One day my mother and I were watching football on TV. She asked me if I knew that Joe Montana, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers at the time, was born in the same year as me. Joe and I were in our late 20’s then so it wasn’t all that surprising. Most professional athletes are somewhere in their 20’s or early 30’s. My mother had something and I only had to wait a few seconds for the real reason that Mom brought up is age. “He just bought his parents a new house.”

Ba-da-bing. My first instinct was to tell Mom that Elizabeth Taylor was a few years younger than her and she let her children lead a life of leisure and luxury. I restrained myself. In the mean time, Mom hit her intended target – reminding me of my seeming lack of direction or ambition. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she wanted me to work harder on my life, so I too could someday buy my parents a new house. However the result was something far different. I felt bad about myself.

This story came to mind the other day after I read some inspirational story that just pissed me off. This man became blind due to an accident when he was a teen-ager. Instead of letting the accident destroy his life, he went on to an Ivy League college, became an investment banker and now is a millionaire. The author’s intended message, I’m sure, was to inspire his readers to greater things. Unfortunately, there is also a barely hidden secondary message about all these whiners out there complaining about their hard lives when this guy was blind. If they think they have had hard knocks with racism or fatherless families or poverty, try being blind. There is someone who can complain about his lot in life but oh no he decided to become a millionaire instead.

I was uninspired to say the least.

I am getting this way with LinkedIn testimonies from the rich and famous. They have almost the opposite effect on me. These inspirational messages seem appropriate for a very narrow range of people, those with a driving entrepreneurial spirit and the money to support it.

Do something that you are passionate about.

You can be anything you want to be.

Know your value; don’t settle for less than that.

Don’t take no for an answer.

All, I am sure, very good advice, all not so relevant when you have bills to pay, food to buy and need to put a roof over your head. Those needs might require me to take a job I am far from passionate about or work a job that I would rather not do.  Asking millionaires and wildly successful people for their advise seems like a good idea on paper, in reality, their inspirational stories don’t match most people’s present circumstances or personality. It’s a one size fits all inspiration. When I read about the tech wizards like Jobs, or Gates or Zuckerberg, not their noble deeds now but how they got to where they got, I think these people are assholes, who wants to be an asshole. The spirit of work is not just entrepreneurial.

Perhaps this means I won’t be a billionaire who runs a tech company. And that is precisely the point. There are billions of people who probably won’t make that goal. There are billions of people who would very much like to work and do a great job. And, I am only speaking for myself and not the billions of other people, I just don’t think I can work up much passion for it. I will do a damn good job though.