I find most motivational speakers to be totally full of shit.
For 20 years, I read self-help books, memoirs of successful people and listened to motivational speakers.
You know what I learned?
-
- They were all selling something – books, tapes, seminars.
- Many “self-made” success story people were the beneficiaries of legacy – family wealth, connections, education and resources.
- Almost all others caught a bunch of unrepeatable lucky breaks – right place, right time, right market, right product
With the rise of social media, motivational speakers are even more disappointing. Many of them are people who’ve never accomplished anything other than being a motivational speaker (or even worse, a life coach).
I was looking for answers to my problems. I thought motivational speakers would tell me what I needed to do and how to do it. Although they never said it, the answer is:
The corollary is:
That’s it. I just saved you thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars in wasted time, effort and frustration.
Last night I went down the YouTube rathole watching David Goggins videos. He’s my kind of motivational speaker.
-
- He’s a lunatic.
- He lives a way that few others do.
- He doesn’t care what you think.
His motivational videos consist of him doing something physical – running, working out or swimming – while talking about it.
He talks about how it sucks. He talks about how it hard. He says quit making excuses and take action.
I love his stuff. It always gets me pumped up.
Right now I’m laid up recovering from my second hernia surgery.
I can feel my muscles atrophying and see my belly getting flabbier every day. I went into surgery weighing 140 but I wanted to be 135 and super lean.
I like being 130-135. I feel light and strong and fluid. I look ripped. and it’s an ego thing.
But I did not lose weight I wanted to before my surgery because I kept eating too much food.
So my goal is to get back there soon. Right now I cannot workout vigorously, but I can eat less.
And everyday I’m increasing my activity – taking longer walks, doing more mobility work, standing up more. I’m counting down the days until I can get back to doing real workouts.
It sucks.
I wish I was 100% healed and able to do my normal routine of working out like a lunatic.
Since I cannot right now, it would be easy to slack off. I’ve thought long and hard about binging on pizza, Mexican takeout, ice cream and peanuts while laying around recuperating. After all, I just had major abdominal surgery. I have to “take it easy” for 6-8 weeks. It would be perfectly reasonable for me to get out of shape and put on a few extra pounds.
Except I’m not reasonable.
Neither is Goggins.
Both of us could be considered crazy. And neither of us cares.