100 Ways to Motivate Yourself – Useful Lessons on a Dairy Farm

Author Steve Chandler, in his book, 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, says, “Whatever type of problem you are facing, the most self-motivated exercise I know of is to immediately say to yourself, ‘I am the problem.’ Because once you see yourself as the problem, you can see yourself as the solution. When we see 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 power that shifts from the outside to the inside. Now we can become the solution.” This is equally true on your dairy farm and throughout the dairy industry.

Chandler explains, “You can use this process the same way a detective uses a premise to clarify the crime scene.

If the detective says, ‘What if there were two murderers, not one?’ she can then think in a way that reveals new possibilities. She doesn’t have to prove that there were two murderers in order to think the problem through as if there were. The same is true when you become willing always to see yourself as the problem. It is simply a way to think. Unfortunately, our society today is in the habit of thinking the opposite of ‘I am the problem.’” We’ve become a nation of victims!

In The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden writes, “To feel competent to live and worthy of happiness, I need to experience a sense of control over my existence. This requires that I be willing to take responsibility for my actions and the attainment of my goals. This means that I take responsibility for my life and my well-being. Often, we avoid a basic truth: we are the problem. We never realize this is now good news. Once I discover that accepting responsibility for the problem also gives me new power for solving it, I become free.

How can we use this?

1.     If Cash Flow is weak or negative, are our expenses out of control?

2.     If milk flow is down on our dairy farm, have we lost control over our breeding program and pushed up our Days in Milk?

3.     If our milk prices are low, is it due to decreased promotion or poor marketing efforts. Get involved in your co-op and find out!!

Do yourself a favor. Become part of the problem you face. It’s the best way to become part of the Solution!!!