In that universe, he goes simply by the name “Sashenanda” (he changed it to give it a more marketable flair). He wants everyone reading this blog to know that he comes in peace. If you send me $100 in small, unmarked bills, I will ask Sashenanda to convene with your spirit guides and insure you complete success on the spiritual plane.

Act now! Sashenanda says he will only be able to contact this spiritual dimension for a limited time, so act NOW!

(For an extra $19.99, Sashenanda will also bless any of your children under the age of 7. Older children must, of course, pay the full blessing.)

(Just a reminder for certain readers: please re-read the 4th word of this comment… this is a JOKE that we have… in the same vein as: “Buy our motivational speaker’s success kit, complete with giant, too-white caps for your teeth, hackneyed untrue stories, and 20% off coupon to have your critical thinking skills removed.”)

Luckily, I happened to be one of the 5% of human beings born in America, to white middle class parents, just when we had the best schools, global economic dominance, and were entering the most rapid period of technological growth in human history.

Furthermore, America has so perfected INTER-dependence that I have been able to grow up putting all my concentration into my school and work, while thousands of other people keep the infrastucture running to allow me this great freedom. Sometimes, I forget they exist and pretend my success is “self-made” (a popular American myth). Then my sewer main breaks for a week and I discover quickly that independence is an illusion brought about by really good technology.)

So where does the luck end and the planning begin? Hard to say. The older I get, though, the less I believe in plans(*) and the more I believe in luck and taking advantage of opportunity I did little or nothing to create.

(*) I *do* believe in plans for highly deterministic processes. For example, getting an M.D. is an umpteen-year affair that has a defined path and can be planned for. Meeting one’s spouse? Not so much…

Now, granted, I put in a lot of work to do that, but it’s impossible to overlook the HUGE number of random factors that led to this event:

1) I happened to have quit my previous sport, diving just a few months before discovering gymnastics
2) My parents picked a house in a certain school zone where my 7th grade GYM TEACHER was the 9-time national and 3-time world tumbling champion… and a brilliant coach and teacher
3) The school board allowed the coach to work with students in high school, even though he didn’t teach at that high school.
4) My grandfather was a gymnast (something I discovered 30 years later)
5) I could flip well but not twist well (this allowed me to focus on some rare tricks which raised the difficulty of my routines)
6) I met an Olympic team member who told me I sucked… and I vowed to prove him wrong
7) The first book about Sports Medicine came out and the doctor who wrote it was in my neighborhood, so I was able to see him for treatment of my injuries (oh, he told me that, given my flat feet, I shouldn’t be able to tumble… I wanted to prove him wrong as well )

I could continue with the list for quite a while, but the gist is that after I made All-America, and people came up to congratulate me, I remember being a bit confused by the attention.

On the one hand, I thought, all I did was follow a plan that took 4 years to accomplish, so there was nothing special about it. And on the other hand — and this wasn’t lost to me at 17 — I couldn’t take it personally, given the vast number of factors which were out of my control that allowed the situation to play out the way it did.

And don’t get me started on the weird constellation of events that led to my meeting and marrying my wife!

Along those same lines, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own ‘goals.’ In my 40 years, I’ve only had three things that I wanted badly, worked very hard to get, and failed to achieve. Of course, the caveat there is the ‘worked very hard to get.’ I’ve been wondering how often I quit because, hey, I wasn’t going to get in anyway, so why bust my ass?

Similarly, the role of dumb luck in achieving my goals is hard to see sometimes. If I do the equivalent of pulling the slot machine handle a few thousand times (and working up that sweat, even if it is just on one arm) and then hit the jackpot, can I really credit my ‘hard work’ in continually pulling that handle? I certainly can’t see the opportunities that I missed. Perhaps I should have been playing poker for *real* money, but instead I walk out all proud about being a ‘winner’ and all the work I did to win.

So perhaps not working so hard is the way to go. Of course, perhaps I’m happy now because I achieved my goals. More fun to believe it was me than luck anyway.

I love your demotivational speech idea… of course, when you do it, and people misinterpret your contrariness as an excellent application of “reverse psychology,” you’ll be hailed as a great motivational speaker!

Just to be contrary (perhaps I’m Quantumly Entangled with Tony Robbins?), I like to give DE-motivational speeches. My theory: if my audience can overcome the effects of my speech, they can overcome anything. And if my little speech can discourage them, well, they wouldn’t have gotten far in real life. It’s better they know NOW and start to pursue that job in Fast Food.

One of my favorite demotivational stories is that Goal Setting Is Of Dubious Usefulness. I did the counter-proof on my last X0 birthday and discovered, much to my shock and horror, that virtually EVERY major positive event and life change I could remember was unplanned, un-GOALed, and unpredictable.

In fact, when reviewing my goals a decade or more later, I shudder to think what life would have been like if I’d actually managed to “manifest” such horrible ideas. The ten-year-ago “me” really had no clue. Why I ever let him choose my life direction is beyond me. (Of course, as you point out, if I actually *had* manifested them, I would feel fine about it two years later, so…)

Hmm. Maybe the moral here is: no matter what you do, there you are. And it’s all good, or bad, depending on your spin.

Cheers,

Stever Robbins