No More Motivation

I don’t read or follow anyone who’s big in the personal development/motivation/entrepreneurship/social media spheres. Don’t read their blogs, couldn’t name their books, aren’t intrigued by their ideas and interested in subscribing to their newsletters, don’t follow ’em on Twitter, have only the vaguest idea of what TED is about (People giving speeches about how to be awesome? Maybe?). When I admit this, people seem surprised. But where do I get my ideas? My motivation? Do I think I’m better than someone who has topped the NYT bestseller list?

Photo by robbed

The fact is that I do not need more motivation in my life. I do not need someone preaching awesomeness and unconventionality and amping things up and crushing them. I find that irritating and exhausting and just so damn trite. I do not need someone or multiple someones telling me that jetsetting around the world and working 11 minutes a week and directing a biz empire from the comfort of a hammock in Costa Rica is not only completely plausible if I hustle enough, but that it’s actually my due. And I don’t think most other people need this either. Can you really carpe if you haven’t even figured out what your diem is? Not so much.

There comes a point at which enough inspiration is enough. More than enough, even.  The rubber has to hit the road and you have to apply all of this mind-blowing counsel and cheerleading into making tangible changes or improvements in your life. And I see precious little of that actually occurring. Call it the inspiration to action gap.  I do see a lot of people caught up being fired up as if that were an end in itself (and for the folks peddling their pep-talking wares, it surely is). Few are stopping to unpack these words of wisdom, to see if there’s any substance beyond the buzzwords, to critically examine their chosen guru’s path to fulfillment to see if it can be plausibly replicated by any ol’ average Joe without means and connections. No, it’s just on to the next quote from the Dalai Lama or the next teleseminar on optimizing your personal brand for the coming location independence revolution. Really, wandering around in a constant state of mental stimulation without an implementation outlet probably feels a lot like those four-hour erections that the makers of Viagra and Cialis urge you to have medically evaluated ASAP.

What’s much, much more interesting to me is for people to figure what they want and the concrete actions and changes in thinking that are needed in order to have whatever that is in a form that works for their specific life and then to actually go out AND MAKE THEM. And to make mistakes in the process. And try to learn from those. And laugh until they can’t breathe. And get pissed off and think about tearing it all apart, but decide to sleep on it instead.  And realize how many millions of folks are making and breaking themselves IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. And guess what? That approach is still free. Unglamorous, modest and utterly lacking in cultish, wild-eyed, lapel-grabbing, fist-pumping intellectual fervor, but free, uncopyrighted and meant just for you (and you and you and you). Can’t beat a deal like that. Right, rockstars?