100 Ways to Motivate Yourself #31

I hit rock bottom last Friday. I couldn't get myself out of bed. I tried and tried and tried. I did manage to get up, but only long enough to call into work, go back to bed, and sleep until noon. I did a lot of thinking that day about what was wrong. There was lots bothering me with no immediate solutions. Then I thought, I need to seek out some solutions, so I went to Amazon and started searching out some inspiration. I finally settled on a book called 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever by Steve Chandler. I thought I would share one of the chapters I found especially inspirational:

Most people think they'll feel good once they reach some goal. They think happiness is out there somewhere, perhaps not even too far away, but out there all the same.

The problem with putting off feeling good about yourself until you hit a certain goal is that it may never happen. And you know all the time you're striving for it that it may never happen. So, by linking your happiness to something you don't have yet, you're denying your power to create happiness for yourself.

A lot of people use personal unhappiness as a tool, as proof of their own sincerity and compassion. Yet, as Barry Kaufman points out eloquently in To Love Is to Be Happy With, being unhappy is not necessary. You can be happy and also be sincere. You can be happy and also be compassionate. In fact, loving someone while you are unhappy does not show up like love at all.

"Love," says the great American spiritual teacher, Emmet Fox, "acts the part."

Songwriter Fred Knipe talked to me recently about how we human beings have learned to use and abuse unhappiness--he said he had made a list for me of the secret reasons why people think they should feel bad.

"If I feel bad, then that proves I am a good person," he said. "Or, if I feel bad, I am responsible. If I feel bad, I'm not hurting anybody. If I feel bad, it means that I care. Maybe if I feel bad, it proves I'm being realistic and aware. If I feel bad, it means I'm working on something."

That list gives us powerful motivation to be unhappy. But as Werner Erhard (personal transformation pioneer) has always taught in his well-known est seminars, happiness is a place to come from, not to try to go to.

I once saw Larry King interviewing Werner Erhard by satellite from Russia, where Erhard was living and working. Erhard had mentioned that he might be moving back to the United States soon, and Larry King asked him if coming home would make him happy.

Erhard paused uncomfortably, because in his view of life nothing makes us happy. He finally said, "Larry, I am already happy. That wouldn't make me happy, because I come from happiness to whatever I do."

Your happiness is your birthright. It shouldn't depend on your achieving something. Start by claiming it and using it to make your self-motivation fun all the way and not just fun at the end.

When I finished reading this section, I immediately started to think how this is such a valid point and one I really need to focus on. This is soooo how I function. For example, I want cute clothes but I won't buy them because I feel I should lost 10 pounds first, that losing those 10 pounds will make me happy. I won't allow myself to be happy until I reach that goal. I should really be happy now and celebrate me and love me the way I am now. But I think I'm afraid to do that because then I might never work on getting in shape. Like, my unhappiness is a motivator, but really, it's just a hinderance.

I know I should live the way Chandler recommends & it makes sense, but it will be hard since that's not how I'm used to functioning. I have always used my unhappiness as a motivator...a punishment...

How dumb is that????