How to Motivate Yourself? Les Brown Motivational Video

How do you motivate yourself? One of the things that we must do is that we must be involved
in working on achieving self mastery. You must work on yourself continuously. Never be satisfied with yourself. Always know that as you invest
the effort and time on you, that's the greatest ability that
human beings have above animals. See, a dog can't be anything but a dog. Tree can't be anything
but a tree. Human being, you've got
unlimited potential. You can put effort on you and by concentrating on you
and developing you, you can transform your life
wherever you are right now.

So you wanna work on yourself. You wanna read books that inspire
you and motivate you. You wanna listen to tapes over
and over and over again. And I suggest that you listen to tapes
when you first get up in the morning. You wanna control
the spirit of your day. When you first wake up in the morning, your mind is operating at 10.5 wave cycles per second. That's when the subconscious mind
is most impressionable. Whatever you hear in the first 20 minutes when you
wake up, that will affect the spirit of your day.

When you listen to tapes, listen with relaxed belief, believing that this can happen for you. And by listening to them, listen to them over and over and over again, and you will get a breakthrough. And as you continue to work on yourself,
you will begin to expand your vision of yourself. You begin to work towards self mastery. And you will begin to see it reflect itself
in all the dimensions of your life, your mental life, your physical life, your social life,
in your relationships, your monetary life. So concentrate on developing yourself. Because if you don't, I guarantee you that you will
make a settlement, and most people have. In addition to working on yourself, and as you work on yourself, you feel good about
yourself and as you feel better about yourself, you treat yourself differently. Develop a health plan. See, you can't feel well
and do well if you don't have good health. You can't perform, if you don't have your health.
Your health is valuable. Develop a health plan, a plan that you will follow,
because this is the only vehicle that you have to carry you
through this experience called life.

And you wanna take good care of it because you love you enough, you care enough about you. And that's not easy. It is not easy having
a health plan and sticking to it. But you're worth it, doing it again and again and again. I have lost 22 pounds several times. Next thing is, as you take care of yourself, the next key, is keys to motivation, to self motivation: You wanna live life with energy and passion. You wanna make a
conscious effort to be lively. See, in life, you either saying hello or goodbye.
You either on the way or in the way. Leave dead people alone. You wanna smile. You wanna be happy.
You got a lot to be thankful for. But you watch some of the faces
around you every day and I tell you, some of these faces, they will put you
in a depressed state of mind. So you want to avoid these kind of faces. The next thing that is the key to
self motivation is that you gotta ask yourself,
what do I want out of life? What do you want out of life? What do you want out of a job?
What do you want out of a career? What do you want out of a relationship? What do you want?
What gives you your life? What? How will you know when you got it? What will make you happy? You need to know.

You need to start
asking yourself some questions. What do I really, really, truly want? You need to be exact about that. Don't be vague. Oh, I just wanna
be happy. That's too vague. What will make you happy?
How will you know when you got it? Zero in on it. Be exact. Be specific. And as you do that, that will stimulate that superconscious mind or the reticular
activating system of your mind that will begin to find those things,
to identify with it. And once you begin to determine that what you want, take the time to write it down.

Don't just think about it. Write it down. That is a subjective
process that engages the subconscious mind. Write it down. Once you write it down, read it three times
a day, morning, noon and night. Why is that important? Because what it will
do? It will cause you to focus. It will cause you to concentrate. When that other conversation is going on,
telling you what you can not do, telling you all of the impossibilities
and all of the obstacles, your concentrating will begin
to create a larger vision within yourself.

And you'll start looking for
and seeing some new opportunities. You start creating some openings for yourself. As you begin to read that every day,
every day, day in and day out, that will make you focus,
that will discipline your thinking, and you'll get all kind of creative ideas. As I talk to you right now,
being involved in this immersion process, you're gonna create
some openings for yourself. You're gonna get some ideas. You're gonna feel your adrenaline flowing. And you're gonna think about something, some idea you have, you say I wanna go back and
I'm gonna look at that again from a different vantage point, not from the level of the problem of the obstacles that I encountered, but from a higher vantage point, because what you will begin to see and to know as I
talk to the higher consciousness within you, that you are powerful,
that you are a miracle worker, and that inner conversation has conditioned you
to believe that you are not.

And as you begin to discover the truth of who you are, whatever challenge that you're facing in life, and if you're living, you're facing some challenge, you begin to know that you are powerful
and that you're a miracle maker. So as you begin to write down exactly what it is
that you want, read it every day. The next thing is see yourself there. How will you feel once you get there? What will the experience be like for you? What will be different? What kind of person do you have
to become in order to get there? Visualize yourself there,
living the experience. You wanna see yourself
beyond your circumstances. You got a challenge,
see yourself beyond your challenge. See yourself with the challenge already resolved. And knowing that all is well,
seeing yourself in control and in charge of your destiny,
being healthy and happy. The next thing is, it is important in the area of motivating yourself,
it's important to know why you're doing it because that mind will say, why bother? Why go through all this? This is too hard.
No.

Throw in the towel. It's not worth it.
Has that ever said that to you before? Here's how you can handle that.
Here's how you override that. Write down five reasons
why you deserve it. Why do you deserve
what you want? Why you? What do you deserve it? What meaning and value will it bring to your life?
What's so different about you that you deserve your goal or this goal? And when you write down
those five reasons, when you have some down moments
and you're going to have them when that conversation start talking
to you and it's going to talk to you, what you will do is you can pull that out
and read it and it will build you up.

It will be your rod and your staff to comfort you
through some challenging moments because you're gonna have some.
Life will knock you between the eyes. It will catch you on the blind side, come out of nowhere. Stuff you can't anticipate that will knock the wind out of you.
You wanna give up. That's why it's important for you to work
on yourself, listening to tapes, building yourself up, talking to yourself
with power, feeling and conviction, building yourself up day in and day out. The next thing is that whatever you do, you wanna develop technical mastery. You wanna be the best at what you do,
you wanna master it. See, part of self motivation is you've got to find
something that gives you a strong sense of competence. Well, you become known for that. You develop
a reputation of being good at doing that. You set some high personal standards for yourself.
You're not competing with anybody else. You're just unfolding yourself
to be the best person that you could be. That you wanna give the best
quality service that you can give, because that is a
statement about who you are.

The other thing that's the key to self motivation is recognize the fact that you're
going to get into some slumps. Recognize the fact that you're going to
encounter a great deal of failure in life. It goes with the territory. But in the face
of that, you wanna be relentless. The next thing is that when you want something out of life,
you got to be willing to go into action. Don't wait around for things
to be just right. Don't wait for things to be perfect. Don't wait for the ideal situation.
It will never be ideal. There will always be a reason.
Well, as soon as the children grow up, or soon as I pay my bills,
or soon as I get my divorce. Or, as soon as I get enough money together. Do what you can where you are with
what you have and never be satisfied. Lot of people never take a chance in life.
They don't want to take any chances. They want the situation to be ideal.
See, that's not walking by faith. That's walking by sight.
If I can see it, I'll do it.

No, no, no, no. Les, a lot of people say,
if I can see it, I'll believe it. No, no, no, no. If you believe it,
you can see it. And don't be disturbed
because no one else can see it. That's not unusual.
That is ordinary. But because you want some different
kind of results in your life, you've got to be willing
to be unreasonable. If you want unreasonable results in your life,
you've got to be willing to be unreasonable. Part of being unreasonable,
you don't judge according to appearances. Part of being unreasonable,
you can see it because you believe it. Most people won't do that. One of the keys to self motivation
that empowers you is that you wanna find
a cause larger than yourself. Find something that
you can contribute to. Find something that you can make a
difference because you care. Part of what feeds your larger vision,
part of what gives you a reason for being, part of what gives you your life,
is being able to give something back.

Say I can't afford to give anything. You can't afford
not to give. Give your time. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do,
but I'm going over there. It's part of my timing in the universe. Once you develop that special sense of
mission and that's what you develop when you're part of a
larger cause than yourself. It drives you. You don't need an alarm
clock to get up in the morning. You have special power. You go places and folk
will like to be around you. They will know there's
something different about you. When you go in, they'll say, hey, that's somebody important. I wanna know
who you are. I just want to be near you. That energy that you have, that consciousness that you will embody will affect everybody around you. You must be willing to do
the things today others won't do in order to have the things
tomorrow others won't have. That's why The Book of Life said, “The road to life is straight and narrow and few there be that find it”.

Because few there be that are willing to do
the things today others won't do in order to have the things
tomorrow others won't have. What are the things that others won't do? Number one, make discipline
a major force in your life. Socrates said the undisciplined
life is an insane life. Road to life is straight and narrow because few there be that are willing to discipline themselves. Here's something
else that most people won't do. Make it okay to fail. A lot of people, 85 percent of people allow their fear of failure to outweigh their desire to succeed.

Now, write this down. You don't have to be great to get started,
but you have to get started to be great. The first time I stood up to speak,
I stood up and my mind sat down. I looked at the audience and I panicked. You have something special. You have talents and abilities in you
that you don't even know. So how do we begin to create wealth?
Let me give you some ideas. Number one, write this down.
Knowledge. What knowledge that you have
in this economy part of what we need, that
people are willing to pay you for that? Next is talent.
What talent? My talent is talking. To me, my
definition of success is doing what you love to do
and find somebody to pay you to do it. So I find people to pay me to talk. I make more in one hour than 90 percent of the American public earned working for a whole year, doing what I love to do,
that I've developed my talent. You wanna master your talent.
Find out what it is that you love to do. I love to talk. Scripture's another key that says to us that what
we need to do to begin to develop ourselves.

Luke 12:34, Where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also. So what do you love to do? And then explore ways
in which you can earn a living doing that. Cooking, writing, painting,
working with numbers, working with people. The other thing is, not only must we
have knowledge, talent, some skill, but the other thing that's important, faith
to act on, whatever your dream is. So the faith to act on those
dreams, those desires. Here's scripture that I
like very much. Proverbs 16, 16th chapter, third verse. Commit thy works unto the Lord
and thy thoughts shall be established. Commit means to carry
into action, deliberately. Commit means to make
it happen no matter what. See, when you make a commitment I'm gonna become wealthy, when you make it important, when you decide I'm gonna do it
no matter what, life changes for you.

See, most people don't keep
their commitments to their commitments. That's why they lead lives of poverty,
lives of misery, lives of unhappiness. Socrates said the uncommitted life
isn't worth living. So part of what you must do, whatever commitment,
whatever confidence you make with God while you are here, to go back to be a better father,
to go back to make a difference in the community, to go back to change your life, to decide
not to ever to use drugs or alcohol again, to decide to bet that you're gonna
begin to recreate yourself, that you're gonna be reborn
to a new state of consciousness. Whatever commitment that you make, keep
your commitment to your commitment no matter what.
If it's hard, then do it hard but keep your commitment to your commitment. First step is you gotta live your calling.
You gotta decide what it is that you love. Second thing is,
you got to work on yourself. Write this down and
then work on yourself. You don't get in life what you want,
you get in life what you are. You have a job. You're generating twelve hundred dollars a year or two thousand dollars or five hundred thousand dollars,
whatever you earn, whatever you're producing in your
life is reflection of you.

I can look at what you are producing
and I can tell you a lot about who you are. See, when you leave here,
you've got a make a commitment to be more fruitful,
to be more productive, to make greater impact. So what will allow you to do that?
You gotta spend time working on yourself. In order to do something you've never done,
you gotta be someone you've never been. That's why scripture
says you must be born again. You've got to die as you are now. You've got to be willing to give up who you
are now for what you can become.

Certain things will no longer
fit into your life. There's no place for it. In order to do something you've never done,
you've got to be someone you've never been. So you gotta spend
serious time reading, writing your goals down, reading scripture,
anchoring yourself spiritually to handle the storms of life,
because they're gonna come. So every day you have to sell yourself and get out of your mind those old thoughts, that old belief system. Every day, you got to sell yourself
on that it's possible. As you gotta put a new mind in you,
you gotta get out of your mind, you gotta begin to
restructure your own thinking. Every day you gotta begin
to recondition your mind. See, let me share something with you. The easiest thing I've ever done was to earn a million dollars. The most difficult thing I've ever done
was to believe it could happen to me. That was the most
difficult part to believe, given the fact I was born an abandoned
building on a floor, being labeled educated mental retarded,
not having any college training.

I used to feel all my life that people who had college
degrees were more intelligent than me. I remember going to see the late Dr.
Norman Vincent Peale, the author of the book, The Power of Positive Thinking and I used to look at
him up on stage and I said I could do that. I would love to talk to people.
I love to talk to people. And I said, I can do that. But then when I started going back to my car,
my mental conditioning activated itself. And it said, Les Brown, you can't do that.
You don't have a college education. Les Brown, you can't do that. You don't have the training.
You've never worked for a major corporation. You can't do that. What makes you think you can earn
five, ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars in an hour? You don't earn that now
working for two or three months.

What makes you think that you can speak
for AT&T, Procter & Gamble, McDonald's Corporation, General Electric?
These are clients I have now. You've never even worked for them. How many of you
have ever thought about something you wanted to do and you talk yourself out of it. Raise your hand
if you know what I'm talking about. That inner conversation
is what's gonna haunt you. after staying here and saying,
I can do all things of Christ who strengthens me after saying that again
and again, we are more than conquerors. That inner conversation will cause you
when you leave here to go back, leading a life of mediocrity, leading a life of unproductivity,
leading a life of poverty. See, we live in a world where we believe that
bad things are supposed to happen to us. I remember the point in my life, Bishop,
when things are going good for me. And I said, this is too good to be true.
Something is bound to happen. Guess what? It did. Watch your words.
Watch what you say about yourself, about your affairs. Be conscious of that
on a daily basis.

Why? Because your words are powerful. In the beginning was the word. Life and death is in the tongue. Watch what you say.
Never say I'm broke. Say I'm overcoming a cash flow problem..