Most of the time we kid ourselves with a system of delusions and denial. We say we are one kind of person, while doing things that are contrary to our desired image. Psychologists call it “cognitive dissonance,” a state of discomfort when we say one thing but do another. We will go to any lengths to avoid that feeling; hence we construct an elaborate system of delusions, denial, and certain behaviour patterns.

To face the fact that we aren’t acting like the person we believe we should be, is painful and unpleasant. We don’t have time for that. Negative emotions get in the way of our being productive and focusing on the tasks and goals at hand. So we live with incongruence’s and denial, and our battling inner selves seem to be just part of who we are. We find a way to excuse ourselves. We are forgiving of our inconsistencies. We’re only human, after all.

The problem is those conflicting undercurrent saps our energy and spirit. The price we pay by not facing these paradoxes is fatigue, irritability, and lack of energy. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to maintain the different sides of our personality in some sort of harmony.

Most people don’t recognize the extent of their inner complexity. We run into trouble when we set goals that do not take into account the differing sides of our personalities. We have competing selves and competing commitments. On the one hand, we may truly be health conscious and want to maintain a set of healthy standards. On the other hand, we are also committed to having fun and enjoying life. These two values may compete for our attention, and usually the goal of immediate pleasure will win out over delayed satisfaction.

We may value family life and work hard to give our family things that provide pleasure and comfort. But what happens when our commitment to work and financial success interferes with spending time with children and spouses? What about our sense of orderliness? What happens when the focus on just getting things done overrides getting the most important things done?

Human beings are complex animals, with competing drives and a multitude of values. It is not easy to know ourselves well. How do you gain self-awareness so that appropriate goals and priorities can be set?

Try to identify 3-5 values and priorities that motivate you strongly. Then identify any competing values that also must be satisfied. Many times something we value has an opposite that we also value. These competing values must be reconciled in your mind.

Once you identify your strongest desires, and the competing drives that vie for your attention and focus, revise your goals and priorities to honour both sides of your personality. Try setting realistic goals that will allow for both sides of your competing values.

Both sides of you will love you for it!

Lower your expectations and you will suffer less disappointment

Try seeing everything as already perfect and accept things as they are, then you can strive less and relax more.

Learn to say NO

Next time someone asks you to do something, before the word ‘yes’ slips out, pause, say you can’t give an answer just yet – you’ll get back to them. This technique gives you time to think. Now you can choose to say NO, calmly, politely and kindly.

Do one thing at a time

SLOW DOWN! If you are racing, so is your heart! Write yourself a list, prioritize your tasks and work through your list methodically. You need to enjoy what you are doing, not just the results of your efforts.

Stop trying to fall asleep

So many people go to bed desperate to fall asleep as quickly as possible, and then suffer the frustration of wakefulness. Quit struggling – you need to relax before you can sleep! Be thankful that you are warm, safe and cosy, be glad that your body is resting. Breathe deeply, slowly, gently and listen to your heart beating peacefully.

Laugh more! Get serious an about humour

Laughter is seriously healing. The special chemicals released when we laugh are nature’s finest form of natural medicine. When you’ve suffered a stressful day, make sure you ‘suffer’ some serious humour in the evening. Watch a comedy show or film, one you know will produce copious laughter, to counter the stress you’ve endured.

Treat yourself to a catnap and don’t feel guilty

When your body is pleading for rest, “40 winks” works wonders but only if you don’t feel guilty about this.

Get out in the fresh air!

A drab office, the whir of computer hard drives and the drone of your boss’s demands can all be stressful. Get outside during your lunch break, find a patch of green, some flowers, or even wander around a garden centre! Lose yourself in nature and feel your tensions dissipate, for a while at least.

Live in the now

The past is gone, you can’t change it. The future is mysterious and seductive, but only with you in your dreams. What you need is with you NOW so make the most of it. Be creative and give everything you’ve got to NOW.

Peter has also written it in a modest way – although don’t take that to mean the information isn’t worth having (as it most definitely is!) – but his light style of writing makes it more of a ‘friend chatting to a friend’ approach, rather than a ‘this way is the right way’ approach.

It is truly a gem, full of practical stuff that really helps, spread over 7 sections and 218 pages. It is certainly worth every penny.

For instance, a paranoid may imagine that people don’t like him. A diagnosis may show that the problem could be a very low self-esteem. “I don’t think I’m a person worthy of anything,” he may insist. Further diagnosis may show that the patient was abused or maltreated as a child. The trauma had impressed a negative emotion that stayed in him, grew, and finally took over his mindset and perceptions.

Let’s take a simpler and more common example. A spirited talk about their child’s birthday party somehow ended up on a sour note. Mary couldn’t figure out why John suddenly became argumentative about what cake to buy. Later on, John admitted that cakes weren’t really that important to him. He told her that any cake would do as long as their child liked it. It’s just that he’s bothered by how his boss has been treating him in the office. His boss has been criticizing everything he decides on. John couldn’t take being opposed anymore, even with a simple decision on what cake to buy.

Every day, many people are held prisoners by their emotions. They let emotions rule their lives and decide how everything would turn out. They behave as if they have no choice but to yield to their emotions. They let emotions use them.

If you choose to, you can use emotions to your advantage. Instead of letting them take over your life and ruin it too, you can use your emotions to build you up.

The truth is that emotions have no power to control anything or anyone. The only reason they seem to be so overwhelming is that they are usually given power to be so. Emotions are similar to power beggars. They wait to be given power. By themselves, they can do nothing. Once they are given importance, they grab that opportunity and take over. Remember, emotions can grow in power overnight.

The good news is that you can order your emotions to propriety. With the right training, you can enforce a process that submits the emotions to a practical will. A practical will is that which is commanded by a strong and practical mind. If a personality has this operation, it will be a progressively changing personality every day. When a practical mind decides on what behaviour to manifest and how to manifest it, a healthy personality is the result – and a healthy personality is one that makes use of its emotions, rather than letting emotions use it.

When we try to control other people we cause conflict, upset and pain – to both the other person and ourselves. The thing about the control we desperately crave is that we all look to control outside factors, in the faint hope that we will be able to gain some control in our own lives.

There are really only three main emotions:

• Love (including happiness, peace etc)
• Anger (including hate, unhappiness, etc)
• Fear (including uncertainty, dread etc)

All our feelings are a combination of these emotions. Love draws you towards something; anger creates conflict, ultimately pitting you against something, whilst fear chases you away from things. By controlling (or attempting to control) outside factors we are really just trying to reduce anger and fear, whilst increasing love and all those emotions related to it.

The good news is that it is easier to get control of everything – by controlling your thoughts. There is one important point to remember, to remind you that you are in control:

• Each event or situation that happens in your life, is neither good or bad – it’s just an event or situation

It is our interpretation of the event or situation that we CAN control. The event itself doesn’t cause you to feel the good or bad emotions – it’s your REACTION to the event that does.

Let’s look at an example – you lose your job. Now, if you loved your job, got on well with your boss and put in the time, you’ll feel naturally upset – however, if you hated the job, you’ll probably feel relieved or happy!

By looking for the positive in any given event and situation, you can turn them around to be for your benefit in some way. Is someone shouts at you, you can decide if you get angry or not. Maybe they had a bad day, maybe they remind you of what you don’t want to be like and maybe you did something to hurt them – it’s your choice how you react.

Changing the way you act in any given situation or event is really down to you changing your attitude to them. Take a second to take a deep, slow breath in before you react, to give yourself time to decide how you actually want to react. Too often, we allow our subconscious to decide how we react to any given situation – this is why you feel out of control – so take back control by deciding to control how you react!

Still, other people use the excuse of procrastination to look like they are working hard on something, when all that they have done is to wait until the last minute in order to look like they actually have a lot to work with! In reality they could have done things little by little, every day and still met the deadline without going through the stress.

In any case, procrastination is difficult to deal with, and if you get used to it, it can be a difficult habit to get rid of, much less deal with. In fact, procrastination in school aged children can be the bad beginning to a clumsy career, and if you procrastinate all your life – you may well put yourself in the hospital or let the stress mess with you and your family.

If you would like to help someone do better and get themselves out of the procrastination habit, then you can use the following tips to motivate them to get off their bottoms and start working:

Don’t be self-righteous

You were a procrastinator, too, and you may have fallen into the Last Minute Trap at one time or another. The key to motivating anyone is to show them that they can get out of the habit because someone has done it before. Talk to them about your own experiences.

You can compare your work quality between something that you did when you were near a deadline and something that you did little by little and finished on time. You can also compare what the last minute work did to your health, and how you were able to get yourself to do better.

Set a good example

It will not do your apprentice any good if you as the master are as bad a procrastinator, or even worse. You cannot motivate someone to change if you do not show them how, so be prepared to show your stuff as you meet your own deadlines.

Be open to questions

A procrastinator can be willing to change, and you may have some advice to offer.

• Offer the person rewards for a deadline well met, say a few days before. If this person is your child or sibling, you can offer money or a treat at a nearby restaurant as a reward. If this person is your co-worker or classmate, then treat yourselves to a movie or a game night if you are able to meet your deadlines well.
• The opposite works, too: if you are not able to stop procrastinating, find a way to slightly punish yourselves, say by completing a put-off cleaning chore, not going out for a few rounds of beer, or not spending money on lunch or take away.
• Encourage the person to set their own deadlines. Having a deadline days or weeks before the real deadline can make them more motivated since they’re breaking their own records!

Your mindset

Your mindset is a major factor that can make you hard to motivate.  This is because it can severely limit your understanding of the world and all experiences in general.  Your mindset can sometimes be composed of growth-inhibiting beliefs, prejudices, biases and standards. 

If, for example, you believe that nothing good can come out of your staff, you’ll fail to see that there is a clerk there that actually has management potential.  If you refuse to believe that you can actually write for a famous magazine because you’re a person from a small town, you’ll miss out on an opportunity to expose your talent and reap its rewards.

Your comfort zone

We all have certain limitations in our minds.  These limits are things we decide on based on our own personal beliefs, ethics and standards.  Within these limits, we feel comfortable in and can pretty much do as we like. 

Once we approach the outer edges, we begin to feel discomfort, shyness, embarrassment or annoyance.  We do not wish to go further because we do not like what we don’t know or haven’t experienced.  Because we have a fear of the unknown, we’d rather stay within our comfort zones because we feel safe there.

The problem here is that a narrow comfort zone can be a major factor that makes you hard to motivate.  Each time you are presented with a new idea or experience, you check to see if it fits into your comfort zone.  If it doesn’t, then you simply refuse, no questions asked.  This is unfortunate because many of these ideas and experiences can be good for you.  But you’ll probably never know because you don’t have the motivation to try them.

Your past experiences

Did you get burned by the stove?  That’s probably why you hate to cook.  Did your former bosses fail to show appreciation for your hard work?  That’s probably one reason why you don’t feel motivated about your job.

Your background – personal, social and professional experiences – has a lot to do with how you decide things in your life.  They can also be factors that make you hard to motivate.  If these experiences are negative, they tend to make you more hesitant and unsure of yourself because they affect your self-esteem and confidence. 

If, for example, you’ve only been met with rejection or ridicule in your life, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine if you don’t feel a strong need to excel or to improve yourself.  You’ll probably be thinking – ‘So what?  Nothing I ever did was good anyway.  Why would things change now?’

Unless you consciously make an effort to identify these past experiences and then refuse to let them rule your life, you will always be hard to motivate.

The First Step is Education

One of the first things you can do to bring the Law of Attraction into your life is to actually educate yourself as much as possible on the subject.  Immerse yourself in books on the Law of Attraction.  Learn the very nature of the law and how it influences your life. 

The core idea of ‘The Secret’, and indeed, the Law of Attraction is that your thoughts go a lot deeper than just negative and positive thoughts. Thoughts – good or bad – attract your attention; your focus – and you will eventually get what you are focused on.

The Second Step is to Take Notice

The second step to mastering the Law of Attraction is to get a journal and begin to write.  Did you know that most people have no clue as to what their predominant thought patterns are, nor do they even know what it is that they want?

When you get a journal you can begin to explore your feelings on a much deeper level.  Write down how you feel, what you wish for, what you are worried about. Seeing your feelings on paper helps clear the clutter in your mind and helps highlight where you are focusing your attention.

The Third Step is to Take Action

The third step to using the Law of Attraction is to take small, inspired action towards your goals.  With your new Law of Attraction journal, you can begin to track your daily actions to ensure they are in alignment with your goals.  It’s very hard for most people to be aware of the way they spend their time, but when you set a specific plan and track it in your journal; you have a better chance of seeing how your week has gone, and if you are on the right track.

Finally, you need to be positive and patient. We can spend our time taking the same tiresome actions that we have previously taken, that get us the same lousy results again and again or you can try something more positive. But you then have to have some patience, as sometimes the thing we truly want will happen – when the time is right. Too often, people will say the Law of Attraction is a load of rubbish as it did not work in their lives; but actually it did work.  It simply worked to give them more of the same conditions they were focusing on and creating again, and again.

Subscribe to Gimundo and you will receive a free daily newsletter, delivered straight into your inbox. It features good news, interviews and special offers along with videos, website resources and news and features.

You can never have enough positive, uplifting and inspirational stories in your life, so sign up now! Go to http://gimundo.com/ and head for the ‘Daily Newsletter’ section to sign up.

You cannot simply slack off in college and drink yourself to death (or a series of F grades), or you may never get a job. And when you are finally sitting at your desk, driving your car, or working & contributing to the economy, you cannot simply leave all your duties and lie down at home. You will need to do as you did in school: meet deadlines, complete requirements, finish reports, and in general, live your life without losing your energy.

How can you motivate yourself? For a lot of people who have been burned out in school, college, or the workplace, this can be a difficult thing to achieve. However, there are a few tips that you can consider when you feel that you cannot push yourself further or farther.

Know what exactly it is you want
What are you motivating yourself to do? Do you merely want to finish a job, or do you want to earn a lot of money? Set tangible, or at least manageable goals for yourself. If you know exactly what you want, you can get it, and you can motivate yourself to get it.

Give your work a purpose
The problem with a lot of people is that they work hard but they don’t know what their work is for. Do they want money? Are they simply working toward money? Do you want money, or does your money have a purpose? Give yourself a tangible purpose so that you can know what you are working for. Striving for money is an empty goal; striving for money so that you can get a good house and a nice car might be more tangible; striving for more money so that you can help your siblings go to college, your parents to enjoy their retirement, and your family to have a better house and car might be even better.

Take a break
Sometimes, being burned out means that you need to stay away from things for a moment, have some time alone to yourself, and get an outsider’s view of your situation. When you start getting fatigued more often, your body might be telling you to slow down; and slowing down can mean re-energizing yourself by taking a vacation, or even just taking a walk. You may want to set aside some alone time each day for you to recharge, so that you are not constantly being barraged with work.

Don’t be afraid to say no when you are offered yet another duty
Sometimes, you can get so much work that you are saturated with stress, and you reach the point where you simply want to give up and not start working. Keep your work to a manageable level. You need to stay sane to keep on working in the long run.

Reward yourself for a job well done!
Plan a trip for yourself, or promise to take yourself to the movies if you complete your work. Little rewards, such as snacks and a cup of hot chocolate, can work too.