Put your library on wheels

Put your library on wheels

One of the greatest opportunities for motivating yourself today lies in
the way you use your drive time.
There is no longer any excuse for time in the car to be down time or
frustrating or time that isn't motivating. With the huge variety of
audiotapes and CDs now available, you can use your time on the road
to educate and motivate yourself at the same time.

When we use our time in the car to simply listen to hip-hop or to curse
traffic, we are undermining our own frame of mind. Moreover, by
listening to tabloid-type "news" programs for too long a period of time,
we actually get a distorted view of life. News programs today have one
goal: to shock or sadden the listener. The most vulgar and horrific
stories around the state and nation are searched for and found.
I experienced this firsthand when I worked for a daily newspaper. I saw
how panicked the city desk got if there were no murders or rapes that
day. I watched as they tore through the wire stories to see if a news item
from another state could be gruesome enough to save the front page. If there's no drowning, they'll reluctantly go with a near-drowning.

There is nothing wrong with this. It's not immoral or unethical. It feeds
the public's hunger for bad news. It's exactly what people want, so, in a
way, it is a service.
But it reaches its most damaging proportions when the average listener
to a car radio believes that all this bad news is a true and fair reflection
of what's happening in the world. It's not. It is deliberately selected to
spice up the broadcast and keep people listening. It is designed to
horrify, because horrified people are a riveted audience and advertisers
like it that way.

The media have also found ways to extend the stories that are truly
horrible, so that we don't hear them just once. If a plane goes down, we
can listen all week long as investigators pick through the wreckage and
family members weep before the microphones. A week later, playing
the last words of the pilots found in the black box, on the air, extends
the story further.
In the meantime, while we are glued to our news stations, air safety is
better than ever before. Literally millions of planes are taking off and
landing without incident. Deaths per passenger mile are decreasing
every year as the technology for safe flight improves. But is that news?
No. And because my seminar schedule requires that I travel a lot by air,
I can see up close what the so-called "news" has done to our psyches.
Simple turbulence in the air will cause my fellow passengers' eyes to
enlarge and their hands to grip their armrests in terror. The negative
programming of our minds has had a huge impact on us.
If we would be more selective with how we program our minds while
we are driving, we could have some exciting breakthroughs in two
important areas: knowledge and motivation. There are now hundreds of

audiobook series on self-motivation, on how to use the Internet, on
health, on goal setting, and on all the useful subjects that we need to
think about if we're going to grow.
As Emerson once said, "We become what we think about all day long."
(I first heard that sentence, years ago, while driving in my car listening
to an Earl Nightingale audio program!) If we leave what we think about
to chance, or to a tabloid radio station, then we lose a large measure of
control over our own minds.
Many people today drive a great deal of the time. With motivational
and educational audiobooks, it has been estimated that drivers can
receive the equivalent of a full semester in college with three months'
worth of driving. Most libraries have large sections devoted to
audiobooks, and all the best and all the current audiobooks are now
available on Internet bookseller's sites.
Are all motivational programs effective? No. Some might not move you
at all. That's why it's good to read the customer reviews before buying
an audio program over the Internet.
But there have been so many times when a great motivational audio
played in my car has had a positive impact on my frame of mind and my
ability to live and work with enthusiasm.
One moment stands out in my memory above all others, although there
have been hundreds. I was driving in my car one day listening to Wayne
Dyer's classic audio series, Choosing Your Own Greatness. At the end
of a long, moving argument for not making our happiness dependent on
some material object hanging out there in our future, Dyer said, "There
is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way."

That one thought eased itself into my mind at that moment and never
left it. It is not an "original" thought, but Dyer's gentle presentation, so
filled with serene joy and so effortlessly spoken, changed me in a way
that no ancient volume of wisdom ever could have. That's one of the
powers of the audiobook form of learning: It simulates an extremely
intimate one-on-one experience.
Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Caroline Myss, Barbara Sher, Tom
Peters, Nathaniel Branden, Earl Nightingale, Alan Watts, and Anthony
Robbins are just a few motivators whose tapes have changed my life.
You'll find your own favorites.
You don't have to find time to go read at the library. Forget the library.
You are already driving in one.

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