Motivational speakers; do we really benefit from them?

By: Mangkholun Touthang
Everyday we watch motivational speakers inspiring us in TV, Facebook, YouTube and whatnot. And we become inspired so much that those speakers become our idols and role models. Since we subscribed and followed their channels, everytime we open our social media platforms their inspirational videos would pop up in the first place. Then we’d watch them and spend minutes on their videos. I remember one time I was in my bed and it was 6 in the morning. I opened my smartphone and logged in to facebook. There I saw some videos of Sadhguru, an Indian motivational speaker, and I began to watch them. His videos must have inspired me so much that when I stopped watching them the time was already 7:30 AM. It had gone over an hour but to me it was like 15 minutes. I was really inspired by them! But then I got up and do the things I usually did. Every motivational word that I heard was gone. Yeah, some remained but I could never put into practice. It hadn’t changed me a bit, sounds funny right? But that’s the problem. A lot of us read and watch inspirational quotes and videos just because we find it interesting to read or watch. We never think of putting what is said into practice.
Like I did and still do, people often spend too much time watching or listening motivational speakers sharing inspiring stuff in the internet. And after listening to them they would do what they usually do. They heard the lovely words but would never put them into practice. Of course they do remember some of the nice words that they heard but are lazy to change some of the behavior they know need to be changed. Like I said, we watch them just because the words coming out from the motivator are inspiring or the motivator himself looks cool. We paste some quotes in our walls only because they are famous sayings or they just look right to us. But we don’t have the guts to do what is written on our walls. But I’m not saying everybody does that. There are a great deal of people who derive benefit from reading and listening to inspirational quotes and videos. These kind of people are typically people who love change. Everytime they learn an inspirational quote or words they would always want it to put into practice. By putting every inspirational quote into practice their lives become changed day by day in an optimistic way and they would end up becoming optimistic people. For those folk, listening to inspiring speeches has become worthy. But for those who merely listen, like me, it has become simply a waste of time. Totally a waste of time!
Some of the well known motivational speakers are Dave Ramsey, Tony Robbins, Nick Vujucic, a Christian evangelist, and Sadhguru from India and many more. Their speeches are quite inspiring and have been helping countless people go in the right way. If I’m not mistaken there is no person who inspires people in the platform and makes a living by it in our society. But there are a lot of people who inspire other people. Anybody that inspires you is a motivational speaker, be it your parents, your relatives, or your boring friend. It’s just that they don’t make a living out of it or use it as their profession. Anyway, nothing becomes meaningful unless you do it. You might have heard a number of inspiring speeches and your brain is loaded with inspiring words, you’ve heard so much that now you can pass on to others, people may like you for you inspire them, but before you yourself put them into practice first it’d do no good. As you motivate others but you do the opposite things, when your listeners or fans notice about it they’d start to disbelieve and mistrust you. It is meaningless when you memorize things but don’t put them into practice, what matters is that you do what you hear or learn. Only after you know its advantages you could pass them on to others. Mussolini once said and I quote, “Inactivity is death.”
From my perspective I think it’d be best if one inspires himself and move on rather than listening to motivational speeches which after he listens would fade away from his mind. And I also believe when someone inspires himself through his tough experiences, that inspirational words that he himself made would inspire him and carry him longer than what he learns from others.