Story of What I Hear: Motivational Speakers Reflection Paper Example

When listening to motivational speakers, individuals can only hear a small percentage of what is being said. Motivational speakers have a tendency to try and find connections with the audience by making their ideas relatable to them. They want the audience to be moved by their speech into changing their lives. There overall school of thought is that if they make their speech relatable to what the audience is going through, then they are more likely to see things from their perspective. However, this is a flawed assumption since by making the speech relatable, motivational speakers are only playing into the realities of individuals and making them relive their experiences. In most scenarios, these people would not be listening to the advice but merely using it to remember what they went through. The truth is that one cannot change another person's story by relating it to theirs.

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One example of this is a situation in which a motivational speaker could be talking to a group that lost their loved ones. The speaker would go on to encourage this group to move on from their loss. They would urge them to remember the best aspects about their loved ones, keep them as memories, and be strong enough to let go. The speaker may go on to narrative a story of how they lost a person close to them and managed to heal the loss. Theoretically, this story would seem possible for the audience since they all want to move on from their loss. However, in most occasions, it may not be practical. All a person would be thinking about in such an instance is how they lost their loved ones and the events that led to the same. By trying to make the audience forget about their loss, the speaker would only be reminding them of the same and making them relive the process. For this reason, some people do not like words of encouragement during their bereavement process and would prefer to be alone as they slowly forget.

Roger Schank argues that listeners often intertwine their stories with the speakers in order to gain more understanding. By weaving these stories together, a listener compares details in the effort to have a deeper level of understanding. The problem with this issue is that it only makes an individual to explore their stories while missing the underlying goals of what they are being told (Schank 276). The same is the case with motivational speakers who tell stories with the hope that they will transform lives when all that is being attained is a comparison session. I can provide an example from my life of a time when a motivational speaker visited our school. At the time, I was a troubled teenager who was experiencing a monumental change in my life. My family had moved to a new town and I was finding it quite difficult to get along with people at my new school. The school had a mandatory policy in which we all had to attend these sessions. The speaker started addressing the reasons for adolescent delinquency and gave many reasons with detailed studies on the same. I remember thinking that this man was wasting his time since the studies were inaccurate. I compared everything he referenced with my own experiences. I was acting out since I needed my parents to realize that I was miserable and perhaps issue a transfer of schools. I remember thinking that I was not on drugs, did not have a history of neglect (in fact, I was quite loved at home), and was not abused in any way. I dismissed what the speaker said after comparing his stories to mine and deciding that he was inaccurate in his analysis. I did not, even for one second, stop to think of how his stories may be true based on the experiences of other teenagers. The example, therefore, showcases how the audience can often compare stories as opposed to actually listening.

Lastly, motivational speakers have a tendency to address issues that most listeners keep buried deep inside. According to Roger Schank, some listeners only take what they want to hear and avoid the rest. The same means that the individual may not want to hear what the person has to say and could hide behind their stories (Schank 375). The fear of confronting different aspects is real and affects people differently. I can relate to this since I attended a conference at a church recently and met a motivational speaker. In the context of preaching, a speaker dwelled into motivational speaking and begun talking about strained relationships among family members. At the time, I was not in good terms with my brother due to some personal issues and this was always a burden to me. However, I refused to listen to what the speaker was talking about and kept thinking about the ways in which my brother had annoyed me. I intentionally refused to listen to the speaker talking about the role we play in conflicts since I did not want to face the fact that I was also part of the problem in this strained relationship.

Works Cited

Schank, Roger C. Tell me a story: A new look at real and artificial memory. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990.