The Dangers When Motivation Becomes Incomplete

We have so many motivational speakers. I love them, and I listen to them sometimes, when I’m a little bit discouraged about what I’m doing to fire up my spirit.

However, I would never recommend a motivational speaker to anyone who plans on starting an idea.

To be honest with you, the number of motivational speakers around the world is increasing. By the way, let me not go too far. Let me talk about my country Nigeria.

I know we all are aware of the daily problems we face in the country. Matter of fact, new problems arise every day. These problems have birthed problem ambassadors who herald the problems and pull crowds because of them.

Here’s what I mean, poverty is on the rise in the country, so also is youth unemployment. There are lots of people who have taken advantage of this to venture into motivational talks.

Here’s what they do most times: They amplify the problem. They make you feel like you’re at the edge of hell as if you’re not aware of the problem. They make you feel like there’s a big disaster coming and that you’d suffer from the problem.

They give statistics for unemployment rate, they give statistics of poverty rate and make it look all real to you. You realize you are unemployed, you realize you are poor, or your job pay is less; you then look up to them for a solution.

Now here’s where there’s a plot twist. They fall back on a simple solution and they prescribe this solution to everyone. We all know what it is;

JUST BELIEVE

WHATEVER YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO, YOU’D SUCCEED

CHANGE YOUR MINDSET, YOUR MIND THIS, YOUR MIND THAT

There’s a big problem with such pieces of advice and I tell you such a piece of advice can ruin you.

You can bear me witness that many of us have changed our minds about success a long time ago. If you haven’t, I did a year ago and I’m still very far from it. Mind you, I have not said these pieces of advice are harmful. I am just saying that they are incomplete.

Here’s what I mean: The best way to kill a novice by drowning is by convincing him that whatever he believes in his mind, he’d get it done. Then take him to a 9 feet pool and throw him in telling him to swim the length while leaving him alone.

You may probably return to meet a drowned man or woman who had the greatest belief in the world. Whose mindset was the strongest. Who had faith in his abilities more than any other thing, but yet now drowned.

Did such person not believe in himself and was so optimistic? Such person did!

But did such person know the process in swimming? Absolutely NO!

Now here’s the reason why I feel you shouldn’t attend motivational meetings if you’ve got nothing doing. A lot of them do not talk about the process.

Matter of fact, they make money from the meetings they organize or got lucky in some ways. If you amplify the problem for people, please talk about the solution and the process in the solution.

Process matters more than the motivation. I’d rather listen to a speaker who simply talks about the process than the other who does the opposite. And if you’re lucky, you get a speaker who does both.

Mr. Speaker, now that you’ve told us there’s a problem with unemployment, what should we do? We should learn a skill, right? What skill? Any skill?

Really? Any skill?

Did I just hear you say any skill sir?

Now, that’s ridiculous

I personally believe that if I am motivating you to succeed, I should tell you what to do and how to go about it. I will be very candid with you, motivation is short lived. It doesn’t last more than a few days.

Unfortunately, it may last few hours if you get motivated then return to the problem you were trying to figure out. You lose motivation when it doesn’t still work out.

I have been there, I have had days of serious motivation only to cry at nights. Countless times!

The problem was that I still repeated the same process, I did not know how to go about a working process and the speaker only spoke about the problem, not the process. That is why people jump from one entrepreneurial event to another, then to another and another. They don’t get answers, they don’t know where to start.

There’s this saying: If you’re consistent with something, you’d eventually succeed. I agree with this statement to an extent after considering a lot of things. I think it needs to be restructured.

Consistency sometimes might be the key to poverty and failure alone. For example, if you keep selling Tom Tom in a place where they don’t need it. If you’re consistent with it, you might still die poor.

Or you’re consistently learning coding in a village in one area that still lives in the stone age. You’re the only one with laptop, and you follow that advice, you might die as the poorest coder that ever lived.

This statement needs some extra information added. I have seen lots of people who are consistent with an idea I know will never scale

Or they just keep learning a skill and they are consistent. It’s possible to be consistent and not still get a job.

If you’re consistent without knowing the roadmap, strategies and process to follow, your consistency might ruin you.

More like if you want to be a very proficient writer. Sorry to burst your bubbles, you can consistently write yet not be known to the point of having jobs.

At least you need to know some strategies and processes to follow. Most people do no pay attention to this crucial second part. This crucial second path requires being deliberate about the process.

The fact that people need to be motivated is true but when motivation does not acknowledge the reality of getting process right, it might be dangerous.