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296

You really need to read a damn book where someone tells you how "you can do it! you just gotta think positive!!!" over 150 pages?

I get the point. Sometimes you need a fresh perspective. My problem is, you can get a "better perspective" on life, and everything therein, by reading religious texts, philosophy, history. Not some faggot who wrote a book about how they "got motivated to take on the world" because they started "being thankful for 1 new thing each day!!!" or some other such BS

It's pathetic because greater minds have addressed these very same issues, and proposed the very same actions. Only, they did it 1,000 years ago and didn't need their iPhone to help them "get there".

ALL the good advice I've ever heard come from a "motivational" speaker or book, is a broken reiteration of something that was said at least 100 years ago.

You *really* need to read a damn book where someone tells you how "you can do it! you just gotta think positive!!!" over 150 pages? I get the point. Sometimes you need a fresh perspective. My problem is, you can get a "better perspective" on life, and everything therein, by reading religious texts, philosophy, history. Not some faggot who wrote a book about how they "got motivated to take on the world" because they started "being thankful for 1 new thing each day!!!" or some other such BS It's pathetic because greater minds have addressed these very same issues, and proposed the very same actions. Only, they did it 1,000 years ago and didn't need their iPhone to help them "get there". ALL the good advice I've ever heard come from a "motivational" speaker or book, is a broken reiteration of something that was said at least 100 years ago.

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[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

My main gripe is that most advice from these books are incomplete, broken, shallow representations of the wisdom that's already been passed down throughout human history. The incomplete nature of these bits of advice, in my experience, end up leading people down a negative path, because the scope of the "wisdom" is so narrow.

I would posit that the wisest among us didn't get that way by reading motivational books nor cognative-behavioral books. They got that way by studying history and philosophy. Not the vestiges of wisdom present in contemporary literature.

[–] • 1 pt

I'm not taking the position you shouldn't study philosophy, classical works or religious texts obviously. But you might be surprised what the wisest among us read. (I am not including myself in that category, though I do read motivational books. Other side of the Venn Diagram.)

Not to mention the whole motivational genre has its own canon of classics. Think Dale Carnegie, Og Mandino, Zig Ziglar. I think you would be hard pressed to find a wise man who hasn't benefitted from one such, though I don't know a lot of them personally.