Having spent a lot of time in the psychology and self-development field, I perhaps have a more jaded and cynical view of humanity than most... particularly when it comes to sketchy people's motivations.
Perhaps it is a product of our day and age that many become almost obsessive about reaching their goals and desires, going to great lengths to get exactly what they believe they want.
I'm not sure there is actual blame to be laid anywhere, although I expect that 1980s "you can be anything you want and you DESERVE it!" culture certainly had an influence on how we approach life. We may have better lives, but we also enter adult life with higher expectations.
So anyway, you have these situations in which people feel they have to have certain things - from success to fame to amazing love - or their lives will be "incomplete" in some way.
As a consequence, they will take extraordinary measures to obtain what they want. This includes spending lots of money on books, and seminars, and workshops, and personal coaches and more.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that there are also going to be those — including people who actually are not qualified to do so — who will take advantage of that drivenness.
I'm not referring to legitimate sources of advice, but to those who seek not to advise but purely to profit from people's obsessions. This can take the form (in the extreme) of near-cultish offerings, whether it's seminars that require you to join "schools" that last for several years and cost thousands of dollars, or "matchmaking" programs with outlandish fees that actually do very little to ensure a better chance at love than randomly meeting people at a supermarket.
Some might just say that "buyer beware" applies here, but let's keep in mind that it is our fears that are being pandered to, and those who are in a state of fear are typically not thinking clearly. So insisting that they should have the clarity of mind to recognize that five sessions of professional psychotherapy to address their insecurities would be a lot more effective than a $3,000 seminar from some nutjob likely isn't helpful.
After all, you (as the one giving advice) isn't living down inside that fear!
I got to thinking about all this after catching a bit of an investigative program about a group who was more or less ripping people off by preying on their desperation at not having a life partner. And these people were basically charging huge sums of money for (essentially) encouraging people to substitute fantasy and imagination for reality... often with very unfortunate outcomes; even a suicide or two.
Of course, it is easy to point fingers at the "victims" and claim that we should all be "aware and self-reliant." And that they voluntarily paid their life savings for little more than hope and smoke and mirrors.
But life is not always so simple, is it? I think back to some of the many workshops and seminars I attended in my 20s and 30s — as part of "finding myself" — and I am grateful that the folks offering the workshops were ethical enough to regularly turn away those who were trying to use the workshops in place of actual counseling, to change a situation and mindset that needed FAR MORE than just a spendy seminar to be changed!
Be careful out there, folks! Not everyone has your best interests at heart!
Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!
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Created at 2023-10-12 07:41 PDT
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