Steve Chandler - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever

This edition first published in 2023 by Career Press, an imprint of
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.careerpress.com

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2012, 2023 by Steve Chandler

Foreword copyright 2023 by Mark Goulston

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser,
LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages. Previously published in 2012 as
100 Ways to Motivate Yourself by Career Press, ISBN: 978-1-60163-244-9.

ISBN: 978-1-63265-204-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Sky Peck Design

Interior by Steve Amarillo/Urban Design LLC

Typeset in Adobe Freight Text and Monotype RBNo2.1

Printed in The United States of America

IBI

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To Kathryn Anne Chandler

Ways to Motivate Yourself

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 Year's 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 century's 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'.

When I read This Book Will Motivate You I was glad it wasn't printed in red ink that rubs off on your fingers and hands.

Why's that?

Because I am old enough to remember a time when pistachio nuts came in red shells instead of the natural way they come now, and you couldn't just eat one. By the time you were finished eating those red ones, anyone and everyone could literally catch you red-handed.

Okay, I'm showing my age. Forget the red pistachio nuts. Think of popcorn. And not just plain popcorn. I mean the butter-soaked popcorn you get in a big bucket when you go to the movies. The kind that's so good, you can't stop eating it.

Now that I've probably so whetted your appetite for a snack, you may be distracted from reading this book. That would be a mistake.

Because nothing could distract me from reading this book and that is what you will experience when you sit down to read it. And after you have read it all the way through, you will, no doubt, either dog-ear or put sticky notes on those chapters that are relevant to you and your life. And if you get started right now, you will become so absorbed that, voila! You'll forget all about grabbing a quick treat.

Why is this book so compelling?

Among the many reasons, two immediately come to mind. First, every chapter is a friendly, simple, and clear directive suggesting you take action in a way that piques your curiosity, and then second, it satisfies that curiosity by sharing story after story that supports that action.

This is the perfect book to motivate busy, distracted people who want to change their lives. Sound like anyone you know?

There is a term from the design field called, form follows function. What that means is that the form that a building or organization takes should adapt to the function it serves. This Book Will Motivate You is the perfect form for a world where people want and need to improve themselves but don't seem to have the time to finish an entire self-help or self-improvement book, let alone get past a few chapters. And then when they go back to it, they discover they have forgotten what they read and have to start over. That is why This Book Will Motivate You is not just a book, not just an idea, but is a format whose time has come.

Finally, I have a personal thank you to give and then a concession to make to the author, Steve.

When I read this book, it reminded me of my very first book, Get Out of Your Own Way, which I coauthored with Philip Goldberg and consists of forty self-defeating behaviors delivered in three to four pages per chapter. That book went on to be translated in many languages and reach bestseller status, but I'm not being disingenuously humble when I tell you, Steve's book is better. And it certainly lives up to its title.

Mark Goulston, MD, coauthor,
Get Out of Your Own Way and author of Just Listen

When Bob Dylan wrote in his book Chronicles about how much he admired Joan Baez before he met her, he said, I'd be scared to meet her. I didn't 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 don't 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 life's turning point came when I discovered I could light that fire all by myself. It took me more than fifty years to discover this. But I'm slow in these matters. You can get it today if you want. For the first fifty 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, don't 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? Counter-intuitive? Cruel hoax?

A friend of mine once said, You're on fire! He was referring to the fact that I'd 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 wasn't 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