The Problem with Personal Development

I’ve been an author, speaker and consultant in the personal development space for 23-years. I’ve delivered thousands of speeches in 10 countries, sold a million and a half books and have been featured on every major TV network in the western world. I honestly believe in the majority of messages offered by the thought leaders in this industry, and in the interest of full disclosure, most of them are friends of mine. The problem is personal development has become so profitable that some authors and speakers are misleading people through wild claims of get rich quick and instant success. From the ridiculous notion of increasing your companies revenue by 10 times in a short period of time to encouraging people to take wild gambles on themselves in business when they have little chance of success. These fantasies are sold to the naive masses every day, to the collective tune of billions of dollars. Wild claims and huge numbers are sexy and salable, even if they are unrealistic for the average person. A few years ago a group of people were sold on entering a sweat lodge in hopes of having some kind of emotional breakthrough, and three of them died in the process. The bottom line is personal development has gone too far. What started out as the proliferation of positive thinking platitudes, suggestions of superior self-discipline and learning to think bigger has resulted in a massive overreach of what these ideas and the people that follow them can actually do. Watch this short video about how to use personal development at its best while avoiding the magical, fantasy-based thinking of its worst purveyors.