Light Your Own Fire

During last year’s site redesign, I found this article written by someone that silently mentored me during the beginning website design years I spend online before 2000’s bust. He is inspirational and his ideas are timeless and don’t require a particular topic to be applicable.

Goals, ideas, dreams, whether they are about securing the safe future of our food or getting your new baby asparagus through their first year without someone eating them all can be lost track of in the hubbub of everyday life.

I am reprinting this for the blog because it inspired me all over again when I found it. Enjoy!

No matter what goal we’re trying to achieve, we all get a little discouraged with our progress from time to time. Hey, no problem! That only means you’re human.

Achieving our goals is seldom a ride on straight, smooth road. There are many bumps and detours that can make the ride a little rough or make us feel we may have lost our way.

Have faith in yourself! The highs and lows only mean you’re rolling along with the natural cadence of forward progress. If it were always easy, everyone would be a superstar in all their chosen endeavors. The difference between success and failure depends on what you do next. It’s our own minds that set the standard. We either motivate ourselves or we don’t, so if you feel discouraged or lost, light your own fire!

Motivation has always been a prime factor in success. Motivation comes naturally at times, but most of us need to rekindle our inner fire regularly. How regularly? Most top achievers stoke the fires of their motivational furnace each day to stay focused and hot for the prize, and I recommend it too.

Too many people get fired up over a new goal, but then as the initial excitement fades, so does the goal’s importance. Motivation doesn’t keep burning on it’s own, that’s why we need to stoke the inner fire daily.

It’s like eating…eating doesn’t last. We have to eat day after day, but we think it’s a good enough idea that we keep eating. Eating fuels the body, your mind fuels your motivation. If you don’t feed your body it will starve. If you don’t feed your motivation it starves too, so you have to feed your mind to fuel your motivation in order to stay excited enough about your goals to achieve them. It’s that simple.

Below are some thoughts to help start you toward being motivated, tomorrow you’ll have to find your own motivation!

Know that you are amazing.

You are so unique that there is no one else quite like you in all of creation. See the value in that! No one can be you better than you can, so be the best you that you can be and know that is plenty good enough.

Know that you have the spark of brilliance.

Every human being has moments of genius, even those often considered slow or dumb. Use your imagination when solving problems or creating something new so your brilliance can shine. As adults, we too often use, or I should say misuse, our imagination to design imaginary scenarios for us to worry about. All that fretting and stewing! Use your imagination to improve reality rather than fearing what-ifs.

Know that you’re an artist.

Each day is your canvas, and you are the artist that paints the day whichever colors you choose. Work to make each day a masterpiece. Of course, some days won’t work out to be masterpieces, but enough will. By making a masterpiece out of as many days as you are able you’ll create a life that’s a work of art. This is the Art of Living, and you are the artist of your life.

Know that today is all there is.

Life is now. Each day that you let slide by only dreaming of some magical tomorrow is a day wasted. You can never reclaim a wasted day, once it’s gone, it’s gone. This is how you build the life you want, day-by-day, one day at a time, today is all there is.

Know your purpose.

Everyone can find or create purpose and meaning to everyday life. Those who don’t often find themselves in an emotional morass of their own making. Self-pity, unhappiness, despair, and other negative states of being are often the result of having no driving purpose. Set goals, big and small, and work for them. Be specific, and make it something you can get excited about, but also keep it realistic. As you accomplish your goals, replace them with new ones. Those who have purpose have little time to feel sorry for themselves.

Break your more challenging goals down into smaller goals. Turn them into step-by-step plans and work your plans. This gives you measurable progress that should help keep you excited.

Know what works for you.

There are many ways to keep the motivational fires burning. Some people find one thing and stick with it; while others, like me, use a variety of methods to stay hot for the prize. Find what works for you and use it regularly.

You might read motivational books or quotations daily, or review your goals daily, or recite positive affirmations, or meditate, or keep a daily progress chart, or write your own motivational material, or join a support group, or partner with a like-minded friend to encourage each other on, or any of a hundred other possibilities. Just do something to light your own fire!

Know that there is nothing to fear.

They say a coward dies a thousand deaths, yet many people still let fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of embarrassment, and many other self-created monsters stop them dead in their tracks. It’s not what anyone says, it’s how you internalize it that matters. Once you’re comfortable being you, and have a clear purpose, no negative comment anyone might make should slow you down for even one moment.

Most of the time what we fear is only in our mind anyway. Making up your mind that fear is a self-imposed obstacle and choosing not to let it be so helps eliminate the biggest hindrance to your success — your self-imposed restrictions and roadblocks…in other words, you!

Know that what you can conceive and believe, you can achieve.

That’s a paraphrase of an oft quoted line from Think and Grow Rich, a classic motivational book by Napoleon Hill. That single line has been a motivational force for more people than you can shake a stick at, and for good reason too – it’s true.

Another way of putting it is that you must believe it before you can receive it. You can work for something year after year but if you truly don’t believe you can achieve it, you won’t. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right! (Henry Ford)

So don’t wait for someone or something outside of yourself to motivate you. Light your own fire if you want to achieve your goals. You are the only one amazing enough, brilliant enough, and creative enough to live your life right enough to be good enough for you!

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