What can this situation teach me?

Everyone would’ve done it had it been easy. The fear you feel is the indicator you need in order to know you’re on a developmental path.

I feel just as strongly as anyone against self help gurus. I watched the Tony Robbins documentary and was repelled by the behaviour people showed in regards for him, treating him as a god. But the difference between being repelled by the guru mentality that people have towards a person and being repelled by what the person says or does is big, at least in my book. There are valid points too much of what the self help industry produces. The same goes for the sentences that start this text off.

When I face issues, problems, struggles and rough patches in my life, I feel like there’s much to fint in the literature and in the practice of self help. The destructiveness doesn’t come from the practices themselves, but by what value small groups of people put to the person saying it. That’s never productive.

I found it really hard to come to that conclusion as there was a lot of pride attached to telling both myself and my friends that I listen to and read some of the traditionally tabooed self help mongols as Robbins. I still find it shameful to tell some people where I find my quotes and my inspiration. The thing that bothers me is that something that has helped a lot of people, myself and my friends included, is given a label and seen as lesser worth just because of who said it.

A question I gathered from a Tim Ferriss podcast episode is this: What can this situation teach me? That’s been on my mind since, because every situation, every book, every person and every interaction can teach us something if we’re willing to see what the teaching might be. That goes for Tony Robbins as well as for your neighbour.