100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

This is a book published back in 1996 but its ideas are still much relevant.  Steve Chandler’s “100 Ways to Motivate Yourself:  Change Your Life Forever” is a must read because of the numerous different motivating tips it contains.  Here are some of his significant ones:

Meditate on Your Mortality

You may want to forget that you are going to die, but ignoring death will dampen your drive to live fully. Wishing that life has no end is like wanting to play a basketball game that never ends – it might be enjoyable at first, but soon, your concentration wavers, and your intensity fades.

Use death to live with more joy and intensity by lying in bed for an extra minute in the morning to imagine you’re about to die and people are coming into your room to say their goodbyes. After you share final words with at least three people you love and fully accept your death, open your eyes and be grateful you get another day to live. You can get out of bed and make today your masterpiece – a perfect example of a well‐lived day.

If you lack drive at any time during the day, remember, you could have been on your deathbed this morning saying your last goodbyes. But instead, you get another day to be the person you aspire to be.

Tell Yourself, “I Am the Problem”

In the book, Chandler writes, “Whatever type of problem you are facing, the most self‐motivational exercise I know of is to immediately say to yourself, ‘I am the problem.’”

Saying “I am the problem” immediately shifts you from victim to problem solver because you stop blaming other people and circumstances and focus on what you can control – your attitude, expectations, and actions. By becoming the problem, you focus on what is within your control and regain control over your mind and motivation.

Wildly Exaggerate Your Goals

Select one professional goal you have, like earning $100,000 or getting two new clients this month, and wildly exaggerate it (multiply it by two or ten!). Imagine someone holding a gun to your head and telling you to come up with at least ten ways to achieve your impossible goal. The creativity you experience after this exercise will energize you.

Sometimes, the only way to get unstuck is to wildly exaggerate a goal and come at it with a new perspective – the ideas you’ll generate from a wildly exaggerated perspective will excite you, and the results will surprise you.

Turn Everything into a Game

If you are a typical college student, you could play computer games all night. But when it comes to schoolwork, your motivation might not last longer than an hour.

You could make your study hours more motivating by using competition in doing tough tasks.

Stir up your competitive juices by competing against the clock and striving to finish an assignment one minute quicker than the previous day or challenging a friend to see who could score higher on a practice exam.

Whatever you’re doing, sprinkle in an element of competition by challenging your friends or trying to beat the clock.

Forward Yourself the Finished List

The best way to inspire yourself tomorrow is to send yourself an email today with things you finished. Reminding yourself of the things you finished reinforces your identity as a finisher. The more you see yourself as a finisher, the more motivated you are to get stuff done and stay aligned with your self‐image.

Remind yourself that you are a finisher by opening a new email when you start work and write “Things I Finished” in the subject line. Save it as a draft and populate it throughout the day. Then, set an alarm for the end of your workday to send the email to yourself using the “send later” function so the email arrives in your inbox just after you wake up.