103see the illness as a gift that allows you to grow may
unlock it.”
If you see your problems as curses, the motivation
you’re looking for in life will be hard to find. If you learn
to love the opportunities your problems present, then
your motivational energy will rise.
49. Remind your mind
Perhaps you have noted an idea in this book, or an-
other recent book that you’ve read, that you want to
hold on to. It might be an idea that you knew, the mo-
ment you saw it, would always be useful to you. You
might even have underlined it for future reference.
But what if the book goes on the shelf, or gets loaned
to a friend, and is forevermore out of sight and out of
mind? This is a very common experience, and there is a
remedy: Start treating self-motivational ideas as if they
were songs.
You can find ways to rewind these ideas so they’ll
play again and again until you can’t get them out of your
head. That’s how belief systems are restructured to suit
our goals. Place the thought you want to remember into
the jingle track in your brain so that it can’t get out.
You can create a new self by learning the beliefs you
want to live by—one thought at a time. Learn these
thoughts as you would the lyrics for a song you had to
perform on stage. A friend of mine used to learn his
parts in musicals by placing index cards with song lyr-
ics all over his office, home, and bathroom mirror. He
sometimes had them on the dashboard of his car. Why?
He was making a conscious visual effort to reach the
backside of his own mind.
Remind your mind