Do you ever wonder whether you are living life to your potential? Do you sometimes feel as though you are standing on a busy street corner while the rest of the world is engaged in meaningful activities? Do you feel like you are being carried or sometimes even dragged along by life's trials and challenges? Now you can get motivated and take action toward accomplishing your goals. Empower Your Life: Finding Greater Motivation Within provides real-world solutions and creative tools to help empower your life and motivate you to action. Author Bradley D. Castle offers unique insights and guidelines that can help you accomplish your goals and overcome challenges. In this helpful guidebook, you will discover the following: Motivational activities designed to drive you toward achieving your goals Creative methods that discipline your mind to overcome negativity and build positive thought patterns that push you toward accomplishment Techniques to help you increase your driving force and view obstacles as stepping stones to your dreams Step-by-step advice on how to be a powerful influence to motivate and inspire others Effective and powerful strategies that can help you to create an environment where you can be successful Empower Your Life: Finding Greater Motivation Within provides valuable guidance to help you maximize your skills, gifts, and talents to empower your life.

EMPOWER YOUR LIFE

FINDING GREATER MOTIVATION WITHINBy BRADLEY D. CASTLE

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 Bradley D. Castle
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-5056-7

Contents

Acknowledgments...............................................................ixAbout the Author..............................................................xiPreface.......................................................................xiiiChapter 1: The Power of Motivation............................................1Chapter 2: Motivation in Personal Connections.................................7Chapter 3: The Journey Can Be Motivating......................................12Chapter 4: Work for Success...................................................23Chapter 5: Learning from Struggle.............................................27Chapter 6: Expectations.......................................................30Chapter 7: Learning from Failures.............................................34Chapter 8: Value of Service...................................................39Chapter 9: Critical Decisions.................................................46Chapter 10: Advice on Employment and Education................................50Chapter 11: Learning Success..................................................56Chapter 12: Time Is on Your Side..............................................60Chapter 13: Personal Accountability...........................................63Chapter 14: The Fear of Failure...............................................66Chapter 15: Influencing Your Environment......................................69Chapter 16: Be a Positive Influence through Communication.....................74Chapter 17: The Danger of Negative Criticism..................................77Chapter 18: Exercising a Positive Attitude....................................80Chapter 19: Choosing Your Environment.........................................82Chapter 20: Being a Strength to Others........................................86Chapter 21: Leadership in All Things..........................................89Chapter 22: The Power of Optimism.............................................91Chapter 23: The Alter Egos of Leadership......................................93Chapter 24: The Value of Change...............................................96Chapter 25: Defining Success..................................................99Chapter 26: Focus and Sacrifice...............................................105Chapter 27: The Starting Line.................................................108Chapter 28: Taking Concrete Action............................................110Index.........................................................................113Resources.....................................................................119My Notes......................................................................129

Chapter One

The Power of Motivation

The first thing I want to do is explore the power of motivation. How can motivation change your life? Does being motivated really affect your level of happiness or ability to reach what you would consider success? To answer these questions, you must look at your past experiences to contrast and compare those moments in your life when you were motivated. Did you accomplish more than you thought you could? Did you find fulfillment doing things that you otherwise would not have enjoyed? Often we spend so much time focusing on our future goals that we forget our past experiences, how much we already have accomplished, and how we overcame the challenges we have already faced. It is vital that you take the time to remember. Remember those defining moments in your life and the circumstances surrounding the experience. Include even the little things because we know that by small and simple things, great things can be accomplished.

I would like to share some of my past experiences to hopefully ignite the fire within you as we explore some of the little and big things that have helped me understand the power of motivation. One of my first experiences with being motivated to reach a goal happened when I was only five years old. My twin brother and I learned about a beverage company's promotional giveaway that promised prizes, including a dirt bike. I had seven siblings, and money was not in abundance for my family at that time. I knew that the only way I was going to get a bike was to win this prize, even if it meant sharing it with my brother. In order to win this bike, we had to collect bottle caps. On the inside of each bottle cap was a letter of the alphabet, and we had to collect the correct letters to spell a five—or six-word phrase. For the next couple of months, I was extremely excited about the prospect of winning the bike.

Every morning and afternoon, as I walked to and from elementary school, which was about a fifteen-minute walk, I would look for bottle caps along the side of the road. I was amazed at how many people would pop the cap of their soda bottles and throw the cap out of the window of the car as they drove along this road. After a few months of collecting caps, we had the entire phrase spelled out with the exception of one letter. As the deadline approached, we spent hours after school walking the neighborhood roads to find this last letter, sifting through discarded bottle caps.

When I look back at this experience, I realize that at five years old, I did not have any ambitions in life beyond having fun with neighborhood friends. But as soon as I envisioned winning this bike, I became a very motivated child, working hard every day to collect the letters from the bottle caps I needed. My brother and I never actually found that last letter before the promo expired, but I would have done it again if given the opportunity. I learned a valuable lesson in life about the power of motivation and the role that having a goal can play as a catalyst for action. I went from only being interested in the day-to-day activities of a child to having a burning desire to accomplish something that, at the time, I considered great. I also enjoyed the work. It was fun and exciting collecting these bottle caps. I would be outside in the hot sun and heat of a Florida day, doing something that some people would consider too challenging and too difficult for a five-year-old, but I considered the work to be the most exciting part of my day. I believe that if you can identify that motivating factor in your life, mundane work can become the most exciting part of your day. So many of us underestimate the power of motivation and overlook the potential we have to find purpose in our daily tasks as we labor to reach our goals.

Many of us have identified areas in our lives that we want to improve and have set goals that we want to accomplish. To reach these goals, we must change how we do things. However, it can be difficult to find the motivation within to make that change a reality. How often do we think about all the things that we could potentially accomplish without having a clear plan for moving forward. We often want to make change. The desire is there to make the change, but something is holding us back. Something is preventing you from taking the next step forward. I urge you to seize the day and move forward with the notion that now is the time to act.

I recall a story of a young teenage boy who felt lost in his life. He felt alone sitting on the bench of an almost deserted park, wondering where his life was going. He felt he was no good to himself and was doing no good for anyone else. As he sat in despair and utter...