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 DESIRE
IS one kind of motivation. Fear is another. If you look at the
basic training or “boot camps” of military organizations,
you will see that the whole thing is one giant motivational stew.
They use anything and everything they can to motivate the recruits,
and the end result is, these recruits are more motivated that
they have been or probably ever will be.
For example, the drill sargents remind
the recruits again and again that not everyone is going to make
it. Some people won’t be able to stick it out and graduate
from basic training. For many of the recruits, this motivates
them to try to be one of the strong, capable people who make
it and avoid being one of the ones who couldn’t handle it.
Sometimes when one recruit lags behind
or doesn’t work hard enough, the rest of his platoon is
punished for it. This is another kind of motivation. It is using
the recruit’s embarrassment and feeling of ethical obligation,
as well as using the peer pressure from the rest of the platoon
to motivate him to work harder.
If you don’t keep up during a run,
you might get extra guard duty (rather than badly-needed sleep),
or you might have to do push-ups until your chest aches. This
is a different kind of motivation — pushing yourself through
suffering now in order to avoid greater suffering later.
 Some
motivations work better than others, so basic training uses all
of them to make sure everyone is motivated, and as motivated
as possible.
The different types of motivations can
add together without canceling each other out. For example, you
the peer pressure doesn't cancel out the desire to be one of
the chosen few. They add together to make an even more intense
overall motivation.
You can use the same principle. When you’re
thinking up statements to motivate yourself with, try out many
different kinds of motivation. Try to think of anything that
works on you. Try scaring yourself. Make yourself white-hot with
desire. Use embarrassment, peer pressure, lust, curiosity, pride
— anything that gets you fired up and working hard.
If it motivates you to be the best, to
be better than others, use that. You don’t have to share
these statements with anyone else. This is up to you in the privacy
of your own mind. It is nobody else’s business. So do not
limit yourself to motivations or statements that would be publicly
acceptable and politically correct. Appeal to your ego, appeal
to your manliness, appeal to your desire to attract a mate —
whatever makes you feel motivated.
The bottom line is: Find things to think
that make you feel motivated, and practice those thoughts. Get
in the habit of thinking those things, and you will be
a more motivated person. It’s a matter of habit. The difference
between a very successful person and a very unsuccessful person
is mostly their mental habits.
Our next article will be on what habits
are, and how they work.
The article above is a chapter from a book
entitled, Slotralogy. Click
here to check it out on Amazon.
Read the next chapter: How
Habits Work
This article is part of a series on Slotralogy.
Read the first section here: Slotralogy
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