How should we motivate ourselves in negative circumstances?

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Irrelevance
by: Anthony de Mello, SJ, One Minute Wisdom

All questions at the public meeting that day were about life beyond the grave.

The Master only laughed and did not give a single answer.

To his disciples, who demanded to know the reason for his evasiveness, he later said, "Have you observed that it is precisely those who do not know what to do with this life who want another that will last forever?"

"But is there life after death or is there not?" persisted a disciple.

"Is there life before death?-that is the question!" said the Master enigmatically.

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This thing has always puzzled me in my life that what is the trick to keep ourselves engaged in positive activities when we are down. There are lots of motivational stuffs available on Net and also so many self-improvement books available. Do we really feel like reffering all those when we are just completely demotivated?

What we lose? How can we regain our confidence? How to proceed in the most negative circumstances? Is their any scientific way to come out of these killing-like situation.

Let's share our views and this may help some of us to start a fresh if they are coming in search of some practical thoughts.

Happy Sharing..

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Recently, I read a book by Zig Ziglar, "See you at the top" and found it useful. This helped me in someway. I feel the kind of impact that these kind of texts leave over you are for short time. With the passage of time, we keep forgetting the points.

I realize that we should keep feeding our mind continuously. I read somewhere --

"The only way to get positive feelings about yourself is to take positive actions. Man does not live as he thinks, he thinks as he lives."

--Reverend Vaughan Quinn, O.M.I.

[Bad Religion]

go!go!go!go!go!go!
keep going!

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Seems, you want to emphasize that life is all about keep going. Isn't it?

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There once was a bunch of tiny frogs, who arranged a running competition. The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower. A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants. The race began. Honestly: No one in crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower. You heard statements such as: "Oh, WAY too difficult!!
They will NEVER make it to the top." or: "Not a chance that they will succeed. The tower is too high!"

The tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one except for those who in a fresh tempo were climbing higher and higher. The crowd continued to yell "It is too difficult!!! No one will make it!" More tiny frogs got tired and gave up. But ONE continued higher and higher and higher. This one wouldn't give up! At the end everyone else had given up climbing the tower. Except for the one tiny frog who after a big effort was the only one who reached the top! THEN all of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it?

A contestant asked the tiny frog how the one who succeeded had found the strength to reach the goal? It turned out that the winner was DEAF!!!!

The wisdom of this story is: Never listen to other people's tendencies to be negative or pessimistic because they take your most wonderful dreams and wishes away from you. The ones you have in your heart! Always think of the power words have. Because everything you hear and read will affect your actions!

Therefore: ALWAYS be POSITIVE! And above all:Be DEAF when people tell YOU that YOU can not fulfil YOUR dreams! Always think: I can do this!

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Dale Carnegie says, “If you are a mental worker, it is seldom the amount of work you do that makes you tired. You may be tired by the amount of work you do not do. The lesson to be learnt is that our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worries, frustration and resentment”.

In one of his books, Dale Carnegie had described a small but very interesting and inspiring story. There was this man Sam, who would get bored with his dull job standing next to his lathe, producing bolts in a factory. He wanted to quit, but was not too sure what the next job would have in store for him, if he were to get one. He thought since he had to do this job anyway, why not make it interesting. He began to race with another mechanic who had to trim the rough surfaces on his machine. Occasionally they’d switch the job. The idea was to see who would turn out more number of bolts. The foreman, impressed with Sam for the speed and accuracy promoted him. It was the beginning of a series of promotions. Sam, Samuel Vauchlain, thirty years later went on to become the president of Baldwin Locomotive Works.

By inculcating the right thoughts and the right attitude, you can make any job less distasteful and at times very interesting and very rewarding. We spend almost half our day and about a 3rd of our life at work. If you don’t find happiness in your work, you’ll probably not find anywhere. On the contrary, if you get interested in your work and do it well, you’d take away a lot of worries and in due course be rewarded with increased pay and even promotions. At a minimum, you’ll help yourself reduce fatigue and enjoy your leisure.

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Paramahamsa Sri Nithyananda Swamy wrote, “A poor man had no land and prayed to God for some land. God appeared to him and told him that all that he could cover from dawn to dusk would be his land.”

“The man set off the next morning without sleeping a wink. Though he had covered enough land to satisfy his needs, very soon he began to run and run filled with the desire to own more land, more than anyone else. By dusk he had covered a lot of land, but he fell down dead, exhausted.”

Usually this is the story of most of our lives.

Desires that are real and are born out of genuine need will have their own energy and will sustain them. However, most of our desires are created out of jealousy and have negative energy.

When we cannot bear the excellence of others, we get jealous. Comparison is the seed, jealousy the fruit. Comparison and jealousy are actually non-existent. We create such thoughts ourselves and talk endlessly on how to overcome them.

Imagine that the room you’re in is dark. Can you remove the darkness if you wanted to? Can you take it to another room? No. The reason is that darkness has a negative existence. It does not really exist. If you bring light into the room, the darkness will at once cease to exist. In the same way, jealousy has a negative existence. You cannot deal with it directly. Even if you tell yourself repeatedly not to be jealous, you cannot overcome it.

If you queue up all the people in the world in an ascending order of money, where would you be? You’ll be somewhere in the middle. You’ll not be able to count the number of people on either side of you in the queue. Now, you’ll have to decide if you’re going to look at the queue in front of you and feel jealous or look at the queue behind and feel relaxed and grateful to God.

Everything is in your hands. We’ll never face failure if we live our lives competing with ourselves. Win yourself with yourself, never with others. Every minute of comparison with others is a waste of time in the path of progress. A problem in a rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. To stop comparisons, you need to be aware of your own worth; you need to realize your uniqueness without being proud. Meditation leads you into that awareness of who you are and what your potential is.

You will then soar beyond comparison, for you’re freed from jealousy.

Let us find ourselves, and lead our own way to realize our potential.

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Hope anticipates, faith believes, and patience quietly waits. Together
you can achieve.

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”

– Robert Frost

Douglas Malloch, the late poet wrote this poem:

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill,
Be a scrub in the valley - but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush, if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of grass,
And some highway happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie, then just be a bass –
But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,
There’s something for all of us here.
There’s big work to do and there’s lesser work to do,
And the task we must do is near.

If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun, be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail –
Be the best of whatever you’re!

It is the positive mental attitude that helps us be at peace with what we are doing; keeps us away from worries and therefore fatigue, and help us do better every day.

John J. Pelliza also said,

“One should stretch one self. When you stretch and do something, you’ll begin to realize your talent and you can develop it”.

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"Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience."

-Victoria Holt

"It is not enough to aim; you must hit."

-Italian Proverb

"Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is to you."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts."

-James Allen

"Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else."

-Judy Garland

"Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success."

-Denis Waitley

"Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success."

-Alonzo Newton Benn

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant."

-Robert Louis Stevenson

"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

-Michelangelo

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."

-Henry Ford

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become."

-Buddha

"We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision."

-Unknown

"You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it True".

-Unknown

"If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it."

-Brendan Francis

"Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act."

-Andre Malraux

"Action conquers fear."

-Peter Nivio Zarlenga

"Many fine things can be done in a day if you don't always make that day tomorrow."

-Unknown

"Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live."

-Chamfort

"Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning."

-Mahatma Gandhi

"One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others."

-Lewis Carroll

"We are what we believe we are."

-C.S. Lewis

[Kakashi]

I found these lines very wise. I specifically liked what Buddha said. What we think we become. It encouraged me somehow. Keep up the good work!