Shownotes
Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 381 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Motivate Yourself
Thank you for joining us for our 3 days per week, 12 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 381 of our trek, and today is Motivation Monday. Every Monday we will provide you with your weekly dose of motivation that will set you on the trail of success. Today we will hike the six steps needed to motivate yourself.
We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. By the time this episode is released, the 5-year Chamberlain Reunion will be winding down. Since I am recording this ahead of time, I will have to provide details on future treks.
Paula and I have put in hundreds of hours in renovations and preparation over the past couple of years so that we could provide the best venue and experience possible for the family. We were motivated by a fixed deadline to work extra hours with a focused effort to accomplish all that we had planned. While we did not complete everything that we had hoped to due to time and resources, we were very pleased with the amount of work that we did accomplish. Creating an atmosphere of unity and peace where everyone feels that they have “come home” is important to us and is part of our living legacy for the family.
Although maintaining The Big House is a lot of work and responsibility, we feel that it is part of our God-given mission for life. As Jesus spoke in Luke 12:48, “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” With that awareness, we carry on with the joy of being able to serve in this manner.
Because of the deadline of the reunion we were highly motivated to complete our tasks, which is a basic principle with any motivation. Today let us hike the trail that contains the six steps to…
Motivate Yourself
Let’s get started on our trek for today with a quote from Andrew Carnegie, “People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”
If you want to excel in life, self-motivation is essential. You must know how to motivate yourself. You must be able to keep your spirit high no matter how discouraging a situation is. That’s the only way to get the power you need to overcome difficulties. Those who are discouraged in difficult times are certain to lose even before the battle is over.
The question is: How do you motivate yourself? We will climb the six steps that will allow you to effectively build and maintain self-motivation.
1. Have a cause.
I can’t think of a more powerful source of motivation than a cause you care about. This was the Chamberlain Reunion for Paula and me. Such causes can inspire you to give your best even in the face of difficulties. It can make you do the seemingly impossible things.
While other causes could inspire you temporarily, a cause that matters to you can inspire you indefinitely. It’s like a mountain spring of motivation that will never dry. Whenever you think that you run out of motivation, you can always come to your cause to get a fresh dose of motivation.
2. Have a dream – a big dream.
Karen Ravn put it this way:
Your cause is a powerful source of motivation, but it’s still abstract in nature. You need to make it concrete in the form of a dream. For us, it was imagining how The Big House would look with the renovations completed. That image drove us on when we felt like quitting.
Having a dream is important because it’s difficult to be motivated if you don’t have anything to shoot for. Being able to host the family for the weekend and allowing them to see the Family Homestead restored to its original state is our overriding dream. While we are not completely finished, we have made good progress. We will continue with our dream in subsequent years. That is our goal which drives our ambition. Just having a dream is insufficient.
Your dream must be big enough to inspire you. It must be realistic but challenging. It must stretch your ability beyond your comfort zone.
3. Be passionate.
Les Brown said, “Wanting something is not enough. You must have a passion for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.”
To be truly motivated, you need to have passion and not just desire. Having mere desire won’t take you through difficult times since you don’t want things badly enough. In many cases, passion makes the difference between the best performers and the mediocre ones.
How can you have passion? Your cause and your dream play a big role here. If you have a cause you care about and a big dream related to it, you should have the passion inside of you. If you think that you are losing passion, all you need to do is to connect again to your cause and dream. Let them inspire you and bring the passion back.
4. Run your own race.
Mikhail Baryshnikov put it this way, “I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.”
Comparing yourself with others is an effective way to demotivate yourself. Even if you start with enthusiasm, you will soon lose your energy when you compare yourself with others.
Don’t let that happen to you. You have your own race so how other people perform is irrelevant. Comparing yourself to others is like comparing the performance of a swimmer with a runner using the same time standard. They are different so how can you compare one with the other?
The only competitor you have is yourself. The only one you need to beat is you. Let me ask you this question…Have you become the best you can be?
5. Take one more step.
Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
When you meet obstacles along the way, there could be the tendency to quit. You may think that it’s too difficult to move on. You may think that your dream is impossible to achieve. But this is where you can see the difference between winners and losers. Though both of them face the same difficulties, there is one thing that makes the winners different – the courage to continue.
In difficult situations, just focus on taking one more step forward. Don’t think about how to complete the race. Don’t think about how many more obstacles are waiting for you. Just focus on taking the next step. Through the many early mornings and late nights working on refinishing the woodwork and floors, I had to continually remind myself to keep moving forward, just a little bit at a time. In doing so, I was able to complete the tasks that we had planned for now.
6. Let go of the past.
This next quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson certainly summed up my feelings most days, “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.”
Believe it or not, one of the best de-motivators is your past. Your past can drag you down before you realize it. Your past can give you a heavy burden on your shoulders.
The good news is it’s a burden you don’t have to carry. Take it off your shoulder and leave it. You might make mistakes in the past. You might disappoint others with what you did. But it’s over. It’s already in the past, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Today is a new day, and you have the chance to start again. No matter how bad your past might be, you still have a bright future ahead waiting for you. Just don’t let the burden of the past stop you.
We are nearing the end of today’s trek. These six steps, if followed, will provide you with the tools needed to motivate yourself. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Let your self-motivation take you to excellence. Go forward this week with a new sense of self-motivation to do you very best. Don’t wait for someone else to motivate you. External motivation is never lasting. Take responsibility for yourself.
Our next trek will be Wisdom Wednesday, and we will dig for more nuggets of wisdom in the 2nd half of Proverbs 13. So encourage your friends and family to join us, and then come along on Wednesday for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.
That will finish our trek for today. As you enjoy your dose of wisdom, we ask you to help us grow Wisdom-Trek by sharing with your family and friends through email, Facebook, Twitter, or in person and invite them to come along with us each day. If you would like to listen to any of the past daily treks, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek so each trek will be downloaded to you automatically. I would like to ask you to also rate and review us on iTunes or Google Play so that others will find out about Wisdom-Trek and join us.
Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.
As we take this trek together, let us always:
- Live Abundantly (Fully)
- Love Unconditionally
- Listen Intentionally
- Learn Continuously
- Lend to others Generously
- Lead with Integrity
- Leave a Living Legacy Each Day
This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Every Day! See you on Wednesday!