C’mon, motivate me. I dare you.

You have the right to be rich!

How I made a million in my pyjamas, and so can you!

I used to plough the fields before dawn but now I’m skyrocketing up the stock market!

This reminds of the time when I went to a camp organised by the prefects’ board when I was a not-too-long-ago youth. As a senior prefect, I was required to oversee certain aspects of the camp, from safeguarding the well-being of my juniors to supervising the many activities that were to be carried out.

I didn’t.

This was my first and last camp (I was never much a camper) and I’ll be damned if I didn’t join in the fun! As with all school organised camps, this had We’re gonna motivate your ass right now! Yee haw! written all over it. Other “rousing” war cries included such gems:

• Inspiring you and your future! And there’s nothing you can do to stop us!
• You’re a champion! The rest are bottom feeders!
• You’re better than that boy who fell into the sea wearing only his underwear!

It was propaganda. I would nod my head each time my teacher/motivational coach/football coach/shameless glutton said something that needed nodding. It wasn’t that I was rude or didn’t appreciate his talk; I just wanted to have fun, fun and FUN! Let’s cut the chatter and go to the beach to play some beach games. I reckon that’s more motivational. I also didn’t want to be told that in order to serve my school I had to blah yadda blah yadda blah…snore. I’m done with that kind of pointless pep talk and superfluous rah-rah. But the younger ones, oh my, they loved it. They lapped it all up like a cat taking to a saucer of fresh milk. Of course, to be fair, the said teacher/motivational coach/football coach/shameless glutton had the charisma to charm these wide-eyed dolts as well as motivating the bloody punks.

I don’t know about you, but motivational gobbledygook doesn’t work on me. If there was ever a pill for motivating people, I’d be allergic to it. Severely. The thing that irks me the most is how these motivational speakers tend to alter their tone of voice to that of a person explaining the intricacies of flushing a toilet while subscribing to the belief that if I can do it in my underwear, so can you! The only person that can truly motivate me is, naturally, me. More often than not, it is my constant vomit of words of encouragement that gets me going. If I feel tired after a jog, I’d look around to find a languid-looking person and say, “No way, man. I’m going to do another lap.”

Using people’s shortcomings to bolster your waning optimism can be very invigorating.

I used to be of the opinion that self-help books are books written for people who should know better. It’s all done in a didactic manner, no matter the style of writing, be it for gardening to buying the kitchen sink. People like Dr. Phil and other hack jobs are making millions from telling people what to do. If I had known, I wouldn’t have taken up IT and gone straight to marketing.

Bullshitting is so much easier than programming.

Of course, the times have change and I have altered slightly my opinion on self-help material. I draw the line at getting those “Let’s go and make money in our undies!” or “Why loving me is more beneficial than loving yourself,” type of books. Now, if you’ll excuse, I’m off to read How to be best Chinaman do Business Stuffs.

Trust me, it’s really good.

This is Chris, signing off.

PS: Question:- Have you been—truly and wholly—motivated after attending some form of motivational camp or read book telling yourself that “You’re number 1!”?

PPS: Do look out for my next post as I’ll spill the beans (literally) on what transpired during my company’s GASPY! GASP! teambuilding thingy.