Somebody starts swinging round a phrase like 'personal self fulfiled entitlement action' and the first time you hear it you're like "pfft, that's dumb, what suckers". Then the 5th time you hear it you're like "Well, I mean it just makes sense, if I want something I just need the gogettitude to achieve my dream goals".
The phenomenon of motivational speeches is part of what has inspired, for me at least, the project of 'how to be awesome at everything' and so part of that project and the learning process is to get to know the subject matter inside out. This means reading Paul Mckenna books, listening to tapes, and watching the hours and hours of videoed motivational speeches there are on youtube. My basic plan is just to absorb this language and these ideas, until I can speak the jargon fluently. So I've started watching a lot.
This was one of the first characters that I came across after just starting by searching 'motivational speeches'. This is Tony Robbins.
This isn't exactly the video of his that I was watching, but all of his videos are great. Watching him is like if the simpsons did a send up of motivational speakers (I can't remember if they've done that). And it's exactly the sort of thing that I was planning to come across when I started along this journey. His show is even called 'unleash the power within', a perfect title. In the video that I watched he started using a few different techniques that I wrote down for material, or to influence me. One of the things is making the audience very vocal. He has this bit at first where he's asking the audience questions like 'who's ever been disappointed?' then says 'say AAI!'. Watching it is fascinating he sounds a lot like a gospel preacher particularly at this point, and it shows some of the pseudo-religious aspect that self-motivation has developed.
He also, and I personally thought this was funny, starts defining success according to physical space. Poor effort, and poor results are here, good work is here, excellence is here, but you need to be here, at outstanding. And outstanding is just a tiny little bit further than excellence. I think there's definitely something in that that could be exploited for parody, it almost parodies itself with it's own ridiculous simplicity.
Crucially, one of the first things that I noted down, was how he divides up the show: Health, wealth and relationships. I think that's a great start on the road towards everything. If everything is our mission, this could be a fantastic way to start dividing up different themes. Videos, seminars, tutorials, pamphlets can all address these 3 crucial different issues. Tony Robbins is a gold mine. And thankfully a laboriously hard worker. He's been doing this for years, so he has spools upon spools of footage and material to dissect. He's one of the early contenders for my main focus.
Next up is someone slightly different, with some different style and things to teach us too. This is Eric Thomas.
Here's a link to a better and longer version of that video, but that's probably the best part of it. The fantastic story that he starts to tell about the guru and the business man is very genuinely moving, and it also happens to be hilarious and infinitely open to the possibilities of playing around with some of the elements of it. These stories could end up being a really great recurring part of the show, and could be a lot of fun to riff on and develop as our run in Edinburgh goes on. 'Let me tell you a story' We'll start. 'It's about a man who thought that he could be all he wanted to be' e.t.c. e.t.c. It's a very exciting idea, and I wouldn't have had it without the help of this great piece by Eric Thomas.
Also, worth looking at is the link to the other version, which someone has underscored with some touching and emotional guitar music. This really amps up the vibe that he is giving off, and makes the whole thing seem so much more inspiring. Recreating something like that in a live setting could present a great opportunity to be a little bit more silly with it, placing in stunts where the music messes up, has been recorded over, or is badly timed. It's like it's another dimension to play around with.
On emore serious aspect of the video is when Eric Thomas admits that he has spent some time being homeless, and has built himself up again since then. I think that this could be an interesting avenue to explore, simply pertaining to the history of the speakers. His problems were a great adversity that he overcame, and I think exploring a history of being down and out in perhaps some more asinine ways could be an idea that has some potential.
Here's a final video that compared to some of the longer ones I found quite fun and high-impact.
This video starts by falling into all of the cliches of the classic sports movie motivational speech, but by the end it has a pretty powerful effect. It seems like strange blend of military motivation, and self belief hype, interwoven with a horrible sense of incredible violence. I realise those words almost don't sound like anything, but whilst he sounds like a drill seargant, he's not saying 'you're a maggot', he's saying 'believe in yourself''. The whole thing feels very much like they're going to war and is at times even a little bit scary. I actually at one point felt a little bit sorry for the team that had to face these guys, because it seemed like they were going to not only get beaten, but actually physically and truly annihilated.
I think the stereo behind him might be where the highland music is coming from, which is a very endearing a silly touch, that plays quite well into what I was discussing before about the possibility of live music. He has the entire team chanting 'I'm a champion' and his screams of 'who am I' reach a tremendously enjoyable crescendo at the end. This speech is so aggressive and full on, that it is genuinely almost certainly too much for our nice Edinburgh audiences. But the cheesiness of the whole thing makes me sure that there just has to be something from this that we can learn and take away.
So after all of the detailed analysis is done, I find myself ashamed to admit that you do always end up at least just slightly genuinely motivated and amped up by these sorts of speeches. And as I said at the start, it's a habit that very easily becomes incredibly addictive; I know I'm going to have to be careful to reign it in. One thing that struck me whilst I was watching all of these, is that, yes, if you follow this advice to the letter, and are also quite lucky, you can be successful. but can you imagine what an unbearable asshole you would be to be around at the same time? Someone who was relentlessly persistent, and regularly used phrases like 'be outstanding' would be someone who you could spend abotu 8 minutes with, before you had to leave to go watch a movie or something normal.
The motivators almost certainly would hate me for that, or consider me a 'lazy unsuccesserator', ah well.
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