How does my motivation affect my cool career search?
It's the biggest and hardest problem of all. I'm going to be really straight with you. I have a pretty darn, good reputation as a career counselor and yet – the one problem that I have had very little success in is taking unmotivated people and making them motivated. And, I'll tell you why. The standard career counselor advice is, “Oh, if you can only find the right career, you're going to be motivated.” I find that not to be true. I find that people either are – or are not – motivated. If I took Bill Gates, and I said, “You've got to be a shoe-shine boy for the rest of your life” – I'll bet he would do it with gusto. He'd probably open a chain of shoeshine places. But there are just some people' and it is largely genetic, who came out of their mother's wombs laconic. They were unmotivated in school; they're unmotivated in their marriage, their husbands or wives drive them crazy because they're – “Why don't you do this?" "Why can't you take out the garbage?" "Why don't you do this?” I really believe that unmotivated people have a tough time – a hard time. You know, the thing that shocked me the most when I became a career counselor is how unmotivated some people are. The people who tend to come to career counselors are people who are kind of slug-like. Not all, but a lot. So I really made a very serious study of overcoming procrastination. I read everything there was to read about that. I talked to every expert. I've tried everything under the sun and I don't believe that I've been particularly effective in helping unmotivated people. In fact, I spoke to a guy who is considered the world's expert – the expert – on overcoming procrastination and he said, “Confidentially, privately,” – in the confidence of the conversation, he said, “Truthfully, I have not been successful in helping people overcome procrastination. That's the truth.”
