How to Persuade Yourself to Do Anything
Limit negative thoughts., Don’t fear failure., Banish the word “quit” from your vocabulary., Don’t compare yourself with others., Don’t fret about what others think of you.
Step-by-Step Guide
-
Step 1: Limit negative thoughts.
Negative thoughts tend to fixate on negative outcomes.You may be selling yourself short, underrating your skills or innate talents to the point that you doom your efforts before even trying, creating a vicious and self-fulfilling circle of failure.
Concentrate on empowering thoughts.
Part of the process is learning to let recognize what lies behind your negativity, to “let go,” and to replace the negative thought with a positive one.
Instead of fretting about how a task, ask what it is that causes you to fret.
Is it fear of failure? Loss of control? Once you identify the source, you can better control your reaction., We all fail.
More than that, we fail all the time.
In fact, the most successful people fail the most because they take the most risks and learn from prior failures.
Consider Abraham Lincoln, who failed as a business owner, went bankrupt twice, and lost 26 campaigns before finding his political form.
Consider Thomas Edison, whose teachers said that he was “too stupid to learn anything” and who got fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive.”Achieving major goals in life involves “unlearning” our fear of failure.
One way to do this is to try new things – yoga, painting, music – and to retrain your brain by courting failure in order to overcome it., Along with accepting mistakes, adopt a never-say-die attitude toward your goals.
Theodore Roosevelt once said that “Nothing in the world is worth having unless it means effort, pain, and difficulty.”Remember that achievement is supposed to come hard and that you do not have a right to easy success, and put on a brave face when you struggle or fail. , There will always be someone in the world who is smarter, more accomplished, more successful, and more popular than you.
Judging yourself by their standard is hopeless and will only reduce your motivation and make you feel inadequate.
Recognize that these feelings come from within you – you make the comparison and create the feeling of inadequacy; they do not “make” you feel that way.
Try to reason in this way.
Likewise, you can plan strategically to stop yourself from making comparisons.
For example, sit in the front of the class if yoga makes you painfully self-conscious about your body.
Just don’t look at your classmates., Successful people dare to take risks regardless of what other people think.
You may be holding back for fear that you might not fit in or that peers may doubt you, that they will look askance at you or tell you that you will fail.
They might be right.
But what if they are wrong? One way to manage thoughts like these is by creating a hierarchy.
List the people whose opinions really mean the most to you: your family, your parents, your spouse.
Then move down the list in descending order of importance.
Your boss and friends should matter somewhat less than family, and your colleagues less.
By the time you get to casual acquaintances and strangers, you will see that their good opinion should really not matter to you much at all. -
Step 2: Don’t fear failure.
-
Step 3: Banish the word “quit” from your vocabulary.
-
Step 4: Don’t compare yourself with others.
-
Step 5: Don’t fret about what others think of you.
Detailed Guide
Negative thoughts tend to fixate on negative outcomes.You may be selling yourself short, underrating your skills or innate talents to the point that you doom your efforts before even trying, creating a vicious and self-fulfilling circle of failure.
Concentrate on empowering thoughts.
Part of the process is learning to let recognize what lies behind your negativity, to “let go,” and to replace the negative thought with a positive one.
Instead of fretting about how a task, ask what it is that causes you to fret.
Is it fear of failure? Loss of control? Once you identify the source, you can better control your reaction., We all fail.
More than that, we fail all the time.
In fact, the most successful people fail the most because they take the most risks and learn from prior failures.
Consider Abraham Lincoln, who failed as a business owner, went bankrupt twice, and lost 26 campaigns before finding his political form.
Consider Thomas Edison, whose teachers said that he was “too stupid to learn anything” and who got fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive.”Achieving major goals in life involves “unlearning” our fear of failure.
One way to do this is to try new things – yoga, painting, music – and to retrain your brain by courting failure in order to overcome it., Along with accepting mistakes, adopt a never-say-die attitude toward your goals.
Theodore Roosevelt once said that “Nothing in the world is worth having unless it means effort, pain, and difficulty.”Remember that achievement is supposed to come hard and that you do not have a right to easy success, and put on a brave face when you struggle or fail. , There will always be someone in the world who is smarter, more accomplished, more successful, and more popular than you.
Judging yourself by their standard is hopeless and will only reduce your motivation and make you feel inadequate.
Recognize that these feelings come from within you – you make the comparison and create the feeling of inadequacy; they do not “make” you feel that way.
Try to reason in this way.
Likewise, you can plan strategically to stop yourself from making comparisons.
For example, sit in the front of the class if yoga makes you painfully self-conscious about your body.
Just don’t look at your classmates., Successful people dare to take risks regardless of what other people think.
You may be holding back for fear that you might not fit in or that peers may doubt you, that they will look askance at you or tell you that you will fail.
They might be right.
But what if they are wrong? One way to manage thoughts like these is by creating a hierarchy.
List the people whose opinions really mean the most to you: your family, your parents, your spouse.
Then move down the list in descending order of importance.
Your boss and friends should matter somewhat less than family, and your colleagues less.
By the time you get to casual acquaintances and strangers, you will see that their good opinion should really not matter to you much at all.
About the Author
Lisa Ferguson
Committed to making cooking accessible and understandable for everyone.
Rate This Guide
How helpful was this guide? Click to rate: