Workshop Motivational Quotes

The recipe for becoming a good novelist, for example is easy to give but to carry it out presupposes qualities one is accustomed to overlook when one says 'I do not have enough talent'. One has only to make a hundred or so sketches for novels, none longer than two pages but of such distinctness that every word in them is necessary; one should write down anecdotes each day until one has learned how to give them the most pregnant and effective form; one should be tireless in collecting and describing human types and characters; one should above all relate things to others and listen to others relate, keeping one's eyes and ears open for the effect produced on those present, one should travel like a landscape painter or costume designer; one should excerpt for oneself out of the individual sciences everything that will produce an artistic effect when it is well described, one should, finally, reflect on the motives of human actions, disdain no signpost to instruction about them and be a collector of these things by day and night. One should continue in this many-sided exercise some ten years: what is then created in the work­shop, however, will be fit to go out into the world. - What, however, do most people do? They begin, not with the parts, but with the whole. Per­haps they chance to strike a right note, excite attention and from then on strike worse and worse notes, for good, natural reasons.

As for logical consequences, the "logic" is highly debatable. If you continually arrive late for my workshop, despite my warning that lateness is unacceptable, I may find it "logical" to lock you out of my classroom. Or perhaps it would be more "logical" to keep you locked in after class for the same number of minutes you were late. Or maybe my "logic" demands that you miss out on the snacks. As you may be starting to suspect, these are not true exercises in logic. They're really more of a free association, where we try to think of a way to make the wrongdoer suffer. We hope that the suffering will motivate the offender to do better in the future.

At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies—cotton—was America’s primary export. The richest men in America lived in the Mississippi River Valley, and they made their riches off our stolen bodies. Our bodies were held in bondage by the early presidents. Our bodies were traded from the White House by James K. Polk. Our bodies built the Capitol and the National Mall. The first shot of the Civil War was fired in South Carolina, where our bodies constituted the majority of human bodies in the state. Here is the motive for the great war. It’s not a secret.

Countless self-management workshops, motivational retreats, and seminars on personality or mental training promise boundless self-optimization and heightened efficiency. They are steered by neoliberal techniques of domination, which aim to capitalize not just on working time but on the person themselves.

In short: all the woo is keeping us from dealing with our poo. Instead of medicating with Marlboros and martinis, we might be doing it with metaphysics and macrobiotics. And unlike boozing it up to drown our pain, the side effects of neurotic psychoanalyzing or forced flexibility are difficult to spot. We don't end up in rehab from too much meditation or therapy -- we just end up in more workshops. Think of that friend you have who has a not-so-loving relationship with her body, but because she eats "health foods" and talks a good "body positive" talk about just wanting to be strong, we cheer her on. But really, she's got self-destructive motivations and a mild eating disorder disguised as a holistic wellness routine. On the surface, positivity and wellness goalkeeping present so nicely that it can be hard to see when healthy actions are hooked to unhealthy ambitions. Like too much of anything, spiritual bypassing can numb us out from our Truth -- which is where the healing answers wait to be found.

For the disciplined man, as for the true believer, no detail is unimportant, but not so much for the meaning that it conceals within it as for the hold it provides for the power that wishes to seize it. Characteristic is the great hymn to the 'little things' and to their eternal importance, sung by Jean Baptiste de La Salle, in his "Traité sur les obligations des freres des Ecoles chretienne" (Treaty on the obligations of the Brothers of the Christian Schools). The mystique of the everyday is joined here with the discipline of the minute. 'How dangerous it is to neglect little things. It is a very consoling reflection for a soul like mine, little disposed to great actions, to think that fidelity to little things may, by an imperceptible progress, raise us to the most eminent sanctity: because little things lead to greater . . . Little things; it will be said, alas, my God, what can we do that is great for you, weak and mortal creatures that we are. Little things; if great things presented themselves would we perform them! Would we not think them beyond our strength! Little things; and if God accepts them and wishes to receive them as great things! Little things; has one ever felt this? Does one judge according to experience? Little things; one is certainly guilty, therefore, of seeing them as such, one refuses them! Little things; yet it is they that in the end have made great saints! Yes, little things; but great motives, great feelings, great fervour, great ardour, and consequently great merits, great treasures, great rewards! (La Salle). The meticulousness of the regulations, the fussiness of the inspections, the supervision of the smallest fragment of life and of the body - will soon provide, in the context of the school, the barracks, the hospital or the workshop, a laicized content, an economic or technical rationality for this mystical calculus of the infinitesimal and the infinite.

Out of 1,016 study subjects who’d been involved with the Moonies, 90 percent of those who’d been interested enough to attend one of the workshops where this so-called brainwashing occurred decided that the whole thing wasn’t really their cup of tea and quickly ended their Moonie careers. They couldn’t be converted. Of the remaining 10 percent who joined, half left on their own steam within a couple of years. So what made the other 5 percent stay? Prevailing wisdom would tell you that only the intellectually deficient or psychologically unstable would stick by a “cult” that long. But scholars have disproven this, too. In Barker’s studies, she compared the most committed Moonie converts with a control group—the latter had gone through life experiences that might make them very “suggestive” (“Like having an unhappy childhood or being rather low-intelligence,” she said). But in the end, the control group either didn’t join at all or left after a week or two. A common belief is that cult indoctrinators look for individuals who have “psychological problems” because they are easier to deceive. But former cult recruiters say their ideal candidates were actually good-natured, service-minded, and sharp. Steven Hassan, an ex-Moonie himself, used to recruit people to the Unification Church, so he knows a little something about the type of individual cults go for. “When I was a leader in the Moonies we selectively recruited . . . those who were strong, caring, and motivated,” he wrote in his 1998 book Combatting Cult Mind Control. Because it took so much time and money to enlist a new member, they avoided wasting resources on someone who seemed liable to break down right away. (Similarly, multilevel marketing higher-ups agree that their most profitable recruits aren’t those in urgent need of cash but instead folks determined and upbeat enough to play the long game. More on that in part 4.) Eileen Barker’s studies of the Moonies confirmed that their most obedient members were intelligent, chin-up folks. They were the children of activists, educators, and public servants (as opposed to wary scientists, like my parents). They were raised to see the good in people, even to their own detriment. In this way, it’s not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups—instead, it’s an overabundance of optimism.

Some years ago I saw a documentary on dying whose main theme was that people die as they lived. That was Jimmy. For five years, since he began undergoing operations for bladder cancer and even after his lung cancer was diagnosed, he continued the activities that he considered important, marching against crackhouses, campaigning against the demolition of the Ford Auditorium, organizing Detroit Summer, making speeches, and writing letters to the editor and articles for the SOSAD newsletter and Northwest Detroiter. In 1992 while he was undergoing the chemotherapy that cleared up his bladder cancer, he helped form the Coalition against Privatization and to Save Our City. The coalition was initiated by activist members of a few AFSCME locals who contacted Carl Edwards and Alice Jennings who in turn contacted us. Jimmy helped write the mission statement that gave the union activists a sense of themselves as not only city workers but citizens of the city and its communities. The coalition’s town meetings and demonstrations were instrumental in persuading the new mayor, Dennis Archer, to come out against privatization, using language from the coalition newsletter to explain his position. At the same time Jimmy was putting out the garbage, keeping our corner at Field and Goethe free of litter and rubbish, mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, picking cranberries, and keeping up “his” path on Sutton. After he entered the hospice program, which usually means death within six months, and up to a few weeks before his death, Jimmy slowed down a bit, but he was still writing and speaking and organizing. He used to say that he wasn’t going to die until he got ready, and because he was so cheerful and so engaged it was easy to believe him. A few weeks after he went on oxygen we did three movement-building workshops at the SOSAD office for a group of Roger Barfield’s friends who were trying to form a community-action group following a protest demonstration at a neighborhood sandwich shop over the murder of one of their friends. With oxygen tubes in his nostrils and a portable oxygen tank by his side, Jimmy spoke for almost an hour on one of his favorite subjects, the need to “think dialectically, rather than biologically.” Recognizing that this was probably one of Jimmy’s last extended speeches, I had the session videotaped by Ron Scott. At the end of this workshop we asked participants to come to the next session prepared to grapple with three questions: What can we do to make our neighborhoods safe? How can we motivate people to transform? How can we create jobs?

Isn’t it strange then that the focus in our profession is on teaching techniques and classroom activities, not learning techniques, motivation and self-study activities? The focus in course books, training courses, workshops, articles and websites tends to be on supporting teachers in creating effective classroom events (teacher goals) rather than supporting students in achieving their ambitions with the language (learner goals). Good lessons will always help students, of course, and can contribute to student commitment to learning the language, but if we focus exclusively on lessons, we will miss the opportunity to leverage the potential every student has to practise more and make quicker progress.

Frederick Hertzberg begins his famous article “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” as follows: “How many articles, books, speeches, and workshops have pleaded plaintively, ‘How do I get an employee to do what I want him to do?’” (italics added). Read it again. Is Hertzberg speaking about motivation or manipulation? In

Your business and finance mentor helping you achieve success with business, finance, and real estate solutions. Small business startup, small business funding, real estate investment. Dare to think and act differently from the majority and you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. Join me on my journey to achieve success and let me help begin your journey. By sharing my experience, allow me to motivate you to understand there are other options available and you don't have to do what everyone else is doing. By sharing my tips, let me guide you down the road less traveled where opportunities are abundant. You can follow your dreams and you can make them come true!

At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of American industry, all of American railroads, workshops, and factories combined, and the prime product rendered by our stolen bodies - cotton - was America's primary export. The richest men in America lived in the Mississippi River Valley, and they made their riches off our stolen bodies. Our bodies were held in bondage by the early presidents. Our bodies were traded from the White House by James K. Polk. Our bodies built the Capitol and the National Mall. The first shot of the Civil War was fired in South Carolina, where our bodies constituted the majority of human bodies in the state. Here is the motive for the great war.

I've always been drawn to character-driven stories. People, their thoughts, motivations, and fears all become behavior. If the characters are well-developed they will create their own plot. I, the author, simply listen, watch, and record what they do. It's very entertaining. No one tells you to do this in writing workshops or classes, but It's the only way, for me, to make sure they are actually alive and not a figment of my imagination.

Every time a new client hires me for a keynote, workshop, or coaching session, the first questions I ask them are, “What are the 3 top challenges your organization is dealing with? What are your goals? What problems would you like for me to help solve?” Using their own answers, I am able to design a program that is customized specifically around their needs. It takes the focus off of Susan and centers my complete attention toward making them feel important.

I was once hired by an organization to deliver a workshop on networking. The goal was to provide their engineers with tools and strategies for expanding their circles of influence—to foster innovation, collaboration, and teambuilding. One of the engineers raised her hand in the middle of the program and bluntly said, “I’m happy with the people in my life and don’t care to add any more.” I respect and appreciate her position and have sometimes felt the same way. But, as long as we are alive, we will meet, greet, and interact with new people. Even if we are not inviting them into our personal lives, being socially brave will open new doors which may have remained closed otherwise.

People who are high maintenance when it comes to their development is good for business. Encourage and indulge them in any training, workshops or seminars. People who want to grow will help grow your organization.

You may think that your sketchbook journaling is frivolous or selfish, but I assure you it’s not. The world needs more observant, self-motivated, thoughtful, responsive, creative and happy people—not fewer.