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OF the things you can use slotras
for is to remind you of what you’re doing it for —
what’s your motivation? You’ve chosen a goal and you
are striving after it. Why do you want to achieve it?
Tap into your strongest motivations, including
love, pride, anger, etc. It doesn’t have to be nicey-nice.
It doesn’t have to sound pretty to others. In fact, nicey-nice
thoughts are some of the weakest there are. If you want to be
the best “to prove those bastards wrong” and that's
a really strong motivation that gets you going, use it.
For many people, a very strong motivation
can be team-oriented — to come through for the team, to
be the hero, to not let your buddy down.
In interviews with soldiers who have done
heroic deeds, most of them say they didn’t do it for the
“principle of democracy” or to promote the cause of
freedom in the world. What actually motivated the soldier was
“I didn’t want to let my buddy down.” Their fellow
Marines were pinned down by a machine gun in a pillbox, for example,
and the hero jumps in to stop it because those Marines are
his buddies. He loves those guys, and love is an extremely
powerful motivation.
And your wife is your buddy. Your family
is your team. The people you work with are another team. Any
organization you participate in is another team. If you are naturally
and strongly motivated by your loyalty and commitment to any
of these teams, use that motivation when you create your
slotras. For example:
She’s counting on me. I won’t
let her down.
I will come through for my family.
We must get these boys to land.
Use what gives you strength. That is the
number one criteria for choosing your slotra: It must give you
strength, it must retain your determination, and ideally, it
will boost your motivation.
The book, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom,
is about how six men escape from a Soviet prison camp in Siberia
and walk all the way across the continent to India. At one point
in the story, the men had made it out of Siberia, across the
Soviet Union, across the immense Gobi Desert in Mongolia and
had entered Tibet. They still had to hike across the Himilayas,
and were on the lookout for Chinese soldiers. If they were caught,
they were finished. They didn’t have any money. They had
no passports. Their chances of making it to India would seem
remote to the most sanguine optimist. But they didn’t spend
any time talking about what would happen if they didn’t
make it. As the author, Slavomir Rawicz wrote, “We could
not afford to think of failure.”
Being so close to the edge of death makes
you accutely aware of the impact of your own thoughts.
Your thoughts make a huge difference, whether
you are in a life-or-death struggle, or simply trying to accomplish
a financial goal. It behooves you to use this fact to your advantage.
Find thoughts that help you, that motivate
you, and practice them. Focus on the most motivating impulses
you have, and build a slotra to capitalize on it.
The article above is a chapter from a book
entitled, Slotralogy. Click
here to check it out on Amazon.
Read the next chapter: Serendipity
This article is part of a series on Slotralogy.
Read the first section here: Slotralogy
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