Exposing the blatant misuse of inspirational quotes

Inspirational quotes are being increasingly short sold and aspiring professionals are getting misguided by the pompous interpretations of the self proclaimed experts, motivational speakers and career coaches. Below are two I have come across.

Confucius said choose a job we would love doing and not to make our passion our profession which clearly do not mean the same. We do jobs for money which helps us to meet our physical needs. Doing what we are passionate about leads to our mental and emotional fulfilment. Because we have to barter more of our time to earn more money we are fooling ourselves by finding mental and emotional fulfilment in the objects we buy for our physical needs. Monetizing our passion is never a good idea because passion releases our mind from the stress of meeting our physical needs and money suppresses our emotional quotient which means we stop getting emotional fulfilment from our passion. Moreover money creates competition and that is where value for money trumps our emotional needs.

Someone told me about a motivational speaker who tells his audience “work like a dog live like a king”. For one, animals do not “work” like us. The only time they work is for food and there is a better word for it. Hunt. If work like a dog means tire ourselves out to complete exhaustion then there is no time and nothing left in us to live like a king. Commonsense and human anatomy goes out of the window. Its hilarious. Constantin Brancusi said work like a slave, command like a king which means when we work, work hard and when we become a leader be a strong one. Also, command like a king is not the same as live like a king.

English is a quirky language so it is being shamelessly arm twisted and maligned by some among us for their own benefits with scant regard for the negative impact they are creating on the people who look up to them.