Steve - 100 Ways To Motivate Yourself

Change Your Life Forever

By Steve Chandler

Copyright 2012 by Steve Chandler

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

100 WAYS TO MOTIVATE YOURSELF, THIRD EDITION

Cover design by Howard Grossman/12E Design
Printed in the U.S.A.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chandler, Steve, 1944

100 ways to motivate yourself: change your life foever / by Steve Chandler.
-- 3rd ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-60163-244-9 -- ISBN 978-1-60163-554-9 (ebook)

1. Motivation (Psychology) 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) I. Title. II.
Title: One hundred ways to mo-tivate yourself.

BF503.C48 2013

158.1--dc23

2012023412

To Kathryn Anne Chandler

To Lindsay Brady, for the ongoing perception of success; to Stephanie Chandler, for tirelessly working the cosmos; to Kathy, for more than I can say; to Jim Brannigan, for the representation; to Fred Knipe, for the music on New Years Eve; to Ron Fry, for Career Press; to Nathaniel Branden, for the psychology; to Colin Wilson, for the philosophy; to Arnold Schwarzenegger, for a day to remember; to Rett Nichols, for the tension plan; to Graham Walsh, for the Tavern on the Green; to Terry Hill, for the centurys first real mystery novel; to Cindy Chandler, for the salvation; to Ed and Jeanne, for the Wrigley Mansion; to John Shade, for the fire; to Scott Richardson, for the ideas; to Ann Coulter, for the wake-up calls; to Steven Forbes Hardison, for coaching and friendship beyond the earthly norm; and to Dr. Deepak Chopra, for unconcealing the creative intelligence that holds us all together.

And to the memory of Art Hill: without whom, no life, no nothin.

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

When Bob Dylan wrote in his book Chronicles about how much he admired Joan Baez before he met her, he said, Id be scared to meet her. I didnt want to meet her but I knew I would. I was going in the same direction even though I was in back of her at the moment. She had the fire, and I felt I had the same kind of fire.

We dont question what he means by the fire. We read on, knowing full well what he means. But sometimes I wonder, though. Do we really? Do we know it from experience? Do we feel the same fire? Do you have to be a poet or a singer? No. We all know what it is to have that same fire, no matter how briefly we have experienced it.

My own lifes turning point came when I discovered I could light that fire all by myself. It took me more than 50 years to discover this. But Im slow in these matters. You can get it today if you want. For the first 50 years of my life I thought the fire only happened when something inspired me. It was something that had to happen to me. And the reason I believed that was because that was my experience. You have to go by what you know, dont you?

The funniest thing about fire is that it takes fire to light it.

I go to the fireplace to start a fire. I put crumpled-up newspaper under the kindling. Then I put the logs over the kindling wood. But how do I start this fire? I need a match. Or a lighter. You have to have fire to start a fire. Ironic? Paradoxical? Counterintuitive? Cruel hoax?

A friend of mine once said, Youre on fire! He was referring to the fact that Id just sent him a flurry of book ideas, written copy for things we were selling, recorded audio programs, and a number of other activities and actions.

How did I set myself on fire? With fire.

One action led to another and I wasnt afraid to rise early and work. I made myself exercise. I devoted myself to work instead of allowing distraction. Work (as it always does when you throw your entire self into it) soon became fun.

Playwright Noel Coward said, Work is more fun than fun.

It is when you do it. It is not fun when you think about it. Especially when you think about it ahead of time.

To light a fire you need a fire. Rubbing two sticks together creates enough friction and heat to produce a spark and then a flame that you can put into the bigger fire.

It is the same process for yourself. Getting into action whether you feel like action or not is like rubbing two sticks together. Do you think the sticks felt like being rubbed together? Do you ever see them do it on their own?

Since its first printing in 1996, this little book has enjoyed a success I never imagined. During its first 18 years of sales, we have seen the emergence of the Internet as the worlds primary source of information. People have not only been buying this book on the Internet, but theyve been posting their reviews. Whats wonderful about Internet bookstores is that they feature reviews by regular people, not just professional journalists who need to be witty, cynical, and clever to survive.

One such reviewer of 100 Ways in its original edition was Bubba Spencer from Tennessee. He wrote: Not a real in-depth book with many complicated theories about how to improve your life. Mostly, just good tips to increase your motivation. A should read if you want to improve any part of your life.

Bubba gave this book five stars, and I am more grateful to him than to any professional reviewer. He says I did what I set out to do:

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, thats creativity.

Charles Mingus, legendary jazz musician

A number of years ago when I was working with psychotherapist Devers Branden, she put me through her deathbed exercise.

I was asked to clearly imagine myself lying on my own deathbed, and to fully realize the feelings connected with dying and saying good-bye. Then she asked me to mentally invite the people in my life who were important to me to visit my bedside, one at a time. As I visualized each friend and relative coming in to visit me, I had to speak to them out loud. I had to say to them what I wanted them to know as I was dying.

As I spoke to each person, I could feel my voice breaking. Somehow I couldnt help breaking down. My eyes were filled with tears. I experienced such a sense of loss. It was not my own life I was mourning; it was the love I was losing. To be more exact, it was a communication of love that had never been there.

During this difficult exercise, I really got to see how much Id left out of my life. How many wonderful feelings I had about my children, for example, that Id never explicitly expressed. At the end of the exercise, I was an emotional mess. I had rarely cried that hard in my life. But when those emotions cleared, a wonderful thing happened. I was clear. I knew what was really important, and who really mattered to me. I understood for the first time what George Patton meant when he said, Death can be more exciting than life.