I know how skeptical people typically are about motivational pictures. Everyone has seen and got fed up with that tripe posted on the partition walls of their cubicles - some stranger conquering an impossible mountain against the canvas of a magnificent sunrise with some stupid caption about "persistence", or "excellence" under it, or some poor little kitten cutie struggling to hang on to the edge of a table with her babyish claws, beneath which is inscribed, invariably in corresponding bubbly cutesy letters, "hang on".

Hey, you might not believe me when I tell you this. If I were a listener like you, I would probably not believe in it either. Nonetheless, I have an urge to tell you this simple yet rarely acknowledged fact that nothing inspires people quite as much as aerobic pictures to get fit and back in shape.

It is considered a sign of very low refinement even to put such thing up, let alone to confess to be motivated by them - unless you are a middle manager, in which case low refinement is considered more of a virtue than a vice. However, at least in the case of aerobic pictures, it is true. The right picture can really give people that extra push and get them moving.

Well, you think I am exaggerating. No not really. Seeing people sweating every day enables me to tell the gleam of sweat from the gleam of confidence. What I see here is definitely the gleam of confidence. They look at those aerobic pictures and stand up straighter, work that much harder, and I believe, go home feeling a whole lot better about themselves. Even the aerobic exercise classes seem to go better once the pictures are present.

I should know. I am a manager at the Skinny Booty Gym downtown, and I oversee various tasks including decorating the walls. It has given me plenty of time to observe people in their workouts, and the differences that those aerobic pictures make are surprising. Before I stick them up, many people seemed to be just painfully dragging on with their workouts, without hope of ever attaining any fitness goals. Since I put up the aerobic pictures, however, things have taken a dramatic turn. It is like the aerobic pictures lift everyone's morale that makes them practically shine with confidence.

After seeing this effect on people, I have even taken down my other motivational posters and put up the aerobic pictures around my cubicle in the gym. Even when I am not doing any exercise, the pictures of fit, trim people doing their aerobics workouts seems to tell me I should put in a little bit more effort into whatever tasks I am attending to at the moment. There are many types of decorations which are more beautiful, more exciting, and flashier than aerobic pictures, but I have yet to find one that exerts a bigger positive influence on the work ethics. And isn't that the most crucial thing of all?