Motivation And Self Esteem
- Self Help Motivation

You may have moved beyond procrastination and developed a great routine for daily motivation , but what about the things that you just can't seem to do right?

There are certain tasks that we set ourselves that we know, logically, would make our lives better - you may have tried to do something many times in spite of a feeling that you'll never really succeed, a feeling that failure is inevitable because it hasn't gone right in the past. This is where motivation and self esteem can affect each-other.

So much of what we do is based on our own evidence of success and failure. But what do these words really mean? In order for you to feel that you have succeeded or failed at something, you probably set a mental benchmark or a 'finishing line' of some sort - either you win or lose.

Imagine a baby taking its first shaky steps as it starts the transition from crawling to walking. One, two, oops - nope. Try again... first step, second step, third... bump, no luck again. At this point, do the parents sigh and say "oh well, this one's not a walker"? Does the baby look at the evidence and decide to give up? I don't think so!

Success and failure are time-dependent.

You can only fail at something when you decide that you won't spend any more time on it, that it's "just the way it is". By the way, "decide" literally means "to kill or cut off" all alternatives to your decision (it's from the same group as genocide, pesticide, etc.).

And talking of time, I am reminded of the two main types of clocks we have - digital and analogue. In science, digital means either one thing or another, for instance, 1 or 0, on or off, black or white, succeed or fail. Analogue means a continuous signal of infinite degrees - Hmm... how might this be useful, I wonder?

The great inventor Thomas Edison understood this analogue approach. He made many attempts to perfect the electric light bulb, and people asked him how he felt about constantly 'failing'. He replied:

"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

In other words, 'failure' is just learning what not to do next time. You know more, you progress. At the very least, you have much more new information than if you hadn't attempted anything.

And, as you take away the idea of a finishing line, even 'success' is simply a step on the way to even greater accomplishments.


You may also be interested in this article on Self Criticism


Return from Motivation And Self Esteem to Self Motivation

Return from Motivation And Self Esteem to Free Self Help Articles

Top of Page

© Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.
Content is intended for educational purposes only.