How to Motivate Yourself

Be the change you wish to see in the world –Mahatma Gandhi

Being my last post as a Featured Blogger, I guess it’s fitting that this post comes full circle to the topic from my first post: Motivation. However, I want to talk about motivating yourself. This post will be peppered with famous quotes and examples galore. I hope you take one thing from this post and apply it.

It starts with your alarm clock. Get out of bed! If you can do that, you are already winning. I jump out of bed every morning and am thankful that I’m above ground and not six feet below it. Attack the morning with some ferocity.

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. –The Queen (Through the Looking Glass)

When you part ways with your loved ones in the morning, memorize their face(s) and tell them that you love them. What you do the rest of the day will directly, or indirectly, affect them. Don’t tell yourself that you will tell them tomorrow. There’s no guarantee that you will get a tomorrow. The same thing goes for your dreams and aspirations. Do not put off until tomorrow those things that you can accomplish today!

When you arrive at the office, tell everyone “good morning” and smile. Smiles are infectious. When most people see a smile, they can’t help but smile back. Ask someone who looks down in the dumps if they need help or just need someone who can listen. Who knows? You might save their life. There are tons of stories out there about co-workers bringing other co-workers back from the brink simply because they acknowledge their presence with a “hello.”

Set out to accomplish the things you want to accomplish with some intention. Say what you are going to do and do it. Every Wednesday morning I listen to an hour long compilation of motivational speeches. The messages help get me through the rest of the week but, more importantly, they remind me of my purpose. What are you doing here? Why are you taking up valuable resources in the form of something as simple as the air we breathe? Like I ask my wrestlers every season:

Are you here to do something or are you here for something to do?

On any given afternoon, speak your mind at the office. Share your ideas. Present your ideas to the willing audience. There are going to be naysayers. I’m not naïve. I know there are still people out there who do not want to see you succeed.

You got a dream. You gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you, you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period. –Christopher Gardner (The Pursuit of Happyness)

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. –Steve Jobs

Imagine if everyone started to create the things that they imagined and dreamed. What would be the first thing you would create? I say “first thing” because I don’t want to limit the number of things you could possibly create. In the last 100 years, we have already seen flashes of what could be: the automobile, penicillin, and even the Internet.

At the end of the day, do something good for your community. If you are in the city, county, state, federal, or whatever government, you have the opportunity to do something great for other people. I challenge you: you know what needs to be done. If you know something is wrong, fix it. Don’t pass the buck to someone else. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Do something.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (or women) to do nothing. –Edmund Burke

TS Hamilton is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.