The Motivational Bullsh** I Once Loved.
When I was a teenager I loved going on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook and watching all these inspiring people telling me ‘I can do anything I set my mind to.’
Now, every time I listen to a motivational story or video, I either want to laugh or barf. But, before I get judged for being too harsh, and also kind of a hypocrite (as I also love encouraging people myself), let me explain why my view on motivational content has changed so much.
1. The Complexity of the World.
I have slowly and painfully been exposed to how difficult it is to make absolute statements or propositions about real-life situations. For example, a motivational speech could tell people “Even on the days that you don’t feel like it, you should go do your job.”
See, this statement at first glance sounds okay — even encouraging. But if we take into account how different experiences emerge from different situations with such different people on different paths, it makes this advice potentially the worst advice one could give. Let me elaborate.
Let’s assume we have 2 young people: Tim and Chrisa.
Tim is in a job he hates, wakes up 50% of the time dreading work, and 50% of the time feeling mentally numb (aka the famous ‘I’m doing okay’). Tim used to have this thirst for life but decided that a consultancy job would be the best way to ensure a financially secure future for himself and his future family.
Chrisa is the CEO of a start-up that focuses on building and providing affordable medical equipment to developing countries. Her day-to-day schedule is jam-packed, but she loves it with all her heart. She sometimes doesn’t manage to take care of herself properly and undereats, undersleeps — you get the idea. As a result, she is exhausted on some days and almost feels like she wants to quit.
“Even on the days that you don’t feel like it, you should go do your job.
For Tim, one could argue that this above statement is horrible advice. A counterargument to what I am saying here could be that usually, motivational speeches have a narrative. They usually have some preconditions before statements such as the one above are made. However, funny enough, the preconditions themselves also lack the element of acknowledging the complexity and the perplexity of life and experience.
Tim here could very well improve his wellbeing, if he found another job, rather than ‘suck it up’ and go to his existing one even if he doesn’t feel like it. What if someone literally doesn’t feel like going to their job every single day? Is it still admirable if they remain in a job they hate? And what is that really for? I acknowledge that a lot of the time people can’t even just quit — the way our world works we are dependent on a job and an income to survive. Which brings me to another point.
Together with the complexity of experience and diversity of situations and cases, motivational speaking often forgets the messed up systems we are a part of. I am by no means a communist, but I believe capitalism to be the source of a lot of good and a lot of suffering alike. The good? Financial wealth — people out of poverty, and so on. The suffering? A hyper productivity-focused society at the expense of mental well-being, a shift of our sources of worth (a lot of us think we are worthy only when we achieve x, y, z), exploitation, and even deception and privacy issues — all in the name of profit and prosperity.
The reason why I bring up this huge topic is because I believe that in no way are we — as citizens of a state — separate from the systems we are a part of. If we want to have serious conversations and ‘motivate’ people for something — we first ought to address what we are motivating people for. If we agree that productivity, financial independence, and status are what we are after — then be it — the content of these motivational messages reflects exactly that.
However, I do think there is a mismatch between what people think they want, and what they truly, intrinsically value. I think it is quite easy to convince ourselves that we want to hop onto the productivity train and be the boss girl or boss man we always knew we could be. We can be an entrepreneur and do what we envision and we can take on the world.
..oookay, but what if one doesn’t want to do or more importantly be all that? I think the conversation we should be having, is about what we are optimizing our day-to-day life for. Are we on the path to productivity and instrumentalizing every bit of our existence? Is that even fulfilling? Motivation? For what exactly? Is the thing we are trying to get motivated for, even the thing we truly want, or the thing that we think we should want?
Before I sidetrack too much, let's not forget our talented CEO Chrisa. As I mentioned above, she loves her job and finds it intrinsically meaningful, but sometimes she gets too tired and feels like she wants to quit everything. Now, for Chrisa, our motivational message: “Even on the days that you don’t feel like it, you should go do your job.” Could provide a nice encouraging push. For her, there is something to fight for. So indeed, on the days she feels like crap, perhaps she ought to push through if she deems it to be worthy. Then again, taking a rest every now and then is also good. What kind of life is Chrisa really after?
However, if we consider this third person, Jack, who is a Master’s student and feels like their degree is just a contribution to a field he fundamentally disagrees with, things might get even more complex. Jack studies Clinical Psychology. He wants to help people but realized that research practices in the field are quite shaky. He believes in the integration of various therapies but has no support, nor the opportunity to pursue multiple of these directions at once.
He also came across alternative interventions for mental health issues that target the basic building blocks of life — nutrition, sleep, and exercise. He feels confused about how he can contribute to a field that is so stuck in its ways, and wonders if he even fits in. Stay, and try to contribute as meaningfully as you can? Or take a leap of faith and quit your study to figure out another way to help people through other approaches? Then: “Even on the days that you don’t feel like it, you should go do your job.” What does this even mean for Jack?
I know what you’re thinking.
Motivational speeches are not meant for everyone and every situation. And I agree. This is why I am immensely repelled by clickbait titles of videos that follow along the lines of “Change your life forever with this simple rule”, or “You will never be the same after this”, or “The secret to success”.
Sometimes if one is critical enough and reflective enough, some motivational content might strike a nerve with you, and help you in some way — but most of the time, in my opinion, these speeches provide a very vague, inaccurate, and even misguided sense of direction to people, possibly leaving them with more confusion than what they started with. Which brings me to my next problem with this type of content.
2. Motivational messages rely on people’s capacity to be critical — and we are surprisingly bad at that even today.
I am studying psychology and am in the final year of my bachelor’s degree, and I am quite amazed by a very universal lack of critical thinking. You’d expect that a university is the place to find critical thinkers — people who can see ideas and scrutinize them to the core, to take the elements of those ideas with the most value and build and learn from them. Ha! I was wrong!
I’ve seen that Philosophy classes teach people to be more critical. Psychology, and various other studies — not so much. Standardized education often relies on the accurate representation of facts, instead of the ability to think critically. Perhaps this is why we benefit from multidisciplinary approaches to solving problems. But what about our day-to-day lives? Being a critical thinker and being able to identify a credible source from a crappy one, is becoming increasingly important in making sense of our world and reality — especially with rapid developments in AI.
I believe I am quite annoyingly critical and I still struggle immensely to figure out what sources are credible and which ones are not. So much so, that I often worry that most things I read are not credible — except scientific articles. Regardless of identifying trustworthy sources, however, I believe that being an independent and critical thinker is necessary if we are to progress socially in times of rapid civilizational change and if we want to take ownership of our lives.
Motivational messages often tell people what to do and what not to do, but rarely have I heard any of these videos actually talk about the way we get to the truth. How do you even know if you are right or wrong? It makes sense though that they don’t — because if they did, a lot more people would stop listening to the things they say. Furthermore, if we develop our mental and intellectual faculties to be critical and independent thinkers whilst updating our understanding of the world as we learn, we are equipped to make better decisions for our lives and the societies we live in.
Think about it. Critical thinking and identification of bullsh** versus legit content/messages/claims/people: fewer wrong decisions in electing politicians that do more harm than good, less deception by malicious actors, a better understanding of the world, and the difficulty in making absolute claims, and more perspective in the various perspectives out there. Less extremism, less hate, and more compassion.
Being critical isn’t just about being able to figure out what is epistemically or logically valid, it is about crafting a worldview that is more consistent with the actual state of affairs of the world. It brings complexity and integration into the picture — both elements that guide our society and are necessary for understanding it.
My point here is simple. Motivational messages could perhaps be useful if we had developed the capacity to scrutinize statements and critically accept or reject them (fully or partially). Or perhaps motivational content could help develop critical thinking. But until then, this type of content relies on people agreeing with it almost blindly. The only way the industry keeps going is through people needing these messages or getting ‘value’ from them — to keep coming back for it, over and over again. *Which technically defeats the purpose of the content in the first place.*
3. The people being ‘motivational speakers’ are self-made authority figures (but by no means does this make them the right people to advise anyone but themselves).
I think it’s wonderful to share our life stories with each other. It is indeed inspiring sometimes. However, our profit-focused world makes a lot of us prone to sharing from a place of authority — simply because it sells best! If one talks as though they know what they are talking about — they will gain more trust than someone who goes out there and admits their nuanced opinion and uncertainties.
Algorithms thrive on extreme reactions. Either a great one or a really bad one. So often our feeds are either echo chambers or provide extreme opposing views, which incentivizes content creators to craft ideas that fit either one end of a spectrum or another. But once again, complexity means nuance in ideas and opinions and admitting that we don’t have the answers to everyone else's problems or situations.
Imagine how much more useful it would be if people listened more than they talked, and if we all simply admitted that we have no fucking clue sometimes what we are doing, or what we ought to be doing.
I admit it for myself. I used to be a fan of these videos. They used to give me a great feeling. Almost like the feeling I got before I would eat. That’s how exciting it was. However, I noticed slowly that what I was listening to, was too fake — too focused on metrics of success that I ended up not caring about. A lot of times I also found this content unhelpful and too overstimulating — like I had too much to fix, and I had a clock ticking for every second I was ‘wasting’. This feeling itself reflects a worldview that is deeply disturbing in my opinion, but vastly perpetuated by the mass media: productivity, optimization, and achievement.
When I feel down I don’t need to hear that I can optimize my life for success, or that I can do everything I want. More often than not, I want to hear a harsh truth about the way I live my life. Or perhaps I want to read about something that truly interests me or brainstorm on an idea I’ve had. But for someone else, these motivational speeches might work great and make them feel better.
I just wanted to point out that if these messages end up becoming a routine of a watch for us, then perhaps they are not working — their whole purpose is to empower and allow transformation, change, and independence. How can they successfully do that if people keep reverting to them because they aren’t actually facilitating any change? How can these messages be truly helpful if they do not provide the nuance of reality, situations, and people?
I am just hoping that more of us become critical of what we spend time listening to and believing. I hope we take the time to learn and to have actual human conversations with people, instead of relying on some random person we have never met to tell us what we should be doing with our lives. Which also means — we’d have to talk to people and allow them to get close to us — something a lot of us seem to have trouble with.
Inspiration can be wonderful, and I think we all need it at times. But motivational speeches are a different story. Inspiration is not induced but experienced (spontaneously). Motivational content today has become an industry that thrives on selling wellness products and services all with the branding of ‘this will change your life’. This might be well-intended but I believe reflects a broader issue of societal values and incentives. Almost as though we must all fix things — and each other. I wonder what this is really about…
