Spectator competition winners: Let’s get demotivated!

For the latest competition you were invited to supply a demotivational poem. This was your opportunity to come up with a bracing antidote to the worldview peddled by an eye-wateringly lucrative self-help industry that feeds on a mix of insecurity and the aspirational narcissism du jour. You came at the challenge from various angles, but the opening to Tracy Davidson’s entry speaks for many:

It doesn’t matter what you do in life, It’s just a constant loop of pointless shite.

Honourable mentions go to Adrian Fry’s paean to the power of no and to Douglas G. Brown’s 21st-century spin on Longfellow’s ‘Psalm of Life’. The winners, printed below, earn £25 each.

Katie Mallett When you are feeling down, be sure That worse is yet to come, The most that humans can endure Is bound to come to some Which could be you, so should you be Uplifted for a minute, Just dig a hole, six foot by three, Jump in and lie down in it.

The cloud that’s hanging over you Has got no silver lining, You know that you are overdue For trouble, and resigning Yourself to misery is best — Accept that life is crappy.