Monday, May 18, 2009
100 Ways To Motivate Yourself
Amazon.com: 100 Ways To Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever: Steve Chandler: Books
In a standard 4 types of personality test, I am the influencer.
In the quirky dove-owl-peacock-eagle personality test, I am the peacock.
In the super complicated 9 types Enneagram test (my favorite), I am type 7: the Enthusiast.
What do they mean? Pretty much that I am a creative, outgoing, happy person. I also happen to be very inconsistent, having outbursts of i-want-it-this-instant things. Always starting, never finishing. (Well not always, but I that's my normal operating tendency that I will fall back to if I am not performing at my best)
It's true. I am that person. I have accepted it. So in my day to day living, I have to constantly struggle to identify these bad traits when they come up.
The conversation in my head will be something like this:
"Man I hate mondays, let's see what's on facebook"
"Warning!!"
"Just five minutes"
"five minutes is up!"
"But I have to see what my friend wrote, friendship is beyond work"
"it's been 10 minutes"
"Already 10? Well then another minute wouldn't hurt"
"It's been 30 minutes, I feel guilty"
"Hey... ads on glass blowing course, that sounds cool"
"No I don't need a glass blowing course"
"Maybe not, but live life without regrets rite?? What if I regret this later"
On times where my dark side is winning, I like to pull out one of my favorite book out of the drawer. 100 Ways To Motivate Yourself by Steve Chandler. It does what it says, giving many many tips to jolt myself back to motivation and back to my original task. (This is of course assuming that your original task had some kind of meaning for you, if it doesn't then maybe you need a bigger help!!)
Personally, I like to pick a random page whenever I open Steve's book. So I don't know if I've read them all, but even the old ones are still a good straight-to-the-point advice I could always rely on.
Some samples that have helped me overcome a snag during a dry day:
No. 23 - Kill your televison - Self explanatory and can also be applied to facebook
No. 5 - Push all your own buttons - Making note of simple things that lift you up like a great song and using all those to repeat the feeling when you are down.
No. 99 - Laugh with no reason - Hahaha my favorite tip.
No 38 - Learn to come from behind - Accepting the fact that the natural rhythm of things are sometimes about 1 step up and 2 step down. That's not a problem, just put in sometime to recharge and do it again.
And many others...
Usually after pondering one of Steve's tips which may or may not include a simple exercise, my heads all cleared up and things look better. I find my thoughts going back to:
"Monday's aren't so bad after all"
"You sure??"
"Yeah... let's do this one tiny step at a time. No biggie" ¶ 4:12 AM
In a standard 4 types of personality test, I am the influencer.
In the quirky dove-owl-peacock-eagle personality test, I am the peacock.
In the super complicated 9 types Enneagram test (my favorite), I am type 7: the Enthusiast.
What do they mean? Pretty much that I am a creative, outgoing, happy person. I also happen to be very inconsistent, having outbursts of i-want-it-this-instant things. Always starting, never finishing. (Well not always, but I that's my normal operating tendency that I will fall back to if I am not performing at my best)
It's true. I am that person. I have accepted it. So in my day to day living, I have to constantly struggle to identify these bad traits when they come up.
The conversation in my head will be something like this:
"Man I hate mondays, let's see what's on facebook"
"Warning!!"
"Just five minutes"
"five minutes is up!"
"But I have to see what my friend wrote, friendship is beyond work"
"it's been 10 minutes"
"Already 10? Well then another minute wouldn't hurt"
"It's been 30 minutes, I feel guilty"
"Hey... ads on glass blowing course, that sounds cool"
"No I don't need a glass blowing course"
"Maybe not, but live life without regrets rite?? What if I regret this later"
On times where my dark side is winning, I like to pull out one of my favorite book out of the drawer. 100 Ways To Motivate Yourself by Steve Chandler. It does what it says, giving many many tips to jolt myself back to motivation and back to my original task. (This is of course assuming that your original task had some kind of meaning for you, if it doesn't then maybe you need a bigger help!!)
Personally, I like to pick a random page whenever I open Steve's book. So I don't know if I've read them all, but even the old ones are still a good straight-to-the-point advice I could always rely on.
Some samples that have helped me overcome a snag during a dry day:
No. 23 - Kill your televison - Self explanatory and can also be applied to facebook
No. 5 - Push all your own buttons - Making note of simple things that lift you up like a great song and using all those to repeat the feeling when you are down.
No. 99 - Laugh with no reason - Hahaha my favorite tip.
No 38 - Learn to come from behind - Accepting the fact that the natural rhythm of things are sometimes about 1 step up and 2 step down. That's not a problem, just put in sometime to recharge and do it again.
And many others...
Usually after pondering one of Steve's tips which may or may not include a simple exercise, my heads all cleared up and things look better. I find my thoughts going back to:
"Monday's aren't so bad after all"
"You sure??"
"Yeah... let's do this one tiny step at a time. No biggie" ¶ 4:12 AM
