"Every artist was first an amateur."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

And Michael Jordan was not born a star. He was also just another child who motivated himself to be what he is today. He missed many shots, he lost many games, and yet he came back again and again. As the saying goes, success is not about never falling, but getting up every time we fall. But the problem with many of us is that we just don't want to get up. We think that we are not like Michael Jordan, and that he is special while we are just common.

It is the internal demon that is our worst enemy, and he will try his best to make you not try again giving you all kinds of excuses, and you will give up. Then one day you will read a motivation article like this one and feel extremely motivated for a day or two. You even take a printout of motivational quotes and post them on your cubicle, use as a screensaver, and then you just go on with life. No amount of a motivational quotes or articles will help motivate unless you fight the internal demon and start self motivating yourself.

Here are a few steps for self motivation:

1) You should first accept the fact that no great men were born great, and they were just ordinary persons who worked hard and did extra-ordinary things. Unless you accept that all men are equal, and that some are better only marginally, your internal demon will always win and you will find it hard to get up every time you fall.

2) You should have trust in yourself.
Unless you learn to trust yourself, you will find it hard to try again after a failure. You must forget the fact that you failed once and dismiss that failure as a random occurrence. It will help to remember that every great men failed many times before they began to suceed.

3) Be well prepared.
Unless you are prepared, it is no point trying. Put in more effort in your preparation before you try again. If you are well prepared you have benchmark and even if you fail again, you will know where to put your efforts in next time.

4) Be willing to change.
To be successful one must be willing to change, and once you are willing to change, you must be prepared to change.

5) Do what successful people does.
Successful people does those things that most people don't want to do. One easy example is working hard, or respecting other person. You must make these things a habit, and when they become a habit, they will drive away your internal demons.

6) Practice makes one perfect.
And if you are are perfect, it will motivate you to get better and better, for perfection has no limits.

Bob Maintains a website on motivational quotes http://www.glowingembers.org/ and an interesting collection of Inspirational Will Power Quotes, for self motivation. He also contributes to a blog on sayings and proverbs.