Daily Inspiration: Thoughts on Motivation – “You don’t need a motivational speaker. You just need a motivational future!”

“You don’t need a motivational speaker. You just need a motivational future!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

When people ask me what I do for a living, I will often offer up that I’m a speaker – after all, sometimes it’s hard to explain what a ‘futurist‘ does. The question inevitably comes back, “Oh, are you a motivational speaker?” To which I respond, “Not really.”  This leads to a rather quizzical look – and then I try to explain.

Am I a motivational speaker? Not at all, I guess. I will note that I think I can be pretty inspirational and motivational on stage, and you are reading a Daly Inspiration in my 7-year-runing-haven’t-missed-a-single-day series. But I have never quite understood why people need a ‘motivational’ speaker. Isn’t knowing about the wonders of tomorrow good enough to get you going?

Ah, motivational speakers. it’s certainly a world very different from what I do. Have I told you about the office of Tony Robbins? They reached out to me. Tony, of course, is the most motivational of all the motivational speakers out there. He’s uber-motivational, apparently. His team asked if I might fly to Miami to participate in one of his ‘Power Within’ events. Sure, I wrote back in an email; here’s my fee. They never responded. I took a look at the Website for the event and saw that he was charging about $10,000 for people to attend. He’s probably pretty motivated with fees like that, particularly if he can get others to help him out in some sort of motivational serfdom. I wasn’t very motivated to help him earn that $10,000 by working for free, LOL.

Anyways, I digress – back to my main point.

I don’t think you need to walk on fire to find your inner purpose, your core motivation, your desire to excel. I asked Bing about that:

As for firewalking, it is a practice that involves walking barefoot over a bed of hot coals. Some motivational speakers, such as Tony Robbins, use it as a metaphor for overcoming fears and challenges. However, firewalking can also cause burns and injuries if not done properly.

Do you really need to wreck your feet to get motivated? I mean, you sort of need them a lot, don’t you?

If you want to get motivated, figure out your tomorrow – and forget your yesterday. You can’t fix what you did yesterday, but you sure as heck can do a lot to try to make yourself a better tomorrow by what you choose to do today.

You just need to understand what comes next, and what to do about it.

You just need to be motivated by what you can accomplish today to make a better tomorrow.

That’s powerful stuff, and that should be motivation enough.

Think about it. You don’t need to potentially kill yourself, or wreck your feet.

That’s all.

(-;

(I had a lot of fun writing this post!)