1STUDENT MOTIVATION SPECIALISTEDWARDDAVID GARCIA

ANY STUDENTKEYS TO MOTIVATE

3 Keys To Motivate ANY StudentCopyright 2012 Brilliant Partners. All Rights Reserved

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3 Keys To Motivate ANY Student

Are you dealing with lethargic, uninterested or uninspired students? Or are you struggling to maintain your own motivation? This book is designed to give you the tools you need to conquer motivational problems in your students and in your own life.

David Edward Garcia provides three keys to motivation:

Find It You already have all the motivation and energy you need to succeed in life, but you have to find it first, by learning who you are as a person and clarifying your dreams and goals.

Feed It Next, you need to feed your newfound motivation through positive thinking. Learn to visualize your dreams in order to make them a reality.

Fight for It Finally, and most importantly, you have to fight for your motivation resist the urge to stagnate and the pressures of life that are preventing you from achieving your dreams.

By learning to use these three incredibly simple principles, you can start making a huge difference in the lives of your students and in your abilities as an educator.

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3 Keys To Motivate ANY Student"David Edward Garcia, you're right about yourself; you're just not college material," my 12th grade English teacher fumed a few weeks before my high school graduation.

The class had just completed an essay assignment under the imminent threat of leaving school and entering "the real world." What was this "real world" and what had I been living in all these years? I wondered ... had I been a figment of someone else's imagination and attending an imaginary school this whole time? Furthermore, for a make-believe world, mine had been severely lacking in make-believe girlfriends and make-believe straight A's. How much worse was this "real world" going to get? The teacher had asked the class to consider our futures. Some of us were about to join the workforce, others would go to university, and many would do both. "Tell me what YOU want to do," the teacher said. "Write down some of your dreams and your fears. And let me know what you thought about my class. This isn't for a grade I'd like to know what you honestly think. I promise I won't judge or be angry."

I lit up at the thought of a teacher-sanctioned opportunity to be honest with an adult. I was used to authority figures sternly shushing me, and here was my English teacher, actually requesting my honest opinion!

My classmates hunched over their desks, carefully setting down their thoughts and feelings. I, on the other hand, was finished in a flash. I scrawled, "I don't think this class helped me very much. I don't remember learning anything." Well, she'd asked for honesty. I wasn't trying to be ugly to my teacher, but I meant what I wrote. I had spent half the school year studying Beowulf, and I couldn't fathom how that ancient epic could possibly impact my life. To this day, Beowulf hasn't landed me a job interview or comforted me in times of sorrow. It certainly hasn't transformed me into the world's most eligible bachelor. Maybe someday Beowulf will come through for me in a crisis, but as of now, I have yet to see a single return on that 100-hour investment.

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My essay continued, "I want to go to college, but I'm scared I don't have what it takes. I'm scared I won't do well."

The teacher collected our papers and proceeded to keep 97% of her promise to refrain from judging her pupils. She made no comment on any essay, except for one particularly inflammatory screed - mine. As she read my honest feelings and fears, she turned an alarming shade of purple. Then, in front of the whole class, she bellowed, "David Edward Garcia, you're right about yourself. You're just not college material!"

I share this story with audiences all over the world, and my listeners are always appalled that an educator would say something like that. However, in my experience, her outburst was actually a pretty mild one. My high school Spanish teacher once sputtered, "Garcia, you go through life like you just don't know you're not worth s#!+!" In a similar vein, my eighth grade speech teacher delivered this little gem: "I absolutely cannot wait for the high school boys to kick your obnoxious little @$$." And this litany of verbal abuse coming from the adults in my life was by no means atypical. I can't say I was particularly devastated or traumatized by my English teacher's words. In fact, I wasn't even surprised.

The truth is that I was a terrible student. I was hyperactive to the point of being uncontrollable, and my classmates' laughter meant more to me than the teacher's approval (or sanity, for that matter). Today, I would be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, or its more specific cousin, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. At that time, though, I was diagnosed with a bad case of "Attention-Seeking Child of Divorce."

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Only the individual has the power to change their life ... every teacher and every student who is alive and breathing already has all the motivation they need, even if they dont know it yet.

Today, kids like me get medicine and therapy; I got the business end of a paddle. Today's kids have teachers who attend conferences and workshops that teach educators to diversify their educational approach in order to help students like me. I, however, was repeatedly thrown in a windowless solitary confinement cell, known euphemistically as "in-school suspension."

It's worth noting that many of the greatest entrepreneurs credit ADD/ADHD with their success, even though, like me, they'd grown up hearing that success in life hinged on the ability to sit motionless in a chair eight hours a day, five days a week.

But in spite of the paddling, the confinement and the lack of educational support, I was determined not to give up. I was and am a natural optimist, and it has carried me through tough times my whole life.

I believe my involvement in sports aided and abetted my optimism. The chemical cocktail that movement releases in the brain is so good it feels like it should be illegal! My deep faith in God and my belief that my life had a purpose also sustained me. Even as a near-failing high school student, I believed deep down that I was supposed to travel all over the world learning languages and helping kids who faced the same challenges that I had.

I made good on my promises to myself. After I graduated from high school, I went to Europe. Even there, though, I found myself contending with European stereotypes of Americans. My European friends told me, "Americans only think about their big houses and big cars. Then they come to Europe not knowing a thing about European culture or our languages, acting like they own the place." I heard the following European joke over and over:

"David, what's a person who speaks three languages called?""Trilingual.""How about a person who speaks two languages?""Bilingual.""And a person who only speaks one language?""Monolingual?""Nope. AMERICAN!"

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There I was, caught between two opposing forces. On the one hand, I desperately wanted to go to college and then find a job that allowed me to travel all over the world. On the other hand, one side of the Atlantic was telling me I'd never make it as a college student, and the other side was telling me that I wouldn't be able to learn other languages anyway. It felt like everyone in my life believed that I wasn't cut out for success, that I deserved a paddling instead of a diploma.

Rather than throw in the towel, I set out on a lifelong quest to prove to myself that I could be the person I wanted to be and live the life I wanted to live. I have read thousands of pages and sat through thousands of hours of seminars. I have studied the lives and teachings of the great masters of success. All of this effort has helped me realize the life I could only dream of as a lost and discouraged teenager.

But before I explain these three keys, I want to set the record straight on motivation. I am a motivational speaker. People pay me to travel around the world and inspire my audiences to perform at peak levels. Often, when I arrive at a new venue, my hosts tell me, "David, we need you to motivate our teachers. They have no energy!" or, "David, our students won't obey the rules we've set in our school. We need you to motivate them to behave." For these well-meaning administrators, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I cannot say or do anything that will make a teacher or a student live a certain way. Only the individual has the power to change his or her life.

The good news, though, is that every living person does have that power every teacher and every student who is alive and breathing already has all the motivation they need, even if they don't know it yet. People who truly have no motivation are very sick or on drugs or medication that prevent their natural energy from flowing. This is great news for most of the people I meet it means that that they already have the energy to lead an exceptional life!

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I have synthesized all of my findings into three simple keys to motivation, the driving force behind success. These keys can help you and your students achieve any goal, reach any level of success, and live the lives that you were born to live.

My job, then, is not to create energy for you, but to help you channel the energy you already have and to show you how to focus it mightily to help you achieve mighty success. These principles can also be used to enhance the energy and motivational levels of your students. Understanding and using these three keys to motivation will result in drastic, positive changes in your life as an educator and in the lives of the young people you influence.

The 3 Keys to MotivatiNG ANY STUDENT

Key 1: Find It!

We need to help our students find their inner genius and discover their unique motivation, instead of tearing them down when they don't conform to an impossible general standard.

One of the greatest gifts an educator can give his or her students is to help them find their motivation. What is it that makes your students come alive? Every single person is motivated by different external and internal stimuli. Some are motivated by fear, others by positive feedback. Some are motivated by need, others by the desire to excel. Some crave security and comfort, but others need excitement to get them moving. What works for you and your students?

Psychology teaches us that every one of us is a genius in some way or other. If you inspire your students to believe that there is a master of masters locked inside each of them trying to get out, it will change their perspective for the better! Some students may be mathematical wizards who struggle with reading instructions. Others may devour novel after novel in their spare time, and then turn around and blow up the chemistry lab. We need to help our students find their inner genius and discover their unique motivation, instead of tearing them down when they don't conform to an impossible general standard.

We've all heard story after story about high school and college dropouts that went on to become the greatest successes the world has ever seen. I can only imagine how

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many teachers might overlook Bill Gates, Frank Lloyd Wright or Tiger Woods in favor of the kids who obediently memorized formulas and facts. The ability to accurately recall the dates of ancient battles, to recite Shakespeare's sonnets, or to plug numbers into the quadratic equation is all well and good, but it certainly doesn't guarantee success in life. In fact, scholastic education only accounts for 25% of a person's success! The other 75% comes from your attitude, beliefs and environment. As adults and educators, we can't neglect that 75%.

We need to provide a motivational incubator where students can grow and flourish; in other words, we need to help them find their motivation.

Moreover, we need to bring our teaching methods

up to speed with the 21st century! So much of my education was highly demotivational and useless in my adult life. Indeed, the highlight of ninth grade for me was dissecting a frog (sadly, not a whirlwind romance or a special award, sniff sniff). However, that hapless amphibian hasn't contributed a single drop to my career or to my personal satisfaction. In fact, I've never met a single adult whose frog dissection experience ever yielded lucrative financial, romantic or spiritual rewards! I can't decide what kind of car to purchase based on memorized proton and neutron counts from the periodic table, and I've never used the height of a streetlamp and the length of its shadow to calculate the hypotenuse of the triangle thus formed while stuck in the McDonald's drive-through. If a job interview ever hinges on my ability to recite Hamlet's soliloquy word for word, I'll eat my hat. In other words, we need to connect our lessons to the real world our students live in, not to abstract and out-of-touch hypothetical constructs.

We shouldn't distract students from their motivation we need to help them find it!

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Amazingly, most people are only one step away from achieving their goals.

Studies show that public speaking is the number one fear in the United States. In school, I had one rinky-dinky class that required me to cobble together a five-minute speech that was the sum total of the training I received to overcome the greatest fear in America. How about the fact that the average American household carries a credit card debt of upwards of $10,000? Why don't we teach our children about the psychology of impulse shopping or the crippling consequences of high interest rates? Finally, when I contemplate the fact that over half of the kids in our schools have divorced parents and yet can't recall a single class that taught coping skills for children in single-parent or blended families, I realize just how out-of-date and out-of-touch our system really is.

But enough ranting. We need some practical strategies for connecting education to our students' lives and for helping them find their motivation.

When you help your students find their motivation, you turn on light switches for them. You help them see where and why they need to focus their innate energy. When your students find their motivation, they become unstoppable.

There are many ways to approach this process, but one of the simplest is to ask your students questions. Here are some examples of questions that may help them find their motivation:

Finding Your Motivation: Questions to Ask

1. What are you good at? (What are your talents? What comes naturally to you? What can you do that makes people say, "That's amazing!"?)

2. What subjects do you enjoy most at school? Which ones do you excel at?

3. What is your personality type? (This is important a student who truly hates public speaking may not be cut out for politics.)

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4. What's your story? (What makes you unique? What problems have you overcome? What was your childhood like?)

5. What could you do the rest of your life and wake up excited about every single day?

6. What kind of job would allow you to do this?

7. What kind of salary does that job pay?

8. Would the money you make in that job match up to your lifestyle needs or desires? (Consider things like travel, hobbies and family.)

9. Would this job fulfill you as a person?

10. What are your values? (Think about things like family, religious worship, leisure time, etc.)

11. How much education will you need to get this job? (Some jobs require expensive and lengthy degrees! If you want to be a lawyer, for example, you'll need three years of law schoolat least.)

12. How much time do you need to invest in your education?

13. What can you do outside of school to prepare for your dream job? (Are there any internships, clubs or other classes you could participate in?)

14. How can you recession-proof your future career? (You'll have to teach yourself how to show up on time, how to be a good listener and how to go the extra mile. Indispensable assets are the last ones to be laid off. What are you doing to learn indispensable skills now?)

15. Will your dream job be in demand ten years from now?

16. What second or third job would you consider if you couldn't achieve your dream job? (I don't like to call this falling behind. Instead, I call it moving forward. It's a bit like dating. If one person says no, it opens up possibilities for a better person to say yes!)

Amazingly, most people are only one step away from achieving their goals.

Successful people typically master one skill so thoroughly that they can build their dream life around it. If you hear the name Donald Trump, don't you immediately think

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about business? If you think of Jim Carrey, you think of comedy! Jackie Chan kung fu. Michael Jordan basketball. Of course, many successful people diversify and develop multiple skills, but initially, it's just one that takes them all the way to the top. Just think: you only need to master ONE thing to get started living your dreams!

Most things in life follow this one-step rule. Struggling marriages are often one step away from being happy marriages. Perhaps it 's f inancial responsibil i ty, communication or something else just one weak skill that stands in the way of happiness and fulfillment. Prisoners are often one skill away from freedom anger m a n a g e m e n t , c o m m u n i c a t i o n o r forgiveness may be all that's needed for them to turn their lives around.

For you, there may be one particular demon standing between you and your dream life. Think for a moment. What is one skill you could develop that could help you conquer that demon and realize your dreams? What is the one skill your students are lacking that would help them succeed? FIND YOUR MOTIVATION!

Of course, it generally takes ten years to truly master a skill. I know, I know, there are some prodigies who learn at an accelerated rate and some who are born with freakish natural talent. And there are also others who need a little extra time to develop. For the most part, though, you can bet that it only takes ten years to become an overnight success. The good news for youngsters, however, is that they have the time. They just need the right kind of teacher to guide them.

Unfortunately, it's not all sunshine and roses for many people. Think about how demotivational the daily grind can be. In the United States, more people die on Monday mornings than any other time! Their brains simply cannot cope with another demotivational workweek the stress of facing each Monday morning builds and builds until the body can't take any more. By contrast, most Americans experience a

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Finding your motivation means that you will do something you love to do.

happiness increase of 10-15% on Friday. An entire restaurant franchise was founded on the idea that everyone loves Fridays!

This demotivational mindset is a trap, and it can pull your energy and your happiness out from under you if you're not careful. Finding your motivation means that you will do something you love to do with this attitude, you'll never have to work a day in your life. Every day will be full of play. Make no mistake, playing can be just as challenging as working, but these sorts of challenges are energizing and fun, if you've found your motivation.

I had to find my motivation all by myself. I failed several high school classes, including Spanish! How does a Mexican-American dual citizen from a bilingual background fail high school Spanish? However, I turned my own academic life around at the age of eighteen when I found my motivation. At that point, it was like a magic wand had been waved over my grades F's magically became A's. Previously, the only way I could sit still in class was if I had fallen asleep, but suddenly I found myself looking forward to spending all day reading in the library. I started learning other languages, paying my bills and taking care of myself all this because I found my motivation.

Remember, we cannot create motivation in our students. Fortunately, we don't have to; they have the desire to move already! Our role is merely to help them channel all that energy in a way that illuminates their own personal motivation. But our work isn't finished after we unlock all this hidden energy we need to nurture it, which brings us to the second key.

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Motivation doesnt take care of itself, we need to feed and nurture it.

Key 2: Feed It!Motivation doesn't take care of itself; we need to feed and nurture it.

Adults frequently tell young people, "These are the best years of your life you'd better enjoy them!" Kids can hear the true meaning behind this advice: "Brace yourself, because it's all downhill from here." I remember hearing this at a young age and thinking, "REALLY?! I'm getting picked on, rejected and put down left and right, I feel completely awkward, I have no idea how to talk to girls and they certainly aren't talking to me, and this is the best it's going to get?!"

Somehow, deep down, I had to believe that these adults were wrong. Things would change, and my life would get better. All I had to comfort myself with were visions of myself exploring the streets of London, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo, speaking a message that inspired others, in their own languages. I had to picture myself getting my diploma, and then my master's degree, and going on to make enough money to support my dreams. This was how I fed my motivation.

Sure, youth is a wonderful thing. A young body is strong, a young soul is resilient, and teenagers typically have fewer responsibilities than adults. But the truth is, the best years of a person's life are always in the future. Life gets better as you grow up! A forty-year-old body is more capable than a fourteen-year-old body, a thirty-year-old brain holds a lot more wisdom than its thirteen-year-old counterpart, and an adult bank account funds a lot more than that of a teenager. So why do we feel like our best years are behind us at the age of twenty-one? Think about the Ironman triathlon - a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, followed by a 26.2-mile run. Ironman is the ltimate test of human endurance and physical ability. The toughest age bracket is the 35 to 40-year-old range these champions can blaze through the course in less than eight hours! You'd be hard-pressed to find a teenager who could compete with these middle-aged athletes. And yet most forty-year-old adults believe that their physical peak is decades behind them. These are the same adults who believe that their teen

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You will ultimately live the life your brain thinks you deserve.

years were the best years of their life. When they tell young people this, they play their part in a vicious circle of demotivation.

Instead of discouraging young people, we need to be truthful and let them know that the best is yet to come!

Things get better and better as we grow up! Feed their motivation instead of starving it. If you convince a teenager that everything will fall apart after the ripe old age of thirty, then that teenager will grow up to be a demotivated, discouraged thirty-year-old. On the other hand, a teenager who believes that things will continue to get better will find that things do, in fact, get better. The human brain is an amazing creation it will achieve its own expectations and realize the future that it defines for itself.

As an example, if your brain pictures you as a strong, healthy person, it will compel you to eat healthy food and steer you away from empty calories. Likewise, if your brain believes you are old and unhealthy, it will propel you downward into inactivity and poor eating habits. You will ultimately live the life your brain thinks you deserve.

Similarly, we all know someone who seems to attract drama and conflict. This person tells us, "I just hate drama, but no matter what, it always seems to find me!" These people tend to bounce from one drama-filled relationship to another in an endless cycle. How about the men who tell us, "I just don't go out anymore. No matter where I go or what city I'm in, someone always starts a fight with me, even though I'm not looking for one!"? For both of these types, there's a good chance that they have a deep-seated need for drama and conflict that won't be satisfied until these people unconsciously seek out the very thing they profess to hate. When they find drama and conflict voila! Their brain confirms their preconceived suspicions, and the cycle continues.

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I was motivated by the bright future beckoning me from my own imagination.

Have you ever known a size-zero, mega-skinny girl who is always complaining about how fat she is? She constantly worries, "I'm so fat, I'm so fat; if I even think about food, I gain weight." What do you think will happen to her in five or ten years? She will probably transform into a much larger person, seemingly by magic! But there's no magic at work; her brain simply did what it was designed to do it transformed her into the person she thought she was. You see, your energy chases after your thoughts and propels your life in the direction your thoughts lead.

We can game this system by feeding our motivation. We should direct our thoughts into positive channels. Instead of thinking, "I'm so fat," "I'm so scared of failing," or "I hope I don't go broke," we need to picture ourselves as strong and healthy, as walking across the stage at graduation, or as a magnet for money and success. Your brain is powerful enough to find a way to accomplish what you believe it's supposed to! Feeding your motivation means creating positive thoughts for your brain to transform into realities.

According to psychologists, the average person has about 50,000 thoughts a day, and 90% of those thoughts are self-focused intrapersonal conversations (psychologist-speak for you talking to you about you). That's about 45,000 thoughts about yourself every day. Of those 45,000 thoughts, nearly 80% are negative for the average person. Think about this: THE AVERAGE PERSON THINKS 37,500 NEGATIVE THOUGHTS A DAY! Can you imagine? Are you telling yourself 37,500 times a day that you shouldn't believe all this positive stuff, that you're worthless, that there's no point in trying to meet new people because you know they're not interested anyway, or that the chances of slimy green boogers tumbling out of your nose are far too high to allow for any sort of personal

confidence? And remember, these numbers are just for average people if you're a negative person, the onslaught is even worse. What person can perform at optimal levels under such an assault of negativity? Or, to take a sunnier view of the situation,

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Decide right now that nothing and I mean nothing will stand between you and your dreams.

if the average person can achieve some success with an 80% negativity rate, how boundless are their possibilities if they could think 80% positive thoughts instead?

One of the greatest things you can do for yourself is to feed your motivation and change 80% of your thoughts from negative to positive. Envision yourself as confident, beautiful, happy, healthy and strong. Reject negative comments from haters (and from your own psyche) that contradict your positive self-image!

When I started my journey toward an energized, motivated life, I had very little money, bad grades and next to no experience but I had my motivation! When I arrived at university, I soon found that many of my fellow classmates were academic superstars. These young men and women were intelligent and talented; I was easy to overlook. This didn't stop me, though I wasn't motivated by being the number one student at school. Instead, I was motivated by the bright future beckoning me from my own imagination. External praise is like a warm bath for the soul it feels great, but after a while, the good feeling evaporates. On the other hand, internal motivation is like a bowling ball. It gives you the ability to strike down whatever barriers stand in your way. This is what I had and what I still carry inside me today.

One of the best things we can do for students is to help feed their motivation. Show them pictures of the world's great cities and tell them that the world is waiting if they choose to go look for it. Show them university websites and walk them through the application process. Let them imagine their first day as a college student. Ask them to visualize their dream home and write down a plan for obtaining it within ten years. Feed their motivation by asking them to believe in themselves. Don't be afraid of creating arrogance life is an expert at deflating egos that get too big.

My own ego suffered in college, just as my 12th grade English teacher predicted it would. Within a year of leaving home, I found myself broke, depressed and living on food stamps. The only way I could eat was either by using food stamps or visiting the community food bank. I've met people who tell me, "David, I just don't believe in food stamps." I respond, "Neither did I, but I do believe in eating." Home was 1,000 miles away, and with no money, I had no means of getting support from my family or seeking professional help. To make matters worse, I was working and going to school

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full-time, which often meant finishing a late night shift waiting tables and then studying all night for an eight o'clock test the next morning.

In spite of all this, though, when people asked me what I was going to do with my life, I still answered, "I'm going to learn new languages and travel around the world." Let me tell you, that inspired some demotivational responses from friends and family! If I was lucky, I would only get an earful about how difficult it was going to be. More often, though, people would rant and rave about how impossible my dream life was going to be and how I should just give up then and there. My path to success was indeed very difficult but difficult is not the same as impossible. Fortunately, my motivation was so well fed that the challenges I faced seemed miniscule in comparison. I worked and studied as hard as I could until I received my bachelor's degree. Then I thought, "If I can get a bachelor's, why not a master's?" Sure enough, before much longer I had finished a 96-hour master's program. After that, I finally began living my dream in earnest I spent time in Brussels, Sao Paulo and Milan, all the while studying French, Portuguese and Italian. It's been a wonderful journey, but you know what? I'm not finished! I want to visit more countries, learn more languages and meet more people! I am still motivated to live my dream, and I feed that motivation every day!

I do not dwell on the past and its disappointments, mistakes and failures. Instead, I focus on the future, and I envision it filled with abundance, love and happiness, and always waiting for me just around the corner. Instead of focusing on the 10% unemployment rate in the United States, I remind myself that there will be ten million new millionaires in 2020, and I intend to be one of them! Instead of worrying about hard times, I channel my energy toward happiness and success. I cannot speak for anyone else's choices, but I can speak for my own, and I choose to be happy and fulfilled!

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Be a successful, motivated champion who feeds encouragement to everyone in your life.

Here's some more good news about motivation it's extremely contagious. Being motivated and successful allows me to inspire other people through my motivational talks. I'm so full of this stuff that it spills over! When you work with young people, make this your aim as well feed your own motivation so much that it flows from you and over into everyone you come into contact with. Do you know any deeply unhappy people? These people not only talk about their unhappiness, they often try to make others as unhappy as they are. Be the opposite be a successful, motivated champion who feeds encouragement to everyone in your life. A great prophet once said, "Your mouth will speak based on the overflow of your heart." So go ahead and dive into the pool of abundance, happiness and tranquility! When you come out sopping wet from the pool of blessing, let your positive energy overflow your own heart and engulf the hearts of others. There is more than enough joy, love and prosperity for everyone. Remember this and use this principle to help feed your students' motivation!

Key 3: Fight for it!Decide right now that nothingand I mean nothingwill stand

between you and your dreams.

The final and most challenging key to achieving your dreams is fighting for your motivation. You need to train your students to be warriors. Arm them with the weapons they need to slay the dragons of doubt, the demons of negativity and the vampires of lethargy. The fight is the point at which motivation ceases to be a cheery concept and becomes a day-to-day reality.

Life is cruel. Unless we are prepared to fight tooth and nail for our motivation, we will become dreamy has-beens, the people who wail, "I tried all that self-help stuff, but it never did anything for me!" When I say fight for your motivation, I don't mean that you should fight with hateful people. This is counterproductive remember that engaging with hateful people will fill you with hate. Instead, I mean that you need to be strong and focused. Decide right now that nothing and I mean nothing will stand between you and your dreams. This is the part where the going gets tough and the tough get going!

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The beginning of any journey is always the most difficult part. Starting requires much more energy than sustaining anything. For example, a jet traveling two hours will use over half of its fuel getting off the ground and into the air. Human beings are no different a new venture requires more energy and determination than maintaining an established one. This is a biological fact. New skills, knowledge, behaviors and habits require our brains to forge new neural pathways. The first few times you attempt a new skill, you inevitably feel clumsy. This is because your brain hasn't become accustomed to it yet and is working out the wiring for future attempts.

However, to borrow a term from the aeronautics world, after those new neural paths are finalized, the brain goes on "autopilot." Leaving the ground for the first time requires an immense amount of energy, but after success is achieved, maintaining that success is like a captain flipping the autopilot switch your brain will eventually learn to fly itself. But to get there, first you have to fight!

While the brain is capable of adapting to new tasks, it's also true that the mind and body gravitate toward familiarity. Familiar, low-risk opportunities feel safer and require less exertion. Think about the butterflies in your stomach before a speech, or the feeling of cresting the top of the hill on a roller coaster your

brain suddenly starts screaming, "just what the heck did you get us into?!" Your brain has to work hard to create new neural pathways, against its instinct for familiarity and security. Likewise, you have to work hard to make those pathways familiar you have to fight against inertia.

Neurotransmitters are a bit like muscles; the more you exercise them, the better they do their job. If you do something for twenty-one days, it becomes a habit. Do it for ninety days and your brain flips the reset switch. If a smoker doesn't smoke for ninety days, her brain is reset and she becomes a non-smoker. After a year of doing a new activity, your brain literally takes on a new form and shape (this is called neuroplasticity). You can have a renewed and reset brain, too, but you have to FIGHT FOR IT!

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The only fate worse than death is a life full of dead dreams. You have to FIGHT FOR YOUR DREAMS!

You have to continue fighting for your dreams until they come true.

That means if your dream is to go to university, you have to keep fighting every day until you have the diploma in your hand. If your dream is to be happy, you are going to have to press forward through all the sadness and gloom until that inner glow of happiness lights up so powerfully in your heart. If you want to drop thirty-five pounds, you will have to eat and train like a champion until you hit that goal. When you want to change, your brain will comply with your wishes while it likes to feel comfortable, it also needs stress and challenges to grow. Even though feeling comfortable is, well, comfortable, it's not necessarily the best thing for you or for your brain at all times. Sometimes you have to get outside of your comfort zone so that you can grow as a person!

At first, you have to fight to activate your brain to push forward and reach new heights. Your body will retaliate by resisting, but your brain is strong enough to overtake your rebellious body and drive you forward toward your dreams. But remember: you have to fight for it! Sure, it's not easy to fight and push yourself in new directions. Just remember that it's much harder to stay stuck in the mud. It's even harder to let months, years, or even a whole lifetime pass and then think, "I could have done so much more, but instead I chose to be comfortable." It's incredibly hard to see others loving their life from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to sleep, while you think to yourself, "Here I am, stuck in a job I hate, spending all my time paying bills and worrying." Imagine how hard it must be to know that you had the power to live the life of your dreams, but instead chose to wither away in a self-imposed prison of inertia as your dreams passed you by. Why would a fully powerful, capable and intelligent person choose to settle for a mediocre life? The only fate worse than death is a life full of dead dreams. You have to FIGHT FOR YOUR DREAMS!

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Why would a fully powerful, capable and intelligent person choose to settle for a mediocre life?

When you commit to the fight for your motivation, something interesting happens. The most difficult problems become welcome challenges. The terrifying Goliath you used to be afraid to confront becomes a friend you look forward to meeting. Success is addictive, and as you achieve more and more, you become an unstoppable motivational force!

I remember how difficult it was for me to start running as overweight, out-of-shape child. I felt like there were knives in my chest and any minute my heart was going to explode. My shinbones felt like they were on the verge of shattering, and my knees felt like they were going to give out. But after a few months, I noticed that I could run a little further. And then, further, and further still. I was practically bursting with pride and euphoria when I ran three miles, and then five miles, and then SEVEN miles! I was on top of the world! It cost months and months of incredibly hard work to get to that point, but then

something magic happened. I started loving and needing to run and move. Decades later, I still need to run my brain and wellbeing are dependent on it, in fact! At 10 o'clock at night, if I haven't had a chance to move, I lace up my shoes and hit the pavement. If I have been traveling all day, the first thing I do when I arrive at my destination is lace up and grind out five or seven miles. It's my drug of choice, and I truly need the effects it produces. I used to dread exercise, but now I crave it.

When you fight for your motivation, success, happiness and abundance become things that you need and cannot live without. But you have to FIGHT FOR THEM!

When we try to help children and teens fight for their motivation, the greatest aid we can give them is love. The prophet told us, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love drives out all fear: because fear is tormenting. He who is afraid is not made perfect in

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When you teach students to fight for their motivation, you teach them what makes them unique, as well as how to fight to polish, pre-serve and protect their unique talents that make them the best in the world at being themselves.

love." Love is the most potent force in the universe, and through love we can be confident in our ability to face any obstacle blocking our success.

We need to empower our students by letting them know that regardless of their performance, we will love and cherish them. They need to know that if they fall down, we will be there to pick them up and get them back into the game. We need to be sure that they know that the greatest fight of their life is just ahead, and they can't give up or let down their guard. When they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a home base full of love and support, no matter what, it gives them courage and strength! Fight with love!

2011 was an extraordinary year for me. I was invited to the largest Christian youth conference in the country of Switzerland. The organizers needed a dynamic, experienced youth speaker who was fluent in French. Somehow, they found me a South Texas native who grew up five miles from the Mexico border. They asked me to deliver three of the four keynote sessions, all in French. The Swiss National Radio reported on the conference and sent a team to interview me. The interviewer clucked at me and said, "Since you're American, I'm happy to translate for you." I looked him in the eyes and answered in French, "That won't be necessary!"

In my first keynote address, I took the microphone and retold the joke I'd heard so many times before, with my own special twist: "If you speak three languages, you're trilingual. If you speak two languages, you're bilingual. But if you speak five languages, YOU ARE DAVID EDWARD GARCIA! The auditorium erupted in laughter and applause. I was deliriously happy and proud that I had finally reached a point where I could turn a painful memory from my past into a positive message of inspiration! I fought, and I WON!

When I was a child, I got into all sorts of trouble for telling jokes and stories and for getting carried away by my own massive amounts of energy. But today, people pay to send me all over the world. They tell me, "David, tell your jokes and stories! Transmit massive amounts of your energy!" When I was a child, I got paddled; today I get paid! When you fight for your motivation, your weaknesses become your strengths, your pain becomes your power, and your sadness becomes laughter. But to get there, you have to FIGHT FOR IT!

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In the whole world, there is only one Hispanic South Texas guy who speaks the languages I speak and holds the degrees I hold, who has traveled to the same countries I've been to, who does comedy, missionary work and motivational speaking like I do only one: ME! So, when people ask if I'm any good at what I do, I can honestly tell them, "I'm in the best in the world!" And it's true, because I'm the only one in the world who does what I do and is who I am.

When you teach students to fight for their motivation, you teach them what makes them unique, as well as how to fight to polish, preserve and protect their unique talents that makes them the best in the world at being themselves.

And I'm just getting started on my path to success. A dozen languages doesn't seem far-fetched to me. Seeing one hundred new countries isn't unrealistic. Going where I want, when I want, with the people I want to be with doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Life is a beautiful gift, and I am a masterpiece! And you also have just as much happiness, tranquility, abundance and excitement ahead of you as I do! The students you work with also have limitless potential! One of my high school classmates went on to become one of the nation's top ten high school athletes of all time. Another became the first Mexican-American NBA coach in history. Sadly, others in my class followed tragic paths of violence, addiction and imprisonment. We had similar educations and environments, but we made very different choices. Help your students fight to make the right choices in their own young lives.

You never know who is sitting in your class the next female president? The inventor of the cure for cancer? The possibilities are endless! But no one will hand you or your students lifelong happiness and success nicely wrapped up in an Applebee's to-go box.

You can't call in and expect your dream life to be delivered to you in thirty minutes or less. You have to FIGHT HARD FOR IT!

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ConclusionI remember all those motivational speakers I heard in high school that said, "If I made it, then anybody can make it." This is not my message for the students I speak with. Instead, my message is, "Together, all of us can make it! We can all be happy, live in abundance and realize our dreams!" We all need to find, feed and fight for our motivation to do this.

You and your students are superior beings, greater than any other species on this planet. You can turn your life around, choose and navigate your own course, and achieve every good thing that life has to offer you.

I wish you much happiness and unending success, and I pray that you and your students enjoy the best life, for the rest of your life!

David Edward Garcia

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David Edward Garcia Motivates students world-wide with his message:

"Motivated For Life!"David is an international speaker who presents fluently in English, Spanish, and French.

He delivers his message with a 100% family-friendly comedy routine and motivational speech that has dazzled and moved audiences, from elementary schools to high schools and college campuses around the globe.

He empathizes with students who face challenges because he was once considered an "at-risk student" himself before defying the odds and graduating with a bachelor's degree and then earning his Masters Degree.

YOUR AUDIENCE WILL LEARN: How to stay positive when facing challenges How to be free from negative influences How to avoid destructive behavior cycles Why education is THE KEY to your dreams How to understand your true potential How to get and stay motivated for life

"Audiences of every race and socioeconomic background will benefit from Davids message that anything can be accomplished through education, courage, and confidence. I have witnessed first hand his message transform our students." Dr. Jerri Centilli, United ISD

"David captured our students attention immediately. He did a FANTASTIC job motivating our students. I highly recommend his message!" Ruben Arguelles, Principal

"I have never seen anybody with the uniqueness of David Edward Garcia. He combines his talent of multiple languages, comedy, and teaching to deliver an unforgettable, inspirational experience." Dr. Marcus Nelson

Visit Davids website to learn more:

WWW.DAVIDEDWARDGARCIA.COM

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WANT DAVID TO PERSONALLY MOTIVATE

YOUR STUDENTS?

www.AYearOfAwesomeness.com

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