Yesterday, I attended a full-day motivational seminar that featured several big-name speakers. It was a fascinating environment to me. There was probably 10,000 people in the arena and the speakers did a good job creating a “go, fight, win” atmosphere for the audience (of course, a lot of it was “go, fight…buy my product and I’ll tell you how to win” but that’s a different post for a different day!).
Attending conferences are great shots in the arm and can provide wonderful motivational boosts. But I couldn’t get past a simple observation (not just with this event but even with the events I speak at)…
You can clap, cheer, and applaud the ideas presented and the person presenting them. You can take pages of notes and memorize fancy quotes (wow, that rhymed). You can get all the information and knowledge in the world BUT…
It doesn’t mean squat if you don’t do anything with it.
And truth be told most people in that arena won’t do anything different. I’ll tell you a little known secret about motivational speakers that we don’t want you to know: we can’t change your life. Speakers may be good at giving you the knowledge and the ideas, but only you can prevent forest fires. Wait, that’s not right…
You’re the person who has to be responsible to implement the changes. It’s never easy or pleasant, but it’s necessary.
I want your opinion on this…why is it so darn difficult to make personal changes even when we know it will make our lives better?
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3 Comments
Dude, great post. I think it’s something that people struggle with all the time…
People take action when:
1) The pain of their present situation is too much to take any more and they need change ASAP
or
2) When the reward or pay-off is so vivid and enticing that they can’t just sit around and wait for it to come to them.
The goal of a speaker should be to either get them to feel pain (which would probably make for a TERRIBLE speaker) or get them to connect to a vivid picture of what they want. Once that’s done, the people will do whatever it takes to get it.
The problem is that most people don’t know what they want and instead try going after what they THINK They want and end up giving up 2 days after the conference.
Figure out how to get people to FIGURE OUT what they REALLY want. Then they will FIGURE OUT what they need to do to get.
Go figure.
Grant,
I love how you’re keeping it real here. It’s so true. I think a big part of it is how at the conference, we’re surrounded by a supportive environment of like-minded individuals who are vibing with the same message and encouraging each other.
Then reality sets in.
So, I think a huge part of it is having an ongoing support system. And proactively keeping those those resolutions front-and-center…when the crowd disperses and is no longer there to support.
I’m going to Unleash the Power Within with Tony Robbins in Chicago in a few days here. I wonder if I’ll be entertaining similar thoughts…
I think it’s so difficult to make personal changes for two reasons: 1-humans,as a general rule, hate change and 2-we are afraid what those changes might bring about. One of my professors asked one day how many of us changed the seat we sat in in the lecture hall. Out of close to 70 students 2 of us said we did–and those two admitted that it was normally if they were running late! As for the fear behind making those personal changes; it’s difficult to make yourself that vulnerable. We might want to change and to maybe put into action those motivational skills and strategies we learned. But somewhere in the back of our minds we think, “What if I fail at this?” and that small doubt in our ability to prevail lets us make excuses on how we’ll start up another day or that we don’t need to make that personal change.
That’s just my thought anyway…