The Easiest Job in the Whole Damn World Is…
…Drumroll…
Motivational Speaker.
I’m not saying it doesn’t take practice. I’m not saying some motivational speakers envy other, better, more fluid, more humorous motivational speakers. I’m sure any given speaker would make one person more motivated than another speaker. And one person would respond more easily to any given speaker than another person would.
But really…what’s easier than…telling people what they want to hear?
Motivational speakers have usurped from preachers (or homilists, for you guilty Catholics out there) the role of spiritual head-patter. People went to church for a particular reason – to feel a particular way after leaving the church. They knew what they wanted beforehand, and weren’t let down. This is because mass is basically the same, week in and week out. If you were religious and a masochist, and responded to negativity and guilt, you would be ashamed of your sins and do your best to AVOID HELL. If you were religious and a sadist, your anxiety would be soothed by the fact that you were behaving and that some OTHER misbehaving schmuck was GOING to HELL…
Let me lasso myself back in.
Motivational speakers are good at exploitation – not only of the people who listen but of certain ideas within their philosophy. One I’ve often heard late at night while not flipping past them quickly enough is that “CHANGE BEGINS WITH YOU.”
Well, I thank you, and kindly ask you to go f*ck yourself hard.
You haven’t told me anything I don’t already know. And I’m supposed to pay you hundreds of dollars to remind me of this?
It’s not like these clowns are scientists, you know, Ph. D.’s who study and break existing limits of knowledge, who reveal something never before known on Earth. These speakers repackage – for a price – the same wisdom that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years, that stupid, ignorant, reductive-minded people have allowed to be pushed aside in favor of YET ANOTHER SEASON OF AMERICAN IDOL.
Motivational speakers. Telling people they can do it, if only they try. That they can be happy. These speakers act like it’s a secret that optimism is healthy and that freedom from excessive, self-imposed stress and anxiety makes life more fulfilling and less sad. They have to act that way — otherwise people wouldn’t hurl cash at them. Manipulative, twisted freaks.
The best things in life are FREE. Get it?
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