Motivational speaker preaches reverse psychology

“Other people will say you can do anything, that you just need to put your mind to it,” says Clyde Marvin, motivational speaker. “Not me. Face it. You’re not going to climb the Matterhorn. You’re lucky if you climb out of bed. Why? Because you are a failure. That’s your one strength.”

Marvin’s controversial approach has gained national acclaim thanks to his recent self-help bestseller, Win by Losing a Little Each Day. His formula is simple: decide what you want to do, then try to do the exact opposite. “Keep your eyes on the prize,” says Marvin, “and trust yourself to lurch in the opposite direction.”

The method gets results.

“At work, I used to get walked on all the time by my boss, a former Marine,” says Tim Nitticus, a former accountant with an uneven mustache. “She was a terror. Then I read Win by Losing, and I thought, I can do this. The next day, she came in and went apoplectic because my mustache wasn’t ‘trimmed.’ My new goal was to get yelled at as much as possible, so I dumped my coffee on her boots. Wow.

“Needless to say, I was fired. And presto! No more getting yelled at! Thank you, Clyde Marvin. I don’t suppose he needs an accountant?”

Before he got into motivational speaking, Marvin ran herd for an obscure paper-pushing department deep in the bowels of the federal government. The job had pretty much nothing to do with motivational speaking. Not only was it no preparation whatsoever for his future career, it was an almost total waste of time. However, it did teach him the value of failure.

“Every day, I saw everyday people who couldn’t file a report on time, or skip that second cup of coffee, or think,” says Marvin. “After a couple decades of that, it hit me; failure is a constant. It’s reliable. Dependable. And free.”

But Marvin is quick to admit that not everyone has the instant success of a Nitticus. Even failure can take time. Take Rachel Barge, a self described “grump.”

“Before Marvin, I’d tried everything—self-hypnosis, food rewards, Grumps Anonynmous,” says Barge. “I just kept backsliding. Now, I try to be the Ultimate Grump. But the more I try, the less I do it. The flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak. So I fail—which means that, secretly, I succeed!”

“Maybe,” says Norm, her husband. “Seems to me you’ve gotten more grumpy.”

“Nonsense! I am so far from being the grump I was born to be.”

“I thought you were trying not—”

“No, dear, my goal is to be Grumpius Maximus. But secretly I hope I fail, miserably.”

“All I know is, you never used to break dishes over my head, or kick the neighbor’s dog with steel-toed—”

“Oh, shut up!”

While thousands like Nitticus and Barge have been enhanced by Marvin’s method, here are a negligible few who claim to have been “derailed.”

“I wanted to be a better driver,” says Kikki Zucchini, a county judge who hates squash. “After eight accidents, I’m beginning to wonder if the Marvin method is right for me. Maybe trying to do the speed limit wasn’t so hard after all.”

“Nonsense!” chides Marvin. “Success is hard; failure is easy. You just need to give your Inner Loser permission to flower. Not that I’m here to give anyone advice.”