So the important stuff today started at 7:00pm tonight. Why? Because for the entire day today was basically like yesterday in that I did NOTHING. But it changed today when I was forced to come out of the room and socialize during the introduction to this workshop business thing. And I have to say; it was pretty interesting.
After we learned about curfew and the like, our first guest speaker in a long line for this week was introduced to us. You know who he was? David E. Stanely. Elvis Presely's step brother. *shocked silence* If this guy is our first speaker, who are the others going to be?! However, a little while later I grew disinterested with his speech. Let me tell you why.
David Stanely started out talking about having the proper mindset in being successful. A loser mindset will talk about "I want to do this when I grow up" while a winner mindset will say "I'm in the process of doing this" or "I'm going to do this."
Pretty good stuff and all. Food for thought. He also spouted some quotes that had the audience on their feet and shouting "Amen!" Stuff like...
~"Ignore the negative."
~"Never let a loser tell you how to be a winner."
~"Envy is concealed admiration."
~"If it ain't fun, quit."
It was about halfway through this that I realized, "Hey! All this guy is doing is motivating us! I'm not really learning anything I already didn't know!" After that, I started taking notes on what I was noticing behind the words in his speech.
The Process of Satisfying the Mob
-motivational quotes
-"rise above the norm!" persona
-passionate/loud voice
-cracks jokes/ makes people in audience feel at ease
-brought up God during presentation. here's a clever way of appeasing to the Christians
-relayed soldier story and made it a metaphor to his "Mindsets of Success"
This guy reminds me more of a preacher in a black church than a guy trying to tell me useful information. Lots of soul and inspirational words; but that seems about it. How clique can you get?
And so, for my conclusion to the talk, I wrote this.
"I have heard almost this exact speech several times in school assemblies and motivational movies. It's a good message and all, but seems redundant to me."
Hopefully the other presentations later this week are more useful to me than this one was. ::)
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