100 Ways To Motivate Yourself, Third Edition

33. Turn into a word processor

If you associate the word “willpower” with negative things, such as harsh self-denial and punishment, you will weaken your resolve to build it. To increase your resolve, it’s often useful to think of new word associations.

To weight lifters, failure is success. Unless they lift a weight to the point of failure, their muscles aren’t growing. So they have programmed themselves, through repetition, to use the word failure in a positive sense. They also call what we would call pain something positive: the burn. Getting to the burn is the goal! You’ll hear bodybuilders call out to each other: “Roast ‘em!” By consciously using motivated language, they acquire access to inner power through the use of the human will.