Self Help Gurus or Marketing Experts?

When I got home from work last Thursday I was  ”encouraged” to take an honest look at how I feel my life is at the moment. By that I mean writing with no self censoring, no self lies or justifications for previous actions. No blame or excuses, just honesty and facts without any kind of judgment.

The “encouragement” came in the shape of a thought. A thought telling me to sit down and basically just find a starting point. A place from which to look forward instead of moving blindly in all directions. For a very long time I have wanted to change things but have never really worked out where to start from.

I started and found it difficult to stop. There is no particular order to what has come out so far. Memories from when I was a child, back to present-day, then back to childhood again. Then I somehow got side tracked into the area of self-help and gurus and whether or not it actually works. (Viv I think your post and our conversation may have had some influence here!!).

The hot topic on the news, at least in the US is the tragic events that occurred at a sweat lodge session in Sedona during James Ray’s “Spiritual Warrior” Seminar. The title itself kind of make alarm bells ring with me as the 2 words, in my mind, don’t belong together. I decided to dig further into this. Not so much the event itself but what made people pay between $9,000 – $10,000 to a guy no one had really heard much about until he was featured in “The Secret”. I am speaking from my own viewpoint here. If he was a well-known “guru” prior to “The Secret” I stand corrected!
I then wondered ; What credibility does he have, other than the popular culture seal of approval, that will make people part with that kind of money. What problem(s) were they hoping to alleviate or what kind of experience were they hoping to have. If they were hoping to alleviate a problem, how much therapy or counselling can $10,000 buy you?

I am not here to pass judgment on James Ray, it is the industry as a whole I want to question. To be precise I want to question the validity of what these self-proclaimed experts and gurus teach. What qualifications and experiences do they have that gives them the right to label themselves experts in this field? How many of them actually have a real doctorate degree? A lot of them seem to usethe “Dr” title! Is this what gives them their credibility? Or is just our perception?
More importantly, why did I believe that everything I read would propel me to great heights where problems simply could not exist?
The answer to that question for me lies with the field in which these gurus really are experts; Marketing!
In order to get an idea of how I viewed this self-help stuff in the past, I had a read through old journals and old posts on here and as much as I hate to admit this; I was astonished to see the naivety with which I was absorbing this information!

The interesting thing is that the self-help guru can’t really lose out because they have a safety valve in terms of validity.
To give you an example, one book suggested that in order to feel better about myself I should affirm to myself a certain phrase. I did as instructed and continued to do so for months and months. Did it work? Well, this is where the safety valve comes in, because there is absolutely no way of measuring it. The only way it can ever be measured is if I had the facility to live a dual existence in which I could compare how I felt after I had followed the instructions for a given set of time with how I felt had I not followed the instructions for the same amount of time.
Compared to how I was a few years ago, I feel better in myself I feel more confident in my abilities, I feel less afraid of saying what is on my mind even if that results in conflicting opinions of others. Normally I would credit positive improvement to whatever book or programme I was following at that time but now I am thinking that other factors had a part to play. If, however, it didn’t work or I didn’t experience any improvement, did I draw the conclusion that the material was rubbish? No, I put it down to the fact that I must have done it wrong, safety valve has kicked in again!

I was having a conversation with Viv the other night (See what you have started!!!!) about some of this and she raised a very interesting question. If their knowledge and expertise is written into a book, why the need to keep churning out book after book covering pretty much the same stuff? I know of a particular couple of gurus who have released in excess of 20 books saying pretty much the same thing.

I am not here to start a crusade against the whole self-help industry nor do I suggest that they are all a bunch of excellent marketers with only financial gain in mind. I know there is excellent high quality material available. Material that offers real and honest help and opportunity for growth.
But it may be worth remembering that the self-help industry is a multi billion dollar industry. In 2008 it grossed $11.3 billion in US alone. Personally I have no problem with people making money, quite the opposite.
What I do have a problem with is how a selection of individuals in this industry prey on people desperate for a quick fix to whatever problem they have, who will buy into whatever the “experts” are selling because it gives them a sense of hope, (I am talking about me here) at least until they realise that the quick fix promised on the packaging failed to deliver on its promise. Leaving one (well, me) confused as to why it didn’t work when it so clearly worked for the “expert” who wrote it as well as the hundreds of happy customers who were conveniently kind enough to write a testimonial.

I also think that there’s an element of transference operating here. Again I am speaking from personal experience where I would get drawn in to the point where whatever Guru I was following at the time could say or do nothing wrong!
If, at the sweat lodge session, people had exercised a measure of common sense, how many of them would have stayed in the sweat lodge as opposed to leave in the interest of personal safety? I also questioned if I would have exercised common sense and questioned the methods adopted by the guru or would I have conformed to the sheep mentality and followed the majority? I fear the honest answer would have been the latter!

I have left out specific books and authors (except of course Mr Ray, whose material I have never read or followed) purely because, what I think has worked for me may not work for you and vice versa. The only other one mentioned of course is “The Secret”, which in my view is the worst load of nonsense ever written, the sole purpose of which was to line the pockets of Rhonda Byrne, who in the space of approximately 3 weeks became an expert in the so-called “Law of Attraction” on the basis of Wallace D Wattle’s The Science of Getting Rich. The worst part of the secret is the fact that I believed in the concept when I first read it!! And I cringe when I think about how I walked around like a complete fucking moron repeatedly saying some mantra while cosmically ordering things from the ever so generous catalogue of the universe. By the way their delivery service need some work!! Or maybe I just did it wrong again!!

I could write an entire blog about my views of “The Secret” but in the interest of reader safety I won’t. If reading or watching “The Secret” helped you, disregard anything I have said.
There is, however, an excellent article on it HERE (Scroll down a little bit to get to the article)
Statistically there is something like 3,000 new self-help titles being released every year, which begs the question; How much of it is quality based on real experiences as opposed to just another marketing exercise?
Another worrying fact is that anyone can write a self-help book under the pretence of it being expert advice often derived from ancient wisdom or whatever fancy metaphor you want to add to it to make it sell!
In fact one doesn’t even have to write the book. There are places available online where you can buy pretty much any type of ebook along with rights to rebrand it as your own work!

As I have mentioned before, I know there is real quality material available out there and it can be found if one applies some common sense filtering before buying the quick fix! Why it took me so long to learn is no longer important!

Word Salad

The following was written the other evening. The strange thing is, I have no idea where the words came from. Although I was the one typing on the keyboard, I did not control the direction. The words simply appeared.

I emailed it to a friend who kindly told me what this experience may mean, which has given me some further food for thought.

What’s wrong?

I know I somehow chose to tread this path but why?

Who am I trying to punish? Who am I really punishing?

Why did I choose this path instead of the path of joy and happiness?

What am I trying to prove?

What is my end game?

Is there answers to all of my questions?

Do I really want to hear the answers?

Am I ready?

Is this what’s in store for me?

The question remains;

What’s wrong?

Unexpected Teachers

Why do we cross paths with certain people in our lives?

It is sometimes mind boggling to me just how many people I have crossed paths with in my life and how they have had an impact on my life and also how I may have had an impact on theirs.

I have had (and still have) people in my life who always look out for me and who are always there at just the right time! I may not have been there for them in the same way, which sometimes makes me feel guilty and somewhat selfish. Then again, I have been there for other people and may have been there for them at just the right time.

There are people who have been in my life for so long that I would not want to imagine life without them and then there are people I have known for just as long or even longer where the relationship has just naturally disappeared.

Then there are times when we come into contact with people who present us with challenges (sometimes unreasonable challenges) or who seem to make our life a misery whenever we come in contact with them. I have crossed paths with my fair share and on reflection I often handled these situations very badly, usually with negative emotions like anger and frustration. I still go into that automatic way of reacting some times.

Then I started thinking; “what if, for some reason, I attracted these people and behaviours into my life ?” and my initial reaction to that was, “why on earth would I want to attract these people into my life?”

I obviously don’t sit at home at night consciously thinking about attracting challenging people and situations into my life!! I’d like to think I have some degree of sanity left! But, what if these people are sent to teach us something? (I mean me of course!)

Is it possible, that if we go through a spell of being continually exposed to people we generally consider inconsiderate, arrogant, rude, demanding etc, it could just be another opportunity to learn a lesson we may have missed the first few times?

If I take my “need for approval” as an example. I still go through spells of needing approval from external sources to feel good about myself, which means I haven’t fully mastered this lesson yet. I am, however, much more aware of it than when I first wrote about it 18 months ago. Still, I am crossing paths with people where this resurfaces. At the moment it is predominantly in the work arena, which  I think is because unless I do a certain number of sales each week I am made to feel “not good enough” or the phrase that they prefer to use is: “This is not where you want to be!” so when I have weeks of doing well I have this urge to phone my boss and tell her, which gives me nothing more than a “well done”! When I step outside of that circle I don’t even care about the “well done” because it really means nothing.

All I want is to be allowed to do my job and do what is best for my clients whether that leads to a sale or not!

At this point this post nearly turned into another long rant about work but I will save that for my journal.

I do know that no one can make me feel as if I am not good enough unless I let them or unless I feel that I am not good enough.

Maybe this is just one of those lessons that will take some more practice for me to learn and when I have truly mastered it, I will no longer come in contact with these kind of people.

Perhaps the lesson within the lesson is for me to remember that when I do come in contact with difficult people it is just another lesson for me to learn!

Luckily I meet more happy, loving, caring and inspiring people, who I learn so much more from than the difficult ones.

I don’t have a huge circle of friends but the ones I have are priceless and I am forever grateful to have crossed paths with them and to have them in my life.

I have the most wonderful family who I love dearly.

And then there are all of you wonderful people I have met and connected with through blogging.

I am struggling to find the words to express my love and gratitude for the sincerity and kindness I have experienced since I started writing here.

You have inspired me at just the right time.

You have picked me up when I felt down.

You have made me laugh and made me cry.

Whenever I visit your blogs, I feel so at home.

When you visit here, I feel blessed.

I have learned so much from all of you and I feel so privileged to have crossed paths with all of you.

Thank You

Observation

This morning there were two peculiar events happening simultaneously in the street outside my office. I was happily working away when I noticed some bizarre shouting a little further down the street. It’s not uncommon to hear the occasional shouting outside, but it is usually only for a few brief moments. This person, however, was very persistent and in the end my curiosity got the better of me and I had to look through the window.

I couldn’t see the source of the shouting though, but what I did see wasn’t exactly what I expected!!

Across the street (outside a shop) I see two priests (not sure if they were – but they were dressed that way) each holding a sceptre. They were surrounded by approximately 30 – 40 people with wooden sticks!!

At this point my mind is struggling to keep up with what is going on and more specifically; “What do they need all these sticks for??”.

The shouting further down the street is still going on at this point and briefly I did wonder if the “shouter” was part of this whole outfit!

I gave up trying to concentrate on doing any further work and decided to go and investigate at least the source of the shouting, as this was the main cause of my distraction.

This turned out to be a woman, who obviously had things to say and for some reason wanted to make sure that her message reached as many people as possible!

It was difficult to make out exactly was she was ranting on about but I did pick out words like “Love” – “God” – “Peace” with some words in between I really couldn’t make out! The way the message(s) was delivered, however, didn’t appear as being revolved around feelings of love or peace, but I am sure she just felt passionate about getting her message across and that I misinterpreted it that way.

The interesting thing about observing this wasn’t so much the woman doing the shouting but the reactions of passers by, which ranged from some people being so caught up in their own world that they didn’t even notice what was going on, to people stopping to exchange comments (with various reactions in between the 2).

The people people who stopped to exchange comments were the most interesting to watch simply because; here we have a number of complete strangers who will possibly never cross paths again, and yet because of this woman they chose to stop briefly to find some common ground! Most of them agreed that she was obviously crazy and should be locked away! I even heard one guy say “where do you find a sniper when you need one”, which I hope wasn’t meant that way but did make me side with her.

Even more interesting was the fact that everyone kept a “safe” distance from her, even as they were walking past. It was as if there was an invisible wall around her. I suspect her invisible wall was everyone else’s comfort zone.

One guy did walk up to her very calmly and said something to her, which only stopped her shouting for a split second. She then began to tell everyone that smoking cigarettes was the worst sin of all (the guy was smoking a cigarette) at which point he walked away as calmly as he had approached her.

I was awoken from what seemed like a dream by  my phone and had to go back to work. When I got back to my office, all the people with sticks had disappeared and all of a sudden I didn’t hear the shouting anymore.

I went about my day and it wasn’t until I got home earlier this evening that I started thinking about the whole event. If somehow I was meant to have observed it and if so why?

My initial thought, when I first went out to find out where the shouting came from, was that she was a nutter, but then I began to wonder what sequence of events would lead someone to the point where shouting in the street seemed like the most appropriate action. Whatever message she wanted to deliver was without a doubt extremely important to her. That thought made me feel compassion towards her and that she had every right to express herself that way. She was causing no harm to anyone and I am left hoping that she finds peace and joy.

As far as the “stick crowd” is concerned, I have no clue what the hell they were up to! So again my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to google it! Guess what, I found the answer! It’s an event called “Beating the Bounds” At least now I know what they are doing when I see them next year!!!!

Beating the Bounds on Ascension Day

Various locations across the city

Oxford, United Kingdom

The ceremony of ‘Beating the Bounds’ is conducted on Ascension Day, which is celebrated on the fortieth day after Easter. This custom, which began way back in 1498, involves a procession of people who walk around the city. During this march, they halt by certain trees, fences and walls that denote the boundary of a particular area to vociferate, pray and ‘beat the bounds’. The day ends with a celebration with drinks and merry making.

These two events could have been nothing more than a coincidence where I just happened to be there. If I was meant to observe this strange sequence of events I really don’t know why at this point but if it was nothing more than a coincidence then why did I think about it this evening and why did I write about it.