I’m lucky to have supportive people in my social environment. My brother, Bill, and my friend, Mohammad, were both encouraging me to take a risk. It involved a woman. My wife and I split up a year and a half ago, and aside from a very brief fling, I haven’t been dating. I felt it was time to start in again, but found myself holding back. But there was a woman I was interested in. I was feeling I would like to get to know her, but I wasn’t following through.

“What am I afraid of?” I asked my brother. That she will say no, that she isn’t interested in getting to know me.  He and I agreed, failure would be so devastating, that neither of us would risk it. He and I also agreed that this is a little over dramatic, but there it was.

My brother then shared with me the story of a friend of his who was always with a woman. His secret? He wasn’t afraid of rejection. What a difference that makes. When we aren’t afraid of rejection, than we are free to ask out as many people as we wish. And, of course, we shared the story with each other about how a ball player who only gets on base 3 times out of 10, ends up with a .300 average, very respectable.

We both agreed that not being afraid, that asking anyone you wanted to get to know was very reasonable.  On the other hand, we aren’t dealing with reason, we are dealing with emotion. And emotion, by definition, isn’t reasonable.

Here I am looking back on that conversation with Bill, thinking what a wuss I was. Because, yes, I did talk to her, and I did get her number, and we are probably getting together this weekend.

Notwithstanding my fear, my fear of rejection, I will be getting together with her.

So what was the cause of the change? Two causes. One was the discussion with Bill, in which I examined my fear, my fear of rejection, and examined the devastation that could possibly result, and realized just how over dramatic I was being. So the first way to deal with fear, I learned, was to examine it, and see if it made any sense at all.

The second cause was my conversation with Mohammad. He said he thought my plan to ask her if she wanted to get a cup of coffee some time, sounded like a good idea, and encouraged me to ask her.  He said he had my back. As long as he had my back, I figured how could it go wrong. And if it did, I could always blame him!

But it didn’t. So the second way I learned to overcome fear of taking an action was to have a friend tell you it’s okay to take it.

If there’s something you’ve been wanting to do, but have been hesitating about, I urge you to learn from me, and do the two things I did to overcome my fear, one, deeply examine the possible consequences, and two, get a friend to watch your back.

It worked for me.

A fundamental premise of the model for self motivation is that motivation differs for each of us. What motivates me may not be what motivates you. This is why we need to be in charge of our own motivation, rather than relying on someone else’s generic motivational hints or advice. And this is why we need to create our own self motivational plan, based upon the science of self motivation.

There are however strategies that you may find helpful. Try them out, but don’t be discouraged if they don’t work for you. A strategy that works for one person may not work for another.  This strategy, for example, might work a bit better for a linear thinker, an economist, or an accountant.

In economics there is a idea called opportunity costs … the cost of not doing something.  In a cost analysis often you compare the costs of two different alternatives.  But sometimes you do a cost analysis of taking or not taking a particular path. You compare the cost of doing something to the cost of not doing that thing.

When we do a cost analysis in Self Motivational Strategies we look at the cost of not realizing our vision.

In the book Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People for Change the authors present a method by which a counselor or therapist can, by carefully interviewing the client, help the client create a discrepancy between the client’s present behavior and his broader goals.  The interview also helps the client discover the cost he pays for the present behavior.  The authors assert that when the client becomes aware of this discrepancy and the costs of it, he is more likely to change his behaviors, to bring them in alignment with these more important goals.

When we aren’t feeling motivated, when we don’t feel like doing one of the tasks that will help us achieve a goal, we need to ask ourselves the question, “What is the cost to me of not manifesting my vision?”

The bottom line of this strategy is that people change because of the pain of staying the same.

What is the cost to you of not manifesting your vision?  What will it mean to you if it doesn’t occur?  Please share your answers to these questions with your fellow readers by leaving a comment below.

In my most recent posting I shared with you findings about motivation by Albert Bandura, the famous Stanford professor. Bandura writes that one’s view of how effectively one deals with stress impacts one’s motivation. I don’t think that was a surprise for many of my readers.

But Bandura’s second point was a surprise, at least for me. His second point was that our motivation will be impacted by our perception of our ability to control the thoughts that arise when we are in a stressful situation. If we feel we are able to control these thoughts, our motivation will not be impacted. But if we feel we cannot control our thoughts, our motivation will suffer.

I then went on to relate how Bandura suggested one who lacked confidence in his ability to control these thoughts could gain control.  It involved giving ourselves mastery experiences, experiences in which we learned how to control these thoughts. Upon later reflection, it seemed like something you would want to do with a trained professional, and re-reading the article makes me think that this is exactly what Bandura was suggesting.

But it occurred to me later that there are easier ways to get control of these negative thoughts.

The first way is called mindfulness. I first became aware of mindfulness when I studied meditation, especially Buddhist meditation. But for me it really hit home when I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle’s book, which I heartily recommend, presents mindfulness in a Western style, instead of an Eastern style, as Buddhists do. I don’t know why it resonated so much more for me; maybe it’s because I’m from the West.

If you find that you suffer from negative thoughts, thoughts in which you tell yourself that you are not okay, that you can’t handle stressful situations, that you are stupid, that you are ugly, or any of the other thousands of negative messages we give ourselves, do yourself a favor and order Tolle’s book.

The second easy way to lessen the impact of the negative thoughts is with prayer. As Paul wrote the Thessalonians, “Pray continually.”  Prayer will lessen the impact of the negative voices and has other benefits, of course.

Whichever way you choose to control those negative thoughts, don’t let them rob you of your motivation. Our dreams are far too valuable for us to let them be blocked by something that we can control.

Albert Bandura is a major player in the psychology of motivation. He is a professor at Stanford, and reading his writings always gives me a good intellectual workout. But it is always worth the time and effort.

In an article I recently read, Bandura writes of how both the motivation and the level of stress and depression a person experiences in threatening or difficult situations is impacted by how they view their ability to cope with the situation. If they feel they are not able to deal with the situation, they will be likely to fret over the situation and their response or lack of response to it, and to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about what is going to happen in the future. They will even downplay their ability to handle the situation. One unfortunate response when we are in this condition is that we will refuse to deal with the situation in any way, preferring instead to go passive, “since there is nothing I can do about it anyway.”

We have all experienced this, or certainly at least observed it.  Bandura refers to this response as high anxiety level. It’s pretty easy to see that one is not going to be very effective in such a state, nor is one’s motivation going to be particularly high.

When a person feels they are capable of handling the stressful situation, they will not have these disruptive thoughts. They will not blow the situation all out of proportion, and they will remain effective and motivated to deal with the situation.

Bandura refers to this feeling of being capable as self-efficacy. It’s the same thing as successability in the model for self motivation. It’s your confidence in your competence.

There are many strategies to increase your successability. I discuss several of them in my book.  In this posting, however, I would like to share what Professor Bandura has to say about dealing with this problem.

Anxiety arousal, he says, is caused not only by one’s perception of one’s competence, but also by one’s perception of how one controls one’s own disruptive thoughts. In other words, it isn’t just the way we feel about our ability to handle the situation that is important.  Just as important is how we feel about our ability to control our thoughts about the situation.

As way of solution, he quotes the Chinese proverb, “You cannot prevent the birds of worry and care from flying over your head. But you can stop them from building a nest in your head.”

So how do we stop them from building nests? We do that by giving ourselves experiences, positive experiences, in dealing with stressful situations in which we would normally be fretting about our inability to deal with the situation. Bandura calls these mastery experiences, experiences in which we prove to ourselves that we are capable people, capable of dealing with difficult situations, but also capable of turning off those negative thoughts about our perceived inabilities.

Having these experiences of ourselves as capable in both these realms will slowly build up in ourselves the belief that we are indeed capable. But we want to be gentle on ourselves when we do this. Here are several ways to make it easy on yourself as you put yourself in such situations, when giving yourself mastery experiences.

First, enlist an expert in the situation you are going to deal with, someone who knows how to deal with the situation and who can guide you as you are dealing with it.

Second, make sure the situations aren’t extremely stressful; mildly stressful is a good place to start.

Third, take baby steps in dealing with the situation. Use your intellect to break down the situation and the needed response into its component parts. Each part will be easier to handle than would be addressing the whole situation as one big problem.

Fourth,  be gentle. If you start feeling overwhelmed, take a break. Come back to the situation another day.

For most of us it took many years for society to teach us we are not capable. It will take a while for us to undo that learning. But having confidence in our competence is priceless. The more confident you are in your abilities the more you will attempt. And the more you will attempt, the more you will achieve.

This is an affirmation I say every night, while I lay in bed just before closing my eyes to drift off:

I am surrounded by a conspiracy of goodness. Everyone I come into contact with wants me to achieve my higher good, and wants to help me achieve it.

This affirmation reminds me of the importance of my social environment, the people that I surround myself with. Our social environment, part of the third factor in the model for self motivation, is in constant flux, as people come into and go out of our lives. Our social environment, these people, have a huge impact on our motivation. If we surround ourselves with the wrong people, people who scoff at our dreams, who sabotage our work, who are jealous of our successes, and who are threatened by our hard work, our motivation will be sucked from us. These people are motivation vampires.

If we surround ourselves with people who support us, who encourage us, who work along side of us, who mentor us, who teach us, our motivation will soar. These are the people we want on our side. They are our resources.

This affirmation reminds me that there are many people out there who want nothing better than for me to succeed. My success will give them pleasure. And many of those people actually want to help me succeed. Saying this affirmation reminds me that tough as it sometimes is to believe, it is true.

If you doubt this is true, that there are people out there who are in your corner and will, if asked, help you out, you need to do something about your doubts. Because if you don’t believe it, you will be less likely to ask. And if you don’t ask, you probably won’t get. And if you don’t get the help, it’s going to be a lot harder for you to make your dreams come true.

As Lone Man of the Teton Sioux said, “I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.”

So if you find it difficult to believe, borrow my affirmation, say it for two weeks, and then go try it out. Ask someone for some help. Every time you do, it gets easier. And every time someone helps you out, you believe it more and more.

And the more you believe that there is truly a conspiracy that wants your dreams to come true, and is ready and willing to help you make them come true, the more open you will be to this reality. And the quicker and easier your dreams will come true.

In this morning’s USA Weekend there is an article about Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University’s men’s basketball coach.  Coach K., as he is commonly referred, has been coaching at Duke for the past 31 years, compiling an amazing record.

As a coach, Coach K is a motivator. But he doesn’t motivate individuals, he motivates a group of individuals referred to as a team. What it fascinating for me about motivating a group, rather than an individual, is the role of social environment, part of the third factor in the model for self motivation. In the model, your social environment is the people that surround you. The people that surround you, the model for self motivation tells us, play a large role in how motivated you are.

The main component of the social environment of a team, however, is the team itself. It should come as no surprise therefore, that two of the three secrets to Coach K.’s success in motivating his athletes to do their best deal with social environment.

Secret #1: Build a cohesive team. This secret is all about social environment. As he implements this secret Coach K. is building a social environment; making each man on the team part of the social environment of each other man on the team. This is the essence of a team, each person working together and encouraging each other, and each player enhancing the capabilities of each of his team mates.

Secret #2: Involve everybody. This secret is about getting the buy in of all the team members. Rather than having rules imposed on the team member from without, Coach K. gets input from all the team members as to what they need to do in a given situation. This attitude was very important when he was coaching the 2008 Olympic basketball team. These were all NBA, professional basketball players from different professional teams. By being flexible and not trying to rule with an iron fist, Coach K. was able to get them to come together and support each other the way a healthy social environment is supposed to.

Secret #3: Invoke a higher cause. This is the secret that is not related to social environment. Instead it addresses the first factor in the model for self motivation, the vision, the goal you are seeking. In order for a goal to be motivating to you, the goal must be valuable to you.   In order for a goal to be motivating for a team, it must be valuable to the team.

Motivating a team may seemed more complicated than motivating yourself, but it all comes down to the same laws of human nature. Learn these laws as they apply to you, and you will become aware of the power of self motivation, the power to achieve all your dreams.

I’m lying on my couch, listening to Appalacian Spring, in moderate misery, as I have been stricken with Bartonellosis, also known as catch scratch fever. Though more people know the song than the ailment, if you catch it, it will probably be more memorable than the song. It has flu like symptoms, fatigue, achiness, loss of desire to eat, and like the flu, there isn’t a heck of a lot you can do but stay at home, sleep, force food down your throat, and wait it out.

My relatively new kittens (16 weeks) think it’s great having me home, and they alternatively snuggle up with me (I am horizontal at least 20 hours a day) and raise Cain.

My place is a disaster; it reminds me of those movies about the damaged children who are raised by alcoholic or drug addicted parents. There’s actually a piece of PVC pipe on the floor by the couch where I am lying. I took it off the couch where I am trying to make the couch scratch proof (good luck). And the kittens spot it immediately. I am trying to relax and these darn kittens need to bat it and roll it and generally make a bunch of noise.

I can only take so much, and I yell, “Is everything a toy to you kittens?” And then I have to laugh.  Because I am asking the kittens a question I already know the answer to. The answer is an emphatic yes. Everything is a toy when you are a kitten, even Paco, my brother’s Chihuahua, though they aren’t sure how they should play with him. Thank heavens God made kittens little. I would hate to be confronted with an eighty pound kitten. Play time would be rough!

The word is perspective, how we view the world. From a kitten’s perspective a piece of pvc pipe is a toy. A crumbled up piece of paper that missed the trash can is a toy.

And people have perspectives as well. I write a blog, so my perspective is that everything is a possible blog entry to me. So naturally I started thinking about how our perspective impacts us being effective in our lives.

We may think we are more complex than kittens and so we don’t have one overpowering perspective like, everything I see is a toy. But the reality is, we all have overpowering perspectives, ways in which we view the world, that color our lives.

Your perspective colors the way you see the world.

We all hear about people who see the world as victims. How does that color the way they see the world? Unfortunately for them, not very positively. They see the world as a hostile place, a place full of people who are trying to harm them. They don’t see potential allies, people who could help them achieve the things they want to achieve. Their social environment, the model for self motivation would tell us, does not positively impact their motivation.

Then you have people who have the perspective that people are fundamentally good, and will give you a hand if you ask them politely. These are generally the same people who will offer you a hand when it is needed. These people, seems to me, are the ones who thrive.

Can you change your perspective? I say, absolutely. It’s simple, though not easy.

The key to this change, like so many changes, is intent. If in my perspective the world is an unfriendly place, when I see I need some help to get something done, I automatically look for an alternative that does not require anyone’s assistance.

My perspective controls me; I am on automatic. Urge >>> response. What I need to do is break that link. As Frankl taught us, between urge and response comes a uniquely human step called reflection. This happens to be the space in which motivation occurs, but it’s also the place in which we work on the problems that arise from our perspective.

What you do is intentionally act in opposition to what your world view tells you to do. In other words, act out of alignment with your perspective.  Find you need help, but think that no one cares enough to help you? Ask anyway. You may find that your world view is not correct, people are willing to help. Do it again and again and you will actually establish a more healthy, more effective world view.

Will you take charge of your perspective, or let it continue to control you? Your success in life may depend upon how you answer this tough question.