The Paradox of Motivation

What Works for Me May Not Work For You

I've been a believer in self-help solutions for many years now, but I am the first to admit self-help seminars, books, and audio-reinforcements simply don't work for everyone. 

Motivational tools work for the people for whom they can work. The sort of person most likely to seek out a self help guru, whether its Stephen Covey or Tony Robbins, is the sort of person already favorably disposed to believe -and to have the resources to make - the changes in their life they believe they need to make. 

Ultimately, self-help gurus work because of confirmation bias.

I think they can work, therefore they work.

If you don't believe that you can become a bestselling author, a millionaire, an Olympic champion, you are unlikely to become a bestselling author, a millionaire, or an Olympic champion.

Believing in these things is no guarantee they will come true.

Yet without that belief, they won't come true.

That's the Paradox of Motivation. 

All that self-help rah-rah may look like bunk, may get on your nerves, and much of its truth is built around massive social advantage. Yet without that steely belief in oneself, that get up and go, that total devotion to a goal, you're not going to meet that goal. 

Lack of belief kills dreams.

I remember very well how I got into the self-help scene. I had been in comics for less than ten years at that point, but I was really battered by my early years in the industry. I'd been through hideous experiences at early publishers, and with the most powerful editor in the history of the industry. Several people tried to get me blacklisted, went directly to publishers at other companies, and demanded that I not be hired. Without success - Mike Hobson and Archie Goodwin were not pleased with these attempts and hired me to spite my detractors, I think. Still, the early attempts to oust me made me very paranoid.

After I left one publisher that had tried to take all copyright and trademarks in A Distant Soil, I got harassed by fans for years. Once I was at a convention and people plastered the walls of the hotel hallway leading to my room with signs reading "The Elves are Coming". I got hate mail, shunned at conventions, and a number of noted professionals treated me very badly. 

They deny it now. Some of them even follow me on twitter.

My self esteem was in the toilet. I was down, and thought no one in the business liked me, except a woman we’ll call Gladys (because I know she’d hate that) who had been my mentor for awhile who, it turns out, didn't really like me either. I was making very little money, though I'd managed to get a low income loan to buy a house, and I thought I was always going to be that D-list journeyman fill-in artist everyone seemed to think that was all I was good for.

I was up late one night watching one of those self-help infomercials and I thought..."I'll try anything. Life can't get any worse." So I ordered the Tony Robbins package.

And what do you know...it worked for me.

I felt better within days. Motivated. Energized. Over time, I firmly believe the tools I learned from the program helped turn my life around.

I'm not saying it was some kind of miracle, or it was 100% due to good old Tony. It's not. In fact, Tony Robbins teaches you nothing you can't learn elsewhere. He packages lessons in a highly energetic way. I followed the steps, and I saw improvement. My life got better because I used what I learned there proactively and productively.

Now before you run and scream into the night thinking I'm trying to sell you on this stuff, I'm not. Just bear with me and read this through.

One of the things I learned from the seminars, books, and tapes I bought and participated in, is that I'd developed very negative feelings about myself that were attached to my work. This made it difficult for me to move forward both as a person and as an artist. 

My glamorous studio. 1985.

Every ugly, negative thing people had said or done to me over A Distant Soil in particular, ran through my head like a raging fire each time I sat down to work on it. Voices and bad experiences burned me.

I dreaded the drawing board.

Even the names of old publishers or anyone I knew there made me sick to my stomach. In fact, my long term fans will note that for years I never said or wrote their names on my blog. (I've been cleaning out my files this past week, and to this day, touching a document related to this experience makes me upset. They didn't use the word back then, but now we'd call it "triggered”. I like to refer to one company as “defunct” which I know drives them crazy because as a publisher they are, in fact, defunct. They just don’t like to hear someone say it.)

The motivational seminars and tapes helped me to realize what was happening to me and gave me some tools to fight this. I was eventually able to get more control over these negative feelings. (My friend Julie Ditrich, who is a writer and hypnotherapist told me I had a lovely case of PTSD. I guess I did. I guess I still do.)

But I had to face it down, to get back to my art, to get back to the time art was good for me, and when working on A Distant Soil made me supremely happy.

The seminars helped with that. They really did.

Gladys was so surprised at my turnaround she begged me to let her know what my secret was. I reluctantly told her because I was sure she'd mock me for it. Eventually she did, but first she wanted to try it herself.

She was not doing at all well then, was broke, had been borrowing money from me to get by (she was from a rich family but didn’t want to tell them the truth of what was happening to her wallet,) and her career was on the skids. I had to pay her way to the seminar myself. So we both took the trip to do the firewalk, and sit in the third row to hear Tony Robbins preach it.

How'd it go?

Disaster.

Gladys hated it. She mocked him, yelled obscenities right there from the third row, refused to participate in the activities and assignments, and later told all my friends in the biz it was a cult and I was a total sucker.

Well, OK.

Like I said, it's not for everyone. But I didn't appreciate her trashing me behind my back.

Do it to my face where I can then ask where my loan money is.

It got to the point where I'd dread every call from her. She'd be on the phone for four hours a stretch, endlessly negative, railing about all the people who'd gotten assignments that she deserved more. God, what a saga.

I won't get into the gory details, but I eventually cut her and she no longer has a career (I didn’t get my money or art back, but whatever. Having her out of my life was priceless.)

She’s out of the industry for all intents and purposes, and not by her choice.

If anyone could have used some rah rah, she could. But she pretty much couldn’t get published anymore, and what she hoped to accomplish is long past her ability to recover.

I also took an assistant to one show after he asked to go, bought him hundreds of dollars in motivational tools, and after begging for all the goodies, he never cracked the cover of a single CD.

While I got solid advice and solace in motivational tapes and seminars, I haven't been to a seminar in more than 20 years: they're all pretty much alike, and you don't need to spend a lot of money to get the tools you need. These days, if you want to try any of this stuff, you can save a lot of money buying them used on ebay. 

Anyway, when my health began to deteriorate some years ago, I was certain motivation was the culprit. That I was being lazy. That I just didn't have the mojo. How could I go from being the super-motivated person who drew 12 hours a day, worked out 2 hours a day - how did I become the person who slept 14 hours a day, drew 2 hours a day, and couldn't even remember my own character's names? 

Surely, it must be just laziness!

I tried pulling out my old tapes and cd's.

Boy. Oh, boy.

Not only did they no longer do anything for me, I was hostile to the messages in them. 

No, lack of money isn't just about motivation.

No, health isn't just about will.

No, success isn't entirely in your hands.

No. No. No. No. No.

These things are not true.

They are really, absolutely 100% not true.

They're not true for my friend Willow who did everything right in life and ended up with Myasthena Gravis. I recall sitting there telling her she just needed to feel better about herself before we knew she had this disease, and now I feel like a total asshole. She didn't need rah-rah, she needed a cure, and there isn't one.

They're not true for the talented creators who every day produce wonderful work that is shut down by flashy populist stuff cranked out by corporations. 

They're not true for people who get ripped off by slimy hedge fund managers after they've scrimped and saved for decades for retirement.

They're just not true.

Motivational tapes and seminars tell you everything is within your power.

BUT IT ISN'T. 

And because I believed everything was within my power, I spent years railing at myself for not doing more to fix something that had nothing to do with me at all. 

I had a disease I did not even know about. But I was sure the problem with my art and energy was poor character.

Paradox.

Without a fundamental belief that we have control over our destiny, we are less likely to try to make changes in our lives that get us where we need to go.

But we don't control all the things in our life. And if we don't think we have control, we can't make changes we need to make.

Paradox.

Recently, Tony Robbins made some supremely bone-headed statements that went viral, mostly about women. After, lots of people started railing about how the self-help industry is all bunk and why does anyone fall for that stupid stuff? 

Well, a lot of it is bunk, but frankly, a lot of it is also just life lessons packaged nicely, and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, this junk worked for Oprah, and she's not hurting.

A lot of the advice is, as I wrote, the kind of advice that works for the people for whom it can work. 

And that person may not be me. Or you. 

The whole Tony-Being-a-Big-Idiot-Debacle was a reminder to me about just how much of his entire program is geared toward a certain kind of person, even though he spends a lot of time talking about the massive changes underprivileged people have made in their lives on his program.

He speaks about how 90% of the people who buy self help programs never complete them. No doubt, since you can find tons of them being resold on the internet for cheap. So all the people who don't believe they work never buy them, so that itself is proof the program works because look at all those losers who didn't do the program, and all the people who bought it but don't complete the program are proof the program works because if they completed it it would have worked. 

Right?

Years of struggling with ill health and brain fog made it impossible for me to pick up one of those old cd's and feel any rah-rah. I felt ridiculous even listening to them, frankly.

I actually got angry.

I packed them up and put them away and forgot about them.

But being reminded of old Tony, there with his foot in his very big mouth, I was curious: how would I feel about those lessons now? It's been...what, more than ten years since I even tried them?

Last week I pulled them out, and gave it a go.

Well. What do you know.

With my new energy, and clarity, what did not work for me ten years ago works for me now. I feel the same forward momentum I used to feel when it was 1990 and I was a young girl desperate to be a more positive, productive person. 

I feel good about doing the program again. And since I haven't listened to it in a long time, it all feels very new.

I am healthier and more positive, in a state where I have the verve to move forward. In a state where I feel like I can make the changes.

I am the person for whom the program can work.

I also did the entire program again for the first time since about 1995.

However, I am much more critical of the system than I used to be. When Tony teaches stupid crap like how your financial situation is due to your negative feelings about money, I just sort of roll my eyes. 

In this country, almost every citizen is one diagnosis away from bankruptcy. If I hadn’t had the funds, my cancer year would easily have destroyed me.

But I had those funds because I am that unicorm of creators, a cartoonist who made money.

I also feel like I am in a better position to take in what I need from Tony’s programs, and reject what I don't, and I don't take it personally when I feel the hint of a rebuke or scorn in his advice. When I am not able to meet all my goals, or feel fatigued, I am kinder to myself. 

I won't be that person who, decades ago, would bark at me in my own head like a drill instructor. 

"If I'm having money problems, it must be because I have negative feelings about money!"

"If I'm having health problems, it must be because I'm not exercising enough!"

"If I'm having art problems, I'm not trying hard enough!"

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sometimes, life really does just bite you in the ass. 

Sometimes, it's not all about you. 

And you can't fix everything.

And that's OK.

Tony Robbins may be a bit of a dick, but hey, I did get some good stuff out of those seminars.

And I didn't get burned at the firewalk, either.

My studio now.