What Motivates People To Change Their Character?

• Every day, you are reminded of what you expect from yourself.
• Every day, you evaluate yourself.
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Additional techniques include:

• Substituting positive thoughts for negative thoughts: it is very difficult to drive out a negative thought directly. However, just as light overcomes darkness when the two co-exist, your positive thoughts will overcome the negative.
  
  
• Using the intellect to alter the emotions: it is far easier to change one's thoughts than one's feelings. However, feelings are affected by thoughts, and when positive concepts become deeply ingrained, negative feelings will start to subside by themselves.
  
  
• Reinforcing positive thoughts with:
  • Repeated, verbal affirmations.
  • Concentration exercises (which strengthen will power).
  • Actions consistent with these thoughts.
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• Associating with people who support our goals.
  
  
• Reading literature written by those who have successfully put into practice that which we strive to put into practice:
  • Instructive literature
  • Success stories
  
  
  
• Serving others selflessly — an antidote to excessive preoccupation with one's own problems; an aid to the development of compassion, a virtue; and an opportunity to earn appreciation from others.

• General
  • Breaking promises.
  • Excusing a hurtful comment on the ground that it was "only a joke."
  • Using power to get one's way.
  • Leading, but not following — even when the other person has demonstrated superior competence.
  • Making others wait, but refusing to wait for others.
  • Refusing to apologize, despite knowing one is wrong.
  
  
  
• Intimate
  • Demanding, as a married person, the freedom of a single person.
  • Desiring the security that comes when another person makes a commitment, yet refusing to give the same level of commitment to the other.
  • Being insensitive to the other person's needs.
  • Not giving one's children the love, attention or care they deserve, because it would be inconvenient.
  • Withholding information to which the other is entitled, for selfish reasons.
  • Taking too much and giving too little.
  • Purporting to love somebody, yet insisting that s/he change — i.e., loving what the person would become if s/he submitted to the will of the one who purports to love.
  • Claiming to know what one's partner is thinking or feeling, despite the absence of demonstrable psychic ability.
  • Being unfaithful or disloyal.
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• Not having any, or having ones that are too low.
• Having high standards of which no one is aware, because they have never been communicated.
• Having standards nobody believes, because they have never been enforced.
• Having a double standard.

• Criticizing indirectly (e.g., sarcastically), thereby hurting people without being accountable.
• Being neither polite nor respectful, yet expecting others to be so.
• Accusing others of having negative motives, without evidence.
• Losing one's temper when unable to get what one wants, irrespective of whether one is entitled.
• Arguing belligerently instead of negotiating.
• Finding it difficult to listen to a point of view that differs in any way from one's own.
• Instinctively defending when criticized, instead of seeking to learn.

• Assuming it's somebody's fault, merely because one experiences pain or discomfort.
• Incurring a poor reputation (e.g., credit rating) as a result of having made commitments one knew s/he could not keep — or worse, not honoring one's commitments, despite the ability to do so.
• Feeling shame, embarrassment or guilt that is warranted on the basis of one's action or inaction.
• Expecting one's body to provide continuous fulfilment, yet devoting less effort toward maintaining it than one offers one's car — then complaining it doesn't work properly.
• Seeking permanent happiness in transitory experience.