Monday, October 26, 2009

My first motivational talk

I do not quite know the correct term for it. Some call it “motivational talk/workshop”, some call it “self-improvement talk”. Anyway, there are plenty of such talk or workshop around in Singapore, with speakers “sharing” with you how to improve yourself, how to have better management of your time/cash, and most importantly how to earn more money. Most of such talks or workshops have free previews whereby the speakers will try to promote his sessions to the audience.

I had been to one such preview few months ago. I was invited by the speaker, who is a business associate. I had politely rejected the invitation a few times, until I felt that maybe I should just go for one session to stop any future invitations.

The room for the preview session was very small, with only about 10 attendees. I came in late and sat at the second row. The talk started with the organizer introducing the speaker in a very exagerrated tone, as if he was Warren Buffett or Bill Gates.

The speaker then started with his talk. With some simple presentation slides, he shared with us some of his “insights” which I felt was rather common sense stuffs. He would occasionally raised the volume of his voice, which I really don’t understand the rationale behind other than keeping us awake. Throughout the talk, we were asked to play some simple games, listing down items on papers and interacting with one another. The interaction portion would involve pairing off with the person beside you and then asked each other some questions designated by the speaker. One rather bizairre thing I noted was, some of these attendees were unusually “high” when playing some of those simple games or interactions. I was rather uncomfortable as I wasn’t a person who would get “high” for no particular reason. Guess I am just not that easily motivated.

The talk stretched to about 2.5 hours. Towards the end of the talk, the speaker began to introduce his workshop to the audience. He started by saying how much he charged companies for his consultation services. From there, he break down and compute the “value” of his time, and concluded that his workshop was worth $X. Then, he proceed to say that there will be a very special discount if we signed up on the spot.

In the end, I do not know whether anyone signed up for the workshop, or how much the workshop actually costs. I just wanted to get out of there asap and breathe some fresh air. I guessed, I valued my time a little more than the speaker.

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