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Chris Sligh a "Negaholic"?

Fri., Mar. 30, 2007 6:34 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

Maybe Chris Sligh's rhythm wasn't off. Maybe his aspiration was.

"To me he sounds like a negaholic," says life-coach and motivational-speaker Cherie Carter-Scott.

Sligh sure wasn't sounding like a posterboy for a "Success" poster after telling reporters he nearly to dropped out of American Idol, and never wanted to win the competition.

"Ah, it's no big deal at all," Sligh remarked of his dismissal from the show Wednesday night.

In a press conference Thursday, Sligh revealed he was disheartened by a number of Idol things, from the hate mail, to the no-musical-instruments, no-original-songs rules, to the criticism he bore on the Mar. 14 telecast for his attempt to update "Endless Love." The latter had him considering quitting, he said.

Not that Sligh, considered an early frontrunner by viewers, ever considered himself in it for the long haul: "I never came into this wanting to win it," he confessed.

According to the 28-year-old Sligh, he wanted to do well, and he wanted to do the Idol summer tour (an honor reserved for the Top 10 finishers)--and, well, that was about enough.

"I made the top 10--that was my goal, and ultimately that's all that matters," Sligh said. "It doesn't matter who is going to place ahead of me. What matters is, I reached the goal that I really wanted to make."

And he did. By being eliminated this week, a night after what the Idol judges deigned was an off-the-beat rendition of "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," Sligh placed precisely 10th.

Self-fulfilling prophecy, according to motivational experts.

"Why would you want to go to all this effort and trouble, and come in 10th?," Carter-Scott asked.

Because, Carter-Scott answered, Sligh sabotaged himself.

Annabel Chotzen, a motivational speaker and trainer, agreed that Sligh's mindset might not have been ideal for a competition.

"I tell people to go for it even if they don't believe in themselves," Chotzen says.

Had Chotzen coached Sligh, the South Carolina man's Idol journey might have been different. Or at least looked different.

Said Chotzen: "I would have absolutely done visualizations with him."

Carter-Scott sounds less sure Sligh could have overcome Sligh.

"You can't talk somebody into winning who doesn't want to win," says Carter-Scott, who studied nattering nabobs of negativism, or so-called negaholics, as she's tagged them, in her book, Negaholics.

Mike Robbins, another motivational speaker, thinks Sligh's downplaying of his Idol ambition can be viewed as a healthy attitude. Or as a defense mechanism.

A onetime minor-league baseball pitcher, Robbins says he remembers telling people it didn't matter if ever made it to the land of 50,000-seat stadiums and six-figure minimum salaries.

"To me personally, that was a lie," Robbins laughs.

For all his professing of how Idol wasn't for him or his "indie-alternative-rock background," even Sligh eventually allowed that he didn't realize his potential.

"Ultimately, I feel like I could've and probably should've done better," Sligh said.

Sligh largely was looking on the bright side, and so is Chotzen.

"Maybe it will lead to something greater," Chotzen said of Sligh's exit, "and it's going to open a door that he never thought possible."

"Being number 10 isn't bad."