A NJ man attempted to act out a motivational boardroom cliche on Sunday by paraphrasing a Tony Robbins quote on the top deck of a Hudson River commuter ferry and belly-flopping into the water, forcing the ferry to circle back and rescue him.
"You wanna live your dreams? You wanna take the island? You gotta be willing to burn the boats," said 34-year old Alexander Vivanco in a video his buddy took. "But my recommendation is this—before you burn the boats, I suggest that you jump off them."
Careful not to leave any cliche, well, unturned, he followed up with a, "Remember, you only live once!" before flopping into the Hudson.
"The goal was to do something outrageous and entertaining while at the same time trying to motivate people," Vivanco told the NY Post afterwards. “I’m not telling everyone to go jump off boats, but just telling people to go after their dreams.”
Vivanco flopped around 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, in front of an audience of about ten people, from a top-deck bench on a NY Waterway Manhattan-Weehawken ferry. NY Waterway was so upset, apparently, that a spokesperson for the company called Vivanco an "asshole." The company is also planning to prosecute him, on top of disorderly conduct charges already leveraged by NJ police.
Maybe this all comes down to "living in an extraordinary state" and "conditioning your nervous system," like Tony would.
