Cliche motivational videos · Rishab Academy

Jan '25 (edited) • Self Improvement & Motivation

Cliche motivational videos

Substack post: https://open.substack.com/pub/rudaiba/p/motivational-videos?r=47zbbv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Unless you've been living under a rock your whole life, you’ve likely come across at least one of those motivational videos with catchy music and cliche but somehow cool, rhyming advice.

And I call it cliche for a reason, sure, it gives me that hit at 3 am like, "YAHHH I'm winning WW3 singlehandedly!!" Which, obviously, these don't work out so easily, that "become a multi-trillionaire" we write on our New Year’s resolution after watching these, yeah no, that's not happening, I mean it can but I've never seen any big person say that the reason behind their success was some motivational video.

Now, I'm not trying to be some know-it-all cool guy here, I'm neither Einstein nor Steve Jobs but even though these motivational videos don't have the power to make you an overnight success story, we might actually be able to use them to our own advantage.

In 5th grade, I started my first ever coaching which started at 8 am, so I had to wake up early too. I used to wake up at 6:30 in the morning and since everyone would still be asleep, it would be dark. I couldn't turn on the lights so, I found an alternative way to keep myself from falling asleep and reduce the fear which was of course to blast some cool super loud music that made me feel like I could climb Mount Everest. And then I'd go brush my teeth.

I only ever thought of it as a way for me to get rid of that fear but I continued doing this for more than 2 years and it always worked. Then towards the middle of 7th grade, there was a huge break and in the break, I stopped doing this. As a result, when coaching started again, I lost the habit and instead tried to brute force my way into waking up. I could barely wake up in time to get changed and make a run that way but I didn't think much of it and dismissed it.

Until today.

My coaching will start soon, I need some extra time, and for a few other reasons, I decided that I needed to start waking up early again but it wasn’t so easy, I did manage to wake up early more than a few times but I was just falling back asleep and I didn't know what to do. But today was different, I woke up early, stayed up, brushed my teeth, and actually worked, I didn't start working immediately after I woke up but I did start working in the morning and that for me was a huge win cause this is after so many tries and with 0 coffee. I also didn't feel any extra tired later.

So I was wondering what I did differently today that I couldn't replicate other days and I found the answer to be motivation videos.

Today, first thing after I got up, I checked my phone and found some texts from a friend. I went to reply to him and coincidentally, he was also active at the time. We exchanged some words and decided to meet back in a while to work jam together. But I was feeling super lazy and sleepy and cherry on top, it was so cold in the morning. So, instead, I started scrolling on my phone. When scrolling, I came across this study motivation video (it was so nostalgic TT) so I started watching that and I watched a couple more, and then something came over me and I got up, did my morning routine jumped right into the call, no second thought and ended up working for 7 hours straight (I did take breaks for breakfast and tea).

So, what do you think, do motivational videos work as a good morning productivity cue or am I missing something?

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