Any company worth its salt has among its ranks a demotivating. There are many lapidary phrases that will help you to recognize it: "At this rate we have reached 5 million unemployed" "The situation is not improving" "Why am I going to make an effort if the world ends in 2012".
The demotivator can be anyone, from your boss or a co-worker to the bartender at the corner bar. You will be able to recognize him by his heavy gait, his glassy gaze and his hunched back on which the weight of the world rests..
When you ask a demotivator how he is doing, he will answer that "pulling" or "holding the storm". I, who have always had a very visual mind, when I hear these statements I cannot help but imagine the demotivator pulling an imaginary rope at the end of which is a huge rock that remains impassive in the face of the demotivator's efforts to keep "pulling" forward..
I can also visualize it at the helm of a ship struggling to stay on course in the midst of a great storm that is the source of their misfortunes.
The demotivator feeds on the motivation of people like you who are already motivated. The demotivator is an emotional vampire who wanders the world in search of new victims to steal their motivation..
However, that positive motivation that they extract from you undergoes a transformation within the demotivator and becomes a negative motivation that helps them extend their tentacles of pessimism ever further.
The main characteristic of a demotivator is his smile. There is a contradiction between the pessimism of the words that come out of his mouth and the positive gesture of his face. I can assure you that the demotivator's smile is not the result of joy at being able to talk to you for a while, rather it is the joy of the hunter who knows that he has found new prey.
You will never see a demotivator smile when no one is looking at him. However when he meets you he undergoes an instant change. Your mere presence is already giving him strength. You will notice how his back loses stiffness. His gaze concentrates and his pupils dilate. You hesitate between running or screaming. However, you remain petrified listening carefully to his hypnotic words and feeling how your vital energy is leaving your body little by little, very slowly.
If you are not sufficiently prepared, an encounter with a demotivator can be devastating and leave you completely exhausted without any strength to carry out the rest of the activities that you had scheduled. Try to identify the demotivators and get ahead of them by building a wall around you that prevents motivation from leaving you.
When you meet a demotivator, see him as the bull spectator who watches the show behind the protective barrier. Inside that barrier you feel safe and the tentacles of the demotivator can't even brush against you..
When a demotivator tells you it's going "pulling", do not hesitate to answer: "Well, I'm great". You will witness the birth of doubt and disorientation appearing for a moment on his face. Don't feel bad for giving these kinds of answers.
You are actually helping yourself and you are also helping the demotivator to gradually get out of the vicious cycle in which he is trapped. Do not forget that you are what you listen to, and the only person who constantly hears the words that the demotivator says is the demotivator himself.
Faced with this situation, the best thing you can do for the demotivator is to counterattack with answers like the ones I mentioned before. The next time he meets you, he is sure to choose his words carefully. This will be the first step to help the demotivator to break his dynamics and change the perception of the world around him.. At that point it will start to become a motivator..
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