I’m a sucker for motivational posters and sayings about fitness and sports. They stream through my newsfeed on a regular basis. Mostly, as long as they’re not accompanied by a fitspo style image, they make me smile.
And that’s odd because I don’t like inspirational sayings and posters generally, about life, love, education, achievement. The Faculty of Graduate Studies at my university used to have them in every room in which a thesis exam could possibly be held and they drove me batty. Eagles soaring, salmon swimming upstream, misty mountaintops ruled those rooms. I wondered for awhile if we switched them all to demovational posters overnight how long it might take people to notice.
But even though I like inspirational posters when it comes to sports and fitness., I recognize that different sorts of slogans work for different people. See my disagreement with Tracy in the comments section beneath this post here.
Now, I admit my standards of evaluation are rather narrow. I just ask if they work as motivational sayings. Do they motivate me to action or make me feel bad, or feel happy and not motivated? Often I’m putting my philosopher’s hat aside and not evaluating them as ‘deep truths.’ I don’t even ask if they’re true at all. Most have a kernel of truth. And that’s enough for me.
Are there kinds of motivational saying that rub you the wrong way? (“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”? Ugh.) Are the kinds you really like? (“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle)
