3 Reasons I Burned Out on Motivational Speaking

I haven’t wanted to pursue motivational speaking since before the COVID-19 Pandemic.  I’ve had several false starts since early 2020 having said to myself multiple times, “I’m going to start speaking again!”  Then I would begin practicing, looking for potential opportunities, and then, I would stop.  What has been so perplexing about all this to me is when I was 2-3 years into being a speaker up in Tacoma, Wa, I loved it.  But just before the pandemic hit I was beginning to burn out on it and I’m still trying to sort out why.  In my reflection I see three specific issues that may be helpful to you in your own work life:  Giving too much thought to criticism, Not understanding my weaknesses, and Not having a clear objective for my efforts.

Giving Too Much Thought to Criticism

Plain and simple, I gave too much weight to the opinions of other people.  I never let this change my message but it becomes really cumbersome when your creative process is burdened by thoughts of what someone else might think about what you’re creating.  I let both close friends and strangers throw unfounded criticisms without challenging them on their ideas.  I then let those criticisms haunt my creative process.  

When I was growing up, I spent lots of time worried about what other people thought as opposed to asserting what I thought.  This makes sense given the context of bullying that I grew up in.  As someone who felt like he was being bullied at home and at school, I was very self conscious of how my behavior might upset someone else.  This led to timidity in my words, actions, and a deep sense of needing to ‘walk on eggshells’ around others.  As a person passionate about my ideas and philosophy, my job is to assert what I think.  Certainly when it comes to self improvement, people will need to read and hear things about themselves that will upset them.  We stagnate because we don’t deal with the ugly truth of who we are.  

We have to accept that being creative and sharing our ideas openly will invite critics.  Being different is what makes a thing hard to understand by some and profoundly intriguing to others.  We have to work to separate the truth in a criticism versus the pure opinion.  So many of the people that criticized what I was doing barely read my writing and virtually none of them heard me speak.  I presume they had a preconceived notion of what someone who writes about self improvement and calls himself a motivational speaker, might say.  A message full of cliches and empty promises of, ‘Never give up and all your dreams will come true.’  

This is incredibly oversimplified.  Even when I hear a motivational speaker say something like ‘never give up’ I hear something different behind their words.  I hear something like, “Pain is a constant part of life.  You can either be broken by pain or you can use it to push you into becoming a better version of yourself… If you take ownership!”  

What I will never give up on is trying to help others with my message of ownership.  Everyday I’m working to learn what it means to embrace the friction that comes with doing so.

Not Understanding My Weaknesses

Motivational Speaking as a business is a unique thing.  I have only met one other person face-to-face that does it as a fulltime career.  Why do I keep returning to this activity as a business idea?  Plainly speaking (pun intended), I’m REALLY good at it.  It’s incredibly satisfying to be recognized by others for a talent or skill that we have.  This factor alone is enough of a reason to explain my continued meditation on getting back out there and searching for opportunities to speak.  Which leads to part of the reason I got burned out.

Getting opportunities to speak is largely about building relationships and networking.  For an event organizer to take the risk of allotting time in their function for you to share your content, there has got to be a measure of trust and relationship built.  If I were a famous celebrity or CEO of a successful company, I would be able to bypass this process to some extent, but I’m not.  Also, everyone starts in obscurity.  So celebrity, CEO, or unknown, everyone has to build trust from nothing at some point in their career.  

Here’s my challenge, I’m not a people person.  I don’t really do small talk, I don’t make friends easily, and I have no problem being by myself.  The thought of networking makes me cringe.  Often, when I think of speaking again, this is the aspect that causes me to shut down.  If I’m going to start speaking again, I’ve got to put a container around this part of the process.  In that container I have to put tools to help me handle relationship building and I have to create systems on when/how to use those tools.  

A job may heavily involve tasks that we are really strong in but every job is multi-faceted.  In the role of motivator and public speaker, I am more than skilled at executing the primary task of speaking.  However, relationship building is a massive weakness that I must address if I’m going to get back out there.  This reminds me of when we quit jobs because we feel we weren’t set up for success.  I quit speaking because I didn’t understand where I was weak and that blind spot meant that I couldn’t seek help or create strategies around that weakness.  

In this case, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  But in the case of a different career or business, are we letting pride blind us to our weaknesses?  Are we experiencing burn out and not taking the time to truly reflect on what’s happening?  It’s taken me 4 years to see this part of my own burnout, clearly.  So, once again, self awareness and understanding our own story and how it causes us to interact with work, is important.

Not Having A Clear Objective for My Efforts

When I was speaking regularly, I didn’t have a book or a clearly thought out philosophy.  Every time I got a request to speak I would talk with the meeting/event organizer and try to get an idea about what part of my story would make sense with the theme of the event or the target audience.  On one hand this makes sense because it shows a desire to meet the needs of the client.  However, the problem with this approach is that I was constantly reinventing the wheel with my content and there was no consistent message.  Every time I gave a presentation I was practicing a new speech, putting together a new powerpoint, and there was no overall guiding philosophy that I could become known for.  This was exhausting!

Furthermore, I’ve always wanted people to consume my writing.  I really think that it’s my writing that truly has the power to aid someone on their journey of self improvement and taking personal ownership.  A weekly rhythm of being reminded of what personal responsibility looks like in our daily lives is important for staying on the path.  In my speeches I wasn’t placing any emphasis on encouraging people to subscribe to my blog.  Therefore, I never saw any increase in my readership after giving a speech.  To me, writing is the most important thing I do because it can stay with you long after a speech is over.  The different topics can address different parts of life.  Again, the weekly nudge to think about how we are improving ourselves is massively important to me.  I wasn’t using the speaking opportunities to steer people toward the most important content I produce, my writing.  

I was reinventing the wheel every time I spoke and that effort wasn’t moving the needle on my readership which has always been the most important thing to me in this endeavor.  It’s so obvious in hindsight when I look at it but, DAMN!  This piece alone is asking to get burnt out.  Even more than burnout, it’s asking to get resentful towards the people I served.

I have a talent that I know I can make money with.  All I was thinking about back then was how do I make enough money to not have to work another job.  What I needed was a more specific vision of what I wanted my speaking to accomplish and where I wanted it to take my daily existence.  Now, I’m not as intent on getting away from a regular job as fast as possible.  If I start speaking again, my main goals with each speech will be to share my story, share why Personal Ownership is the most important skill in life, and promote my writing.  That’ll be one core speech that I write one time and in which I will ask people to subscribe to my website and buy my book.    

Sometimes we are working really hard at something we love but we don’t have a set of clearly defined objectives.  Our wheels are spinning hard but we aren’t going anywhere.  Hindsight is so 20/20!  This by itself was probably enough to crush my drive to speak.  I’m still not certain I will speak again but this is probably the most important of these three issues for me to deal with.  If you’re burning out on something that you know you are interested in, ask yourself if your efforts are aligned with the future you want to have.  Do you have a well defined vision?

Conclusion

I burned out because I spent too much time on critics, I did not understand my weaknesses, and I gave massive amounts of effort without progressing towards a predefined goal.  It makes so much sense now but when I was in it, I couldn’t see any of this.  I think a big part of why I couldn’t see these things then and why I can see them now, has to do with financial security.

Back between 2015-2020 when I was speaking, I never had a sense of stable financial footing.  At no point during that time period could I see a path to long term financial security.  I wasn’t in debt but I was making very little money so I spent lots of time worried about the future versus being able to work on the business in the present.  This is why I’m such a proponent of doing the simple things in life well.  Over the last 4-5 years I’ve eliminated the anxiety I had about finances back then by settling into a simple stable job as a security guard and saving my money.  Now I can see things clearly.

I’m still not sure I want to start speaking again but if I do, I must actively address these three issues or I’ll burn down again.  Hopefully, you as the reader take away some insight for your own journey with work or some other endeavor where you may be starting to fray a bit on your efforts.  Remember, we have to look at the truth in order to make wise moves forward.

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