I'll Admit It—I Love Motivational Quotes
From non-ironic to ironic and back again
Check out my first post here to read more about the namesake of this newsletter and make a copy of the input/output tracking sheet if you so desire.
Growing up, I was a massive fan of motivational quotes. Here were some that spoke to my tortured twelve-year-old soul:
"If you quit once, it becomes a habit. Never quit!" —Michael Jordan (the level of obsession I had with the 1996 Chicago Bulls cannot be overstated. I saw “Michael Jordan to the Max” in iMax theaters at least 10 times. I did not live in Chicago. )
“Pain is weakness leaving the body” —no idea who said this, attributed to various Marines, pretty sure I had a No Fear t-shirt emblazoned with this quote.
“Swimming isn’t everything. Winning is.” —Mark Spitz, winner of 7 gold medals in in 7 world records at the 1972 Munich Olympics…without wearing googles. A mustachioed icon!
In retrospect, I think there are several reasons for this devotion:
I was attending Catholic primary school where memorization was a prized skill. What did we memorize? Poems, quotes, and proverbs from the Bible. I had barely heard of algebra when I got to my (also Catholic) high school, but I could certainly pull out a proverb for most situations.
I was a competitive swimmer deeply steeped in the culture of training my brain to over ride pain signals from my body (ask me how this turned out later in life), and repeating motivational quotes in my head while I was racing a mile and desperately wanted to stop and vomit was one way I learned to do this.
I found this on Google images, but this is the EXACT poster I had hanging on the wall above my bed. Powerful!!! And, most importantly, I hadn’t yet been introduced to the concept of irony. I unabashedly enjoyed covering the walls of my room and the pages of my training notebook with quotes that spoke to me, that assured me that I was on the right path, that the 4am wake ups were “worth it.” I understood on some level* (*girls at my high school directly telling me) that this relationship to motivational quotes was not “cool,” but I didn’t care because I when i needed to be cool I could simply put on my JNCO jeans!!!
I took great pleasure and relief in repeating these type of quotes to myself when I was in challenging situations. I had a lot of dental work done as a kid, including root canals, crowns, and extractions. I remember seeing a sign for Roger Williams Park Zoo that said “Just Zoo It” on the way to the dentist, and I would repeat “Just Zoo It…Just Zoo It…” over and over as a sadist (pediatric dentist) cracked into my teeth.
When I got to college and decided to try to reinvent myself as someone nominally popular, I remember laughing and rolling my eyes with my teammates during meetings when our swim coach would speak in multitudes of motivational quotes, only to go back to my room later and secretly write them down.
This ironic appreciation of motivational quotes continued for years, from workplace-style “Hang in there!” kitten posters to daily journals, liking-them-but-not-really-haha until I found myself at a very low place in my mental health and writing life. To help me get out of it (along with medication and therapy), I needed to once again unironically embrace my motivational quotes to use as a self-soothing mechanism.
The last few years, I’ve been reconnecting with some old favorites and finding new gems that I repeat to myself when I’m working out, writing, or need to redirect my mind away from a darker topic. I collect them on a doc on my laptop, write them on index cards, and add them to the notebooks for writing projects. Like “Just Zoo It,” the quotes I find now often function a version of self-talk. I’ll be diving much more into this in my upcoming class, Write Like an Athlete.
Here are some I’ve been cycling through recently:
And because I’m incapable of loving something and not eventually trying to write comedy about it, here’s a quote card from a piece that I co-wrote with the fantastic Dan Caprera in February 2020.
Built on the concept of “Churchillian Drift,” where people attribute anything that sounds kind of smart to Winston Churchill, we came up with quotes that the man himself could have conceivably uttered while lying drunk in his bathtub. Hilariously, I sometimes see these images Dan made shared online AS REAL CHURCHILL QUOTES. My work on this earth is important and meaningful, I’m sure you’ll agree:
What’s your favorite motivational quote? Share with us so we can non-ironically love it as well!
ABOUT ME: My name is Caitlin Kunkel and I’m a comedy writer, long-time teacher, and creator of The Second City’s Online Satire Writing Program. I currently teach classes and consult on gift book proposals, modern adaptation, satire, and comedic literature. I co-founded The Belladonna Comedy and the Satire and Humor Festival, and I co-wrote the satirical gift book New Erotica for Feminists: Satirical Fantasies of Love, Lust, and Equal Pay, named one of the Top 10 Comedy Books of 2018 by Vulture.
Love the Roger Williams Park & Zoo shoutout.
I also love inspirational quotes and often find myself copying them down into various Google docs and notes. I also have a Pinterest board of them. What could be more cringe?
Something I find myself repeating a lot is "Show up for yourself." Perhaps not surprisingly, the Peloton instructors are REAL good with the motivational quotes and I actually find they're helpful?! (I also have the Jillian Michaels 30-Day Shred workout burned into my memory, and she used the "pain is fear leaving the body" quote... I believe in reference to crunches of some kind?)
These are awesome. I collect Motivational quotes in a cool little notebook I got as a gift. My two favorites lately :
Tchaikovsky: “Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.”
I don’t know who wrote these, but I like how they help with envy:
Comparison is the theft of joy.
and
Don’t get bitter, get better.
(Reminds me of Garry Shandling’s “Don’t get mad, get funny)