Is there a quote that most everyone finds super uplifting or motivational, but it just does NOT do that for you? It might even annoy the heck out of you.
I’d love it if you left me a comment with the quote and why it bugs you.
“We all have the same 24 hours in a day. How are you spending yours?”
Or sometimes it’s written as: You have the same number of hours in the day as Einstein/Mother Teresa/Steve Jobs/Beyoncé/etc.
UGH.
Intellectually, I get that I’m supposed to hear that and think something like “YES! I can do anything I put my mind too!”
Instead, I’m transported back in time.
Back to when I was about a year in my business and heard this for the very first time.
I was overwhelmed, frustrated, and tired. My business was making negative money while I was doing A LOT of work.
I heard this quote and wanted to cry or scream.
All those other people had created success with their 24 hours, but I had put myself in debt, worn myself out, saw NO path out, and deeply felt whatever the opposite of success is.
I felt guilty that I hadn’t figured something fundamental out that they seemed to know and I compared everything I knew about myself to everything I knew about “successful people.”
And boy, oh boy, I judged myself harshly under that light.
Here’s the problem: I didn’t think about all the overwhelmed, frustrated, tired, self-doubt filled days that those “successful people” had.
I only saw their successes.
But I compared my worst days to their best.
And I couldn’t help but feel like someone ahead of me on the path said “catch this great tidbit of knowledge that I’m tossing to you” and I looked up just in time for a brick to hit me in the forehead and knock me to the ground.
Ouch!
Next time can I have a hug instead?
What would have been helpful, had I had the ears to hear it, was a gentle reminder that I was comparing the messy day-to-day that I felt I was slogging through to the perfectly lit and cropped picture that someone else was sharing.
Which reminds me of a couple of other quotes:
- Don’t compare your inside to someone else’s outside.
- Don’t compare your behind-the-scenes to someone else’s highlight reel.
Final thoughts:
- If a motivational quote really bothers you, it’s okay. And it could be an indicator that you’re stressed or overwhelmed, which is valuable knowledge. Once you recognize it, you can do something about it.
- If you share a motivational quote and the other person doesn’t hear it the way you do, don’t make them wrong about their interpretation. But do notice it and get curious. You might ask how they interpreted the quote and have a nice discussion about it. And they might leave feeling a bit better!
All this talk about my frustration with this quote has made me wonder if there’s a quote that you’ve beaten yourself up with in the past OR if there’s one that transports you back in time, in a positive or negative way.
I’d love it if you’d share it in the comments below.