100 Ways To Motivate Yourself, Third Edition

92. Try becoming the problem

Whatever type of problem you are facing, the most self-motivational exercise I know of is to immediately say to yourself, “I am the problem.” Once you see yourself as the problem, you can see yourself as the solution. This insight was dramatically described by James Belasco in Flight of the Buffalo. “This is the insight I realized early and return to often,” he wrote, “In most situations, I am the problem. My mentalities, my pictures, my expectations, form the biggest obstacle to my success.”

By seeing ourselves as victims of our problems, we lose the power to solve them. We shut down creativity when we declare the source of the trouble to be outside of us. However, once we say, “I am the problem,” there is great ...