“Think­ing: the talk­ing of the soul with itself.”  Pla­to

The one thing I do very well, I must admit is moti­vate myself, even when I have every right to fret and com­plain.  I often find myself telling true lies.  I make up truths about myself to myself that make me sound unbe­liev­ably won­der­ful.  I visu­al­ize the way I want to be.  Back in 2007, I (pri­vate­ly) wrote a short nov­el with me as the lead­ing char­ac­ter, of course.  I now know why I enjoy writ­ing so much; I like play­ing char­ac­ters. Some­one wise once said, “how we act is how we become.”

I have a deep desire to think.

I have been lis­ten­ing, read­ing and review­ing dif­fer­ent mate­r­i­al and out of those find­ings I’ve para­phrased my own thoughts about self-moti­va­tion.  You may have heard some of them.  The truth is, no one is orig­i­nal.   Steve Chan­dler, author of 100 Ways to Moti­vate Your­self said some­thing that real­ly stayed with me.  He said that progress towards a goal is nev­er going to be a straight line.  It’s always going to be curvy.  These waves of emo­tions are in rhythm with progress.  Yes, I’ve heard this many times and have expe­ri­enced more downs than ups in my own jour­ney, but still, I often won­der if oth­er peo­ple look at the very same moon and whis­per words of nega­tion, fear and doubt.

Before I start­ed writ­ing I reviewed my end-of-month jour­nal entries.  One of my weak­ness­es is that I find a lot of things inter­est­ing.  I’m like Colum­bo, very curios.  I ask a lot of ques­tions.  If you’re any­thing like me, you know what it is like to feel dis­tract­ed or leave work unfin­ished.  It’s an awful feel­ing that tru­ly keeps me up at night.

“Noth­ing is more fatigu­ing than the hang­ing on to an unfin­ished task.”

I’ve kept a jour­nal of all the things I have accom­plished in an attempt to com­bat this coun­ter­pro­duc­tive habit.  I have  giv­en myself one month to focus and fin­ish one thing I real­ly want to mas­ter before I move on to the next big idea.  I am thrilled because I will soon be able to start the next goal I have.  And as soon as I pub­lish this post, I will add it to my list of fin­ished tasks as well.  Writ­ing is my sec­ond favorite thing to do and to be able to keep up with it–as busy as I am, makes me feel quite proud.

How do you moti­vate your­self to keep going, even when every­thing (and every­one) around you tells you to move on to some­thing else?  I don’t real­ly know what I do exact­ly, I do many things, actu­al­ly.  I start with the alter­na­tive, which is not an option for me.  I keep a list of all the peo­ple that believe that hav­ing the life that you want is an oblig­a­tion, and a God giv­en right.  I sur­round myself with those peo­ple, most of them are in books and have long passed on, but their philoso­phies will live for­ev­er. I keep a list of all my accom­plish­ments, big and small.  I keep books and read them dai­ly. I have an awe­some library with books I’ve actu­al­ly read.  The first thing I do when I wake up is med­i­tate and pray. I do this for about 5 min­utes. I then start lis­ten­ing to audio books as I am get­ting ready in the morn­ing and in my com­mute.  Five min­utes before I arrive at my des­ti­na­tion I pause the audio and medi­ate for anoth­er 5 min­utes (I med­i­tate sev­er­al times per day).  I think of 15 things I am grate­ful for and I give those thoughts all of my ener­gy.

Once I get to my des­ti­na­tion I have a look at my to do list or guide for the day, which is not as long as it used to be.  There are now about 3 things on it.  Cre­ate a care­ful­ly planned out map.  Don’t live life like a leaf in the wind.  You’re not a leaf.  Know where you are going and list the direc­tions you need to take to get there.  Don’t dri­ve around in cir­cles.  The three things on the top of my short list are the things that have to get done, no mat­ter what.  Cross­ing things off has helped keep me moti­vat­ed.  There’s pow­er in achiev­ing small wins along the way.  I do 1–2 things per day towards my “big­ger goal,” but I log the small “bricks” as achieve­ments as well.

What are some things you’d like to learn?  Take out a sheet of paper and list the 10 things you always want­ed to be real­ly good at and list them in order of impor­tance.  I would pick dif­fer­ent top­ics to keep life both inter­est­ing and pro­duc­tive.   For exam­ple, I have been using Sales­force late­ly.  I’m okay with it, but I learned that I can become cer­ti­fied.  So the goal for July is to sched­ule the exam for the end of the month and study all month for it.  I real­ly only spend about 45mins to an hour per day.  That’s one goal I have that will help me in my career.  Anoth­er goal on my list, don’t laugh, is to learn how to twerk.  I’m fas­ci­nat­ed with the way ladies make their bums bounce.  I’m kid­ding!  Ha ha, I had you going!

I have a list of things I’d like to mas­ter for the rest of the year, but I can only do one at a time.  “The slow­er you start some­thing, the faster you will com­plete it.”  Isn’t that inter­est­ing?  Have you thought about this?  It makes a lot of sense.  The tor­toise and the hare imme­di­ate­ly come to mind.  It’s like sprint­ing a marathon, very few can do it.  Take breaks along the way and enjoy the jour­ney.  I’ve known peo­ple who take 5 class­es per semes­ter, work full time, end up drop­ping 3 and get­ting aver­age grades on the oth­er 2.  I’ve been there; I was that girl!

What are you think­ing right now?  Where are you with your feel­ings?  What’s tug­ging at your heart?  If you were an old lady, sit­ting in your rock­ing chair, what would you tell your young self?  The truth is, no one knows you bet­ter than you know your­self.  Have an hon­est and open dis­cus­sion with the per­son in the mir­ror.  Are you liv­ing the life that you real­ly want?  If you were told you had 5 years to live, how would you spend your time?  Com­mit to using your imag­i­na­tion for good.  You are smart and you are beau­ti­ful.  You are capa­ble and you are amaz­ing.  Every human being has the capac­i­ty to be a genius.

“Every­body is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its abil­i­ty to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believ­ing that it is stu­pid.” Albert Ein­stein

Remem­ber to keep calm and to polite­ly walk away from friends who do not sup­port your goals.  “Cyn­ics do not cre­ate.”  I tru­ly hope that you found my thoughts help­ful.  Don’t for­get to set time aside to think and to share your jour­ney with me.  🙂
“YOLO: You Only Live Once; if you live it right, once is enough.” Pla­to