Does it serve you?

You can do it! You are a precious flower who’s buds open up to the blossoming light of your life. Your power is now! Your time is now! Begin the rest of your life with one tiny step! Begin it now!

Yeah right. We’ve heard it all before. All the spiel about new paradigms, about freeing ourselves, about finding our goal, about being the real you, you were made to be. And it all tastes kinda stale in our mouths. I’m willing to bet there isn’t one person who hasn’t heard a motivational speaker. 

A while ago we had the minicon conference at Gateway. It was great. Very well run, excellent speakers, superb humorous competition and the photographer! Wow! A visionary! I was the photographer. But also at the minicon we had a guest speaker at the banquet. He was a professional speaker and he spoke very well. However how he said it was not as important to me as what he said. What he said laid me bare. It left me deflated. It left me uninspired. It demotivated me.

Let me quickly tell you what he did. He deconstructed motivational speakers. He logically and maybe correctly broke them up into different categories. There were the lazy motivational speakers who rely on clichés and factory produced stories that we’ve all heard before all the way to the threatening motivational speakers who aggressively ask the audience “Do you still wana be in the same place next year?”

And he was very good at getting the audience to agree with him. He turned to the audience and said,

“Do you know the one about the starfish?” as if it was some kind of bad joke. For those who don’t know the starfish story, a boy is throwing washed up starfish back into the sea and the speaker, who’s placed himself in the story, says to the boy “There are so many. What difference can you make?” And the boy replies as he hurls another starfish back to the sea “I made a difference to that one.” It’s a commonly used story to illustrate how a small difference is all it takes. But it is overused. As our speaker asked if we’d heard the starfish story he paused and looked at us expectantly. And guaranteed there were some people who groaned in agony at reference to it. He played upon a very common sentiment that pervades humanity. The idea that being a cynic is cool.
And, while he did make sense. And while he did find all the flaws and poke out all holes in the motivational speaking industry, his speech did not serve me.

Why do we go to the theatre? Why do we watch movies? Listen to music? Read books? Entertainment? Probably. Escapism? Definitely. To vicariously experience a situation through someone else?
When I think about it this is the point that I keep coming back to. Why do I watch Keanu Reeves freeing himself from the prison of the Matrix? Why do I watch Mel Gibson falling in love with Helen Hunt while hearing her thoughts? Why do I listen to Tony Robbins telling stories of other people’s success? Because I am able to see myself in them. Because I’m able to transpose my identity onto their situation. This is not something that I alone am gifted in doing. Everybody does this. That is why when we find a good medium who is able to convey emotion to us, like Jack Nicolson, we pay them millions of dollars. Because the experience of vicariously living a situation for us is real.

And so when someone stands up in front of us and delivers a speech, we’re not just listening to what he is saying, we are experiencing what he is feeling. That’s why we need motivational speakers. Because they stand up there in front of us and they show us how inspired they are. They stand up there in front of us and they show us how successful they are. They stand up there in front of us and they show us how significant they are.
And then they do one more thing.

They do one thing that none of the other forms of entertainment or escapism do. They validate our experience by telling us that we can do it too. That yes we can be inspired. Yes we can be a success. Yes we can be significant. And personally I don’t care how many clichés I have to listen to and I don’t care how by not looking cynical I might seem uncool. The value of knowing that I can make a difference is incalculable.

So yes we need motivators. Motivators in every walk of life, spiritual, emotional, financial. Motivators to drive us to succeed. Motivators to show us our grandeur. Motivators who through any means necessary get us fired up and excited about what we can be.

And no. Cynicism does not serve me. Does it serve you?