While boiling with a fever, I thought of this write-up. The first struggle was whether to title it ‘the bane of motivational books’ or this title, ‘the second head’. Eventually I went with the latter as a
result of the wild spin my thought process took.
Imagine someone has a terminal disease and he has just 2 months to live. Although he knows this, he is determined to fight for his life. Now imagine there was an experimental drug available with no knowledge
of the side effects. Since he knows he will die if he takes a ‘siddon look’ approach, he jumps onboard as a guinea pig. Afterall, there are few things worse than knowing when you are gonna die....
So, he takes this drug and it works!!!! He cheats death and he is bubbling with youth. However, there is a little side effect, he starts growing a second head…..yeah, crazy imagination….I’m laying this one
on the fever. This is a new phenomenon, so he makes the best out of it by telling people the advantages of having a second head. He even goes as far as detailing the recipe and the steps to growing your own
‘spare’ head in record time. People loved the fact that he is so generous to share how he did it and he ended up making tons of money.
Here is the problem with this illustration and a lot of the ‘how to…’ books out there. This is inductive reasoning. He is talking from his experience, his environment, his choices and the course of actions that were dictated to him because of his situation. He has sold an idea that was not borne of his deliberate planning (afterall he was really dying), however what he has sold is a creation of fate, luck, opportunity and an element of risk taking. Needless to say this is a volatile recipe that will surely NOT work 99 times out
of 100.
You have to think about your own circumstance, determine who you want to be and what you need to do to create that person, have a plan and start working towards your goal. The dynamism that you create from
moving towards a goal can only be stopped by yourself. Nothing gets done in an arm chair reading the memoirs of someone. This is my opinion.
Before anyone crucifies me, I totally agree that some motivational books have a general application. But these do not come with ‘seven steps on how to become a billionaire’. It is so easy to write a
successful story just because everything looks good in hindsight.
My advice is this, before you decide to grow a second head, think about your situation.....maybe what you really need is a couple more arms.
A little harsh. I will agree that some of the motivational books out there are just trash but quite a number of them have content. Let me give an example you can relate to, Justin Bieber (I hope I spelt that right) was born poor but taught himself to sing and play musical instruments. WHen his mum posted those vids on Youtube, little did she know that some awesome was going to come out of it. But here's the crux of the matter, he got invited for an audition and he took the bull by the horn from then on. He was ready for his opportunity, he took it when it came, the rest is history and tabloid news.
ReplyDeleteDid I get motivated by that? I sure did. For me it epitomizes the value of dreams, vision and hard work!! That's what some of those books are about...they are supposed to inspire you, give you hope and spur you to action!
By the way, Its Temitayo Pitan
ReplyDeleteNice piece, albeit the important thing is picking lessons from those books. There are sets of people that sit pondering and day-dreaming about the same course that the writer illustrates while others move on fast with lessons learnt and an adaptation to their situation. In any case, the books are not at fault rather lazying around without learning anything but fantacy from the book is the risk. Nice piece M-nat.
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