I wanted to talk about motivation because so many people have this impulse to define themselves by what they fail to do rather than what they actually accomplish.
I see this all the time, I see beautiful, funny, and sensitive people who just read a litany of all the things wrong in their life, an inventory of their mistakes and the times they fell short.
They come to me hoping that I can turn them into a different person and I want to shake their shoulders and show them the person I can see.
Someone who has taken that massive step of getting my help. Someone who is motivated to improve and move forward.
In short, someone who has made the worthy decision to be the person that I can see is already there.
The people who achieve the greatest successes when I work with them are invariably the people who let go of their baggage. The people who, instead of saying they “have always smoked”, say they are “done with smoking.” The people who, instead of saying “I’m fat”, say “I’m becoming a size and shape that I am happy with.”
I’m reminded of a screenshot I came across a while back. Someone contacted the then Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, love him or hate him, Arnold has accomplished quite a lot in his life and this is the whole conversation:
The message I take away from this is that you shouldn’t allow yourself to be defined by the times you didn’t measure up to the standards you would like.
Instead, use those moments to inform your future efforts and acknowledge those moments when you actually did something, accomplished something or moved a step closer to a goal.
This is something that is often easier said than done, sometimes the urge to curl up in a ball and pretend that the world can’t hurt us can be overwhelming.
However the world isn’t actually cruel, sometimes we are given nothing but bad options and choices but it’s not because the Universe hates you.
That is all in your head, sometimes you get given opportunities and sometimes they get taken away. What matters is what you choose to do about it and whether you recognise an opportunity when it comes along?
One thing I guarantee though, is that you are never going to notice an opportunity coming up if you spend your life looking backwards, and seeing all those moments that should have been life lessons, instead become chains that hold you back.
Sometimes trying, and only getting some of the way there is useful, we learn something about ourselves or we get closer to success next time. Only if you allow yourself to do so though.
I think we all tend to sometimes get pessimistic and down on ourselves but, as Arnold suggests, that is just “useless talk” and, as he also says, “don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
