Tags: celebrities, humor, list, motivational speakers
April 24, 2009 | lists
Professional psychics haven’t monopolized preying on people’s insecurities or personal and professional incompetency—whether it’s discovering your own inner child, how to be a stronger, better alcoholic, or how to get confident, stupid!—there’s always a smiling rent-a-friend inspirational speaker, a basketful of catchphrases at the ready, telling you how to seize the ring not found at the bottom of a Cheerios box.
In Part I of our list, we tried to offer a sampling of the different types of motivational speakers, covering the ‘how to succeed in business?’ angle from a guy whose answer to this question is “Duh? Marry Oprah!”, an ex-wrestler fitness guru who extols the virtues of hard work (and that from a guy who would remain unknown had he not been a walking steroid in the early 1990s) and someone who believes turning on a stove can kill—not when it’s packed with explosive or in a gas-filled room, but by depleting the nutrients in your food. In Part II, we are taking a moment (breathe deeply, but not so much that you’ll get light-headed) to turn to more conventional carpe temporis punctum types.
5. Deepak Chopra. Michael Jackson and Madonna are both Chopra devotees. This, despite contradicting, at least from the neck up, their guru’s “you can tell your body not to age” notion. [Here's a brief, Michael Jackson joke interlude: Why isn't Michael Jackson a motivational speaker? Because he's already been inner child]
Chopra is, according to critic Richard Dawkins—a “one man alternative health industry”, worth $75,000 per lecture (!) at which he dispenses vagaries that would blow the mind of your average hacky sacker in a sarong: “When you get to the primal state of the universe, what is it? A universal field that encloses all matter and energy. This field is everywhere, but it also localizes itself.” Being much brighter and more accomplished than anyone else here, doesn’t mean he isn’t more than deserving of a spot in our Top 5. His pompous The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams certainly merits his inclusion. In it, the good doctor postulates “The only difference between you and a tree is the informational and energy content of your respective bodies.” One of the similarities between The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and a tree is that a small forest was felled to publish this hokum. But he doesn’t stop there. He claims in “Return of the Rishi” (we preferred the sequel, Too Rishi’s Too Furious) that meditators can levitate. A chapter in that book describes how he personally experienced “lifting off,” which he calls “the first threshold in yogic flying”, which, if successful, will redefine our current understanding of yogic flying: a bunch of middle aged losers with pony tails hopping along the floor in their underwear. His book, meanwhile, did achieve lift-off — out the window of many a thinking-person’s place of residence.
4. Esther and Jerry Hicks. Authors of the Laws of Attraction, these Hicks tap into a notion of ‘infinite intelligence’, immediately contradicted by the following: “Don’t continually harass yourself into misalignment of what’s already in your vibrational escrow.”[Editor's note: Consider it done!] And later, “the majority of people…are not accustomed to focusing on the vibrational world,” at least those who haven’t had a pair of suspenders snapped against their chests or are familiar with the intricacies of tuning a guitar.
3. Jeff Davidson. “When you practice the sweet and gentle art of doing one thing at a time, you get your best results!!! The world…slows….down. You can’t jump on your horse and ride in all directions.” Now, there is nothing particularly annoying about Davidson himself, but he’s a surrogate for the multitude of ’slow down and take stock of your life’ anti-multi tasking types (one of us is spinning a basketball on a finger as we write this), who are indistinguishable from one another —or maybe they wouldn’t be if we slowed down to take a more protracted…careful…nuanced….assessment of each of them. We can’t, as we have others like Tony Robbins to take to task.
2. Dan Millman. Millman, is the creator of Way of the Peaceful Warrior (because if there’s one thing that’s made warriors successful throughout history, it’s that trait of ‘being peaceful’) and the man behind the dictum that “life continues to come to us in waves”, but who unfortunately doesn’t have his podium set up on a beach when there’s a tsunami warning. According to an Amazon review, which saves us a half-hour of skimming through it, Way of the Peaceful Warrior is “Purely palliative, useless, and deadly dull”.
Another gem from this party-planner extraordinaire, Millman: “I learned that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything.. at least not at the same time. So think of your priorities not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.” One thing can be said about Millman: There is no better way of emptying your mind, than by turning to his teachings.
1. Anthony Robbins. Author of ‘Awaken the Giant Within’, made that much easier if you’re 6′7 and not built horizontally, Robbins is the giant-toothed face of the get happy movement offering pearly white wisdom like “If you’re running east looking for a sunset, you’ve got a problem” and “It’s important to have the best mentor…..so you don’t get stuck in the desert when you’re looking for the ocean, you know, metaphorically” (good thing he made that distinction, so you’re not confused into thinking you need a Bedouin surfer mentor). “Why reinvent the wheel? Success leaves clues!” and later. “All the tools I’ve come up with…the foundation came, standing on the shoulders of other giants“. That this twit would paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton like that, is testament to his giant ego within and cements his place at #1.
I just ran across your site tonight for the first time. You guys are wonderfully funny! Thanks for the laughs. I needed them!