when the youtube motivational videos stop working

how watching Rudy at the gym sort of changed everything (allegedly)

Most people listen to music at the gym.

I’m not most people.

I need something stronger.

I listen to YouTube videos with chill titles like

Don’t Waste Your Life,

KILL THE BOY AND LET THE MAN BE BORN - Motivational Speech,

and my personal favorite, BE RUTHLESS - Best Motivational Video Speeches Compilation (Mike Tyson).

But after a few months, even those turn staler than a bread gone crouton.

So one day last week, there at the gym, cross country skiing in place (using the elliptical), close to my weight loss goals but not there yet, not yet, drenched in sweat that smelled like coffee, I needed something stronger.

I needed Rudy.

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy

Rudy is about a little guy who wants to play for Notre Dame. The scene I’d found was the film’s climax: Notre Dame is winning, the crowd chants “Rudy,” and he gets to go in. I haven’t watched this movie in probably fifteen years and I’m crying watching everyone cheer him on. I glanced at the old ladies to either side of me like, “are you seeing this? they’re letting our Rudy play!”’

Finally Rudy came out and…made a tackled somebody. That was it. That was the moment.

This was a climax in 1993. A tackle. I kept looking for another scene, thinking, surely, that wasn’t the big payoff?

So I keep scrolling until I find this thumbnail:

This one starts with an absolutely classic “lemme check the list to see if I made the team” scene (one of film’s most iconic scene types btw - different essay on this coming soon).

Rudy didn’t. He’s pissed as all get out.

Heck, he quits. Quits!

So then he’s standing there in the bleachers when the janitor finds him and give him the what for:

"You're five foot nothin’, a hundred and nothin’, and you have barely a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college football players in the land for two years. And you're gonna walk outta here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this life, you don’t have to prove nothin’ to nobody but yourself. And after what you've gone through, if you haven’t done that by now, it ain’t gonna never happen. Now go on back."

Well that just about nailed it huh

That one line - if you haven’t proven yourself by now, nothing external you do will ever change that - that line fucked with me. It stuck in my craw, and for the last few days it’s proven to be an actually useful antidote to my unending need to do more.

Publish!

Now!

FAST!

Usually I give into that voice and I do what it says.

What follows are a sad few hours turned days of me refreshing the numbers, disappointed as all get out, because it is never enough.

It can’t be enough. Because the thing I actually need is not out there. The thing I actually need is the thing the internet cannot give.

Infinite as it is, the internet still cannot fill the God-sized hole.

Which leaves me in a pickle. A jam. A kettle of fish.

Because, if I can’t get it from posting, from writing—then where do I get it?

My new friend John

John tells me about a psychologist named Marshall Rosenberg who started something called The Center for Non-Violent Communication. As a pro-wrestler, I am dubious of all non-violent communication but I check it out anyways.

Rosenberg says that all negative emotions—depression, anger, guilt, shame —come from an unmet need. The outside world is never the cause, it’s just the stimulus; the need is internal. If I write an essay and the numbers aren’t good, the feeling isn’t actually about the numbers. The feeling is about me wanting love and acceptance and thinking I can get it via an essay.

The need goes unmet and bam, I assume it’s the stimulus that did this.

If I haven’t lost enough weight and feel terrible about it, the weight isn’t what’s causing my bad feeling, it’s just a stimulus for a need for…I don’t know. Adoration? The need to be wanted? To be needed?

I say this all of this with authority because I’ve watched approximately one and a half of Rosenberg’s nine-part YouTube series. So, yeah, I’m basically an expert.

As you can see from the legit as fuck thumbnail, Rosenberg uses hand puppets: a giraffe (big-hearted, good) and a jackal (bad, misunderstood).

Giraffes because they have the biggest hearts of any animal. No idea why he uses jackals to represent the other way of communicating, but I gotta imagine the jackal community is not happy about it.

wait

If this is true, about my not getting that need met with writing or working out, two questions emerge:

1. Why write?

2. Where can I have my feelings for love and acceptance met?

The first question is easy. Joan Didion said it best, but basically: I write because it helps me think. I write because I feel better at the end of it than I do at the beginning, usually, and sometimes I forget about myself altogether.

And the second question? Where can I have my feelings for love and acceptance met? If you say ‘you already have all that - your friends and family love you’ I’ll drive this car into a river.

I know that, you lil jackal, and yet still I yearn for it, so clearly that’s not enough?

Or maybe it is enough and I’m an idiot.

Maybe you never really get it fully met. Unless you’re one of a handful of people (Gandhi Mandela, Mama T), maybe the whole point is just knowing you’re looking for it in the wrong places, and letting that be enough.

But if I’ll never get it from writing nor working out nor the outside world, perhaps it’s not something one can get at all. Maybe it’s already here?

Doesn’t really matter. It’s the gap between what we expect and what is real that makes us miserable. It’s that gap we keep trying to fill with stuff we think will make us feel good — adoration, fame, super jacked muscles.

Jacked?! JACKAL!!!

Just this morning I started crying again at the gym while watching Hacks.

I cry a lot there, feels safe amongst the old ladies. But it felt nice, the release. Wait, that’s it!

Writing, working out, crying - these are all forms of release. Of me being me.

But the numbers, the weight, the likes - those are inputs. Ways to judge myself against some imaginary scoreboard.

And as we know in Rudy, the scoreboard doesn’t matter. Dude just wanted to get out there and make a tackle, and he does. That’s the climax. That’s the movie.

What all this means, I have no idea, so I’m gonna just listen to this new YouTube video I found: GUY REALIZES EVERYTHING HE NEEDED WAS INSIDE HIM ALL ALONG - KILL THE JACKAL SO THE GIRAFFE CAN BE BORN- Motivational Speech.

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Comments

1. What do y’all listen to at the gym? Spotify playlist links are ENCOURAGED here.

2. Have you proven yourself to yourself? If not, are you still trying to do it with external bullshit?

3. What do I do seriously about these unmet needs??? Is that just a life forever thing?

4. Do you cry at the gym too?

6. You up on this Giraffe v Jackal stuff?

7. Favorite inspirational movie scenes GO