The Motivator

The Motivator

Have you ever heard of a man named Zig Ziglar? The name sounds familiar to me, but since I’m not sure, I checked on him and found that he was a motivational speaker, now deceased. I think that would put him in the same category as Matt Foley, the legendary motivational speaker from the nineties.

That’s pretty funny, but I take it that Zig was the real thing when it comes to motivational speaking, and he got pretty wealthy being a motivational speaker; selling books, doing lectures, etc. I deduced this from reading a short bio piece I found on him.

The reason I’m writing about Zig Ziglar is because of his quote, "Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will."

It’s a pretty logical, easily understood by anyone type of quote, and it’s a quote that stirs my imagination a bit. It seems to me that saying a positive-thinking person is better equipped mentally to do a better job than someone who’s filled with negative thoughts, is just simple, common sense.

Unless we’re talking about the WWE, of course.

I guess the idea behind the quote is that, if we’ve got a job to do, we’ve got a better shot of getting it right if we aren’t all mad about something we can’t get off our minds, because obviously it would distract us and prevent us from doing our best work.

Think of someone writing a love story, but they’re steaming mad because their internet is out, versus someone writing the same love story who is content, happy and motivated to write and their internet is not out; or maybe it’s out but their work can continue without it being a problem.

It doesn’t take a genius to know the happy and content writer will do much better than the writer who’s all pissed off and isn’t thinking straight.

This is the type of quote that I would categorize as being a “reinforcing” type of quote. By that, I mean that the quote is meant to remind us of what we already, or should already know, and to help that knowledge “kick-in” upstairs.

This is, I believe, the type of quote that life coaches use in their attempts to help their clients progress, grow and boost their self esteem.

Writing depends on the thought process running smoothly. It stands to reason that attempting to do something that demands the use of the thought process, would naturally fall victim to countless interruptions when negative thoughts are present.

How about someone who does construction work say, and they’re one of the workers building a house. Being angry while working on a job like that could go either way; it could cause some mess-ups, sure, but it could also have the worker working at a faster pace and with more resolve when angry.

This is something I experience when I go to the gym and someone cuts me off or almost kills both of us by pulling out right in front of me when I’m moving at fifty five or sixty miles per hour on the road getting there.

By the time I get to the gym I can’t wait to get to the weights. Some say this is bad for your health, and especially at my age, but in addition to giving me more motivation, it also erases the anger, and by the end of the workout I feel great and motivated. But that’s just me.

I can imagine someone reacting to the same scenario in exactly the opposite way. They wouldn’t be able to do their workout because of their anger, shock or whatever they’d be feeling after realizing they’d almost been killed while on their way to the gym, so they’d turn around and go back home, accomplishing nothing.

I like the quote. It makes sense and just about anyone should be able to understand what Zig Ziglar was getting at when he made this statement.

_{The Motivator © free-reign 2020}

I've written this opinionated piece as I was inspired by a quote I received as one of the writing prompts I received in a daily email from @shadowspub. The quote, from Zig Ziglar is, “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.”

Thanks for reading my post!

Sources for images used in this post:

_{Plea for Help: Image by Quinn Kampschroer from Pixabay
Motivation: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Heart Journal: Image by Engin_Akyurt from Pixabay
Construction Worker: Image by skeeze from Pixabay}