destroy all limits to your thinking. When your laughing, your open to anything.

77. Be a list writer. ****
Never hesitate to site down and make lists. The more you write down what it is that you want, the more you can dictate your 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 in what we think they should do with their life. But children don't change 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 only available to a careful observer. Your opportunities will multiple 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 your 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 your making all the first moves you'll be surprised on 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 there's a sufficient crisis, the right side sends energy and sometimes super human energy. That's why there's a difference from people who set and achieve goals all day and people who just do whatever they feel like doing. The first person, there's always added purpose. To the other person, 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 we're totally responsible for the energy of our lives.

83. Go on a news fast.
"New fast." Stop watching the news for a few weeks. If you go for a period of time without listening to or reading the news, you'll notice an optimism and upswing upon your life and 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 it. Any small thing. Anything that worries you should be acted on. Not just thought about. Even small actions that starts to chase away your fears and put you back in control to what you want.

85. Be a thinker.
There are 2 kinds of workers, the whiners and the thinkers. The whiners are very smart, dedicated employees that worked long hours, but when they come into the presidents office it was always to complain. They are great at finding fault with other managers and pointing out what's wrong with the system. But they drain the president because they are so negative and it's hard to make them feel better. Then after that, the president is depressed. The thinkers however had a different way of coming to the office with problems. The thinkers come to the president with ideas. They see the same problems as the whiners but they already thought about possible solution. When your committed to self motivation, you'll follow into the realm of the thinker naturally. You'll be more valuable to your company and 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 faster in becoming who we want to be. What we do for pleasure, for example, routine sex, eating, drinking, all kind of short term stuff, that's different than what we do for enjoyment. Enjoyment always involve a 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 begins to know how to consciously put more enjoyment into their lives.

87. Read mystery novels.
The person with the highest IQ measured recommends reading mystery novels. They are brain builders. The brain can be built as surely and quickly as the muscles in the body. So the next time curling up to a good mystery, don't feel guilty. It might be the most productive thing you 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 weaknesses on separate pieces of paper. Place the list of strength somewhere where you'll see it again because just looking at it will 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 shape or guilt about them. Allow them to become interesting characteristics instead of something 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 list of weakness that can't be a strength if you think about it long enough.

90. Try becoming your problem. *
Whatever type of problem your facing, the most self motivational process that 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 yourself and double it or triple it or multiple it by ten. And then ask yourself quite seriously what would you have to do to achieve that new goal. Remember, this is just a self contained game and not a promise to anyone 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 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 needed to do was to get all my fears into the sunshine and demystify them. Once I systematically was able to do that, I was able to dismantle the fears like bomb squid does to a bomb. Acceptance and full conscious of those fears was the place I've never been. Once I was in that place, I could leave. The notion that no one is coming is more terrifying. You can much happier if you value independence and self-reliancy then depending on someone else. So when you accept the idea that no one is coming, it's actually that very powerful moment. It means you accepted that you are enough. You can actually handle 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 are not based on dependency. They are not based on fear. They are based on mutual independence and love. See how much better you are at self motivation once you begin to celebrate the news that you are 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 spirits. You can control what songs you hear. If there are certain songs that lifts you up, create a greatest hits motivation tape for yourself. You got much more control over your environment than you ever 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 that life can challenge you with that you can't challenge yourself with ahead of time. You can set yourself up to succeed. If you have to make a presentation in front of someone that scares you, you can always rehearse it in front of someone that scares you even more. If you got something hard to do and your hesitant to do it, find 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 to you? Does it give you energy? Does it make your smile? When your tired, does it give you energy to go 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 is so colorful 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 it 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 it 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 and 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 that is 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, create something or face some kind of courageous 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 action. Andrew Wiles in "Spontaneous Healing" says when you walk, the movements of your limbs are cross patterned. The right leg and left arm move forward at the same time and the left leg and right arm. The spontaneous 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 type of exercise. I call it "A Walk with Love." Because love and fear are opposites. Most people think love and hate are opposites but their 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 give my life the clarity it needs to make my life exciting. Take your own challenges out for a walk. Feel your own self-motivation growing inside of 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.

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