43 Minutes of Motivation to Jumpstart Your Week

Guys, I’m excited. For a variety of very personal, serendipitous reasons, it has been a banner week for me. And it’s only Tuesday. I’m excited, I’m inspired, I’m restless, I’m hungry, and I need an outlet for all this positive energy. In fact, Paul green-lit my pitch for this article just yesterday afternoon at precisely 12:32pm. Not a ton of time to bang out 1,200 words of clean copy for a 10:00am post, but fortunately for me, that green light may as well have been a lava throne, because I can barely sit down long enough to edit my sentence fragments.

I should mention, by the way, that I don’t really view myself as a role model for…well, anyone. I’m not amazing with kids, and at the age of 27, I still don’t really consider myself to be an adult. To be honest, the idea of someone using my words as a basis for subsequent actions is terrifying to me. I’m not your guy.

But I still have something to share. Over the weekend, a friend of mine sent me a link to video #1 on this list, and the message behind it was precisely what I needed to hear at precisely that moment. If you’ve followed me from day one here at Unreality, you already know how amped I get when dramatic movie scenes are paired with epic musical scores.

Some of these videos are a little long, so I’ve put them in order of how important it is to me personally that you watch them from start to finish. Not one of them needs additional context to be fully appreciated, and each is its own individual snowflake of awesome.

I mentioned I was excited last night, right? There’s a bonus video at the end for those of you pumped enough to make it there.

[Disclaimer: This article isn’t really SFW, but I mean that in a good way. Watch these videos at your own risk.]

1) Inspiration: How Bad Do You Want It?

httpv://youtu.be/7X38PCf7kao

Best blurry-eyed moment: 2:45 “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful. I don’t know how many of you all got asthma in here today, but if you’ve ever had an asthma attack before, you short of breath—SOB, shortness of breath—you wheezing. The only thing you’re trying to do is get some air. You don’t care about no basketball game, you don’t care what’s on TV, you don’t care about nobody calling you, you don’t care about a party. The only thing you care about when you’re trying to breathe is to get some fresh air. That’s it. And when you get to the point where all you want to do is be successful as bad as you want to breathe, THEN you’ll be successful.

And I’m here to tell you number one, that most of you say you want to be successful, but you don’t want it bad. You just kind of want it. You don’t want it badder than you want to party. You don’t want it as much as you want to be cool. Most of you don’t want success as much as you want to sleep! Some of you love sleep than you love success. And I’m here to tell you today, if you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to be willing to give up sleep. You got to be willing to work off of three hours of sleep, two hours—if you really want to be successful, sometimes you’ll have to stay up three days in a row. Because if you go to sleep, you might miss the opportunity to be successful. That’s how bad you got to want it.”

Full disclosure: I’ve watched this video at least 20 times in the last 72 hours, and this music will be waking me up from here on out until the day I have a bad morning.

2) “Be Great, Powerful Beyond Measure”

httpv://youtu.be/OSYtQy9EqTA

Best blurry-eyed moment: 1:20Let me tell you something you already know: The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!… Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and stop pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that, and that ain’t you! YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT!”

Full disclosure: I’ll be participating in the Tough Mudder this October. My ticket is bought and paid for, and it’s non-refundable. If you want in on Team Man-Bear-Pig, you know how to reach me.

3) The Sad Truth. Get Closer

httpv://youtu.be/7-xviTkKrqo

Best blurry-eyed moment: From 0:15 on.

Full disclosure: I had to discretely dab my eyeballs in public the first time I watched this because nobody warned me in advance. Everybody just needs a hug now and then, right? And nobody said inspiration couldn’t come in a bear-shaped package.

4) Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech (2005)

httpv://youtu.be/D1R-jKKp3NA

Best blurry-eyed moment: Actually, I held it together for this one. Still powerful, though.

Full disclosure: I wasn’t really ever an Apple fan until I saw this.

Similar Posts

8 Comments

  1. So I thought I could handle anything you could throw at me. So I watched the Thai insurance commercial at work just now. And cried. I just want you to know I hate you.

  2. This was a very entertaining read. 1 because most of these videos I have never seen. 2 cause I could imagine all the people getting motivated, emotional, distraught and everything else while reading and watching. Nice job on the last vid. For a first time video I would say pretty well done. I love the visuals, the sound quality could be quite a bit better. However the overall message stands strong and authentically heartfelt. Thanks for this article. Now I am going to go outside and fight a whole army!

  3. @Frillic
    Haha, I warned you! No amount of testosterone is enough. I’ve actually banned myself from that video for a while…

    @Daniel
    I forgot all about this one! Definitely would have made the list–good call.

    @Leonard Capping
    Many thanks!

    @Guth
    Another one that would have made the list no problem. I sense a sequel article in upcoming months, at this rate…

    Goddamn, I am flying high right now.

  4. I love the Dead Island trailer. That thing is haunting. I teared up a bit at the Up recut… I love that movie and teared up when they found out they couldn’t have kids. I completely lost it at work while watching the insurance commercial. Ho-ly crap. That thing crushed me.

  5. Oh god, dude, I did not fully appreciate your warning on that insurance commercial. I want to wake up my baby now and never stop holding him. Jesus. Really?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.