episode 78: stop wasting your time following gurus

Listen to this episode here. Transcript below.

As it’s the beginning of 2023, I have a feeling that there are a number of you out there making New Year’s Resolutions, which is great - I think it’s awesome to focus your energy on new goals or working on aspects of your own personal development.  So this is not meant to be a huge downer, but because I’m a pretty direct person (some of my oldest friends would say blunt), I hate to tell you all this, but most of us don’t follow through on our New Year’s Resolutions.  I did a brief google search on this today and discovered it’s more than 80% of folks will throw in the towel.  As an avid gym goer and athlete, I can tell you purely anecdotally I see this every single year in action - the first couple of weeks of any new year, the gym is crazy busy and by February, it’s back to a normal flow again.

Why do we have such a hard time following through with making changes for the better?  Obviously, there’s a myriad of reasons.  Unrealistic expectations, unforeseen hiccups in the road, it’s a lot harder than we think, we don’t follow through enough for changes to become a habit, and so on - I could really go on and on here.  But here’s something I don’t see anyone really talking about that I believe is a huge culprit in our lack of follow through.  OK, when we decide we want to change something in our life - from our career to our body composition - we want it to happen right now.  With minimal effort.  Getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible.  Am I right?  Of course, I mean, who doesn’t want big change to be easy?

So, what do we do?  We look for a proverbial magic pill.  The ONE life hack that is going to make it happen for us.  And I could talk to no end about other personal growth and business podcasts that tell you you’ll only have to do things like just work 4 hours a week and magically become a millionaire.  We live in a world that seems to be run by the cult of personality - as an aging metalhead, I think back to the song by Living Colour from the late 80s, and I can’t think of any lyrics more prophetic for today’s social media culture.  Because social media is pretty much omnipresent - I just read a study from pew research which states that about 80% of adults were active on at least one platform in 2021 - it’s super easy to get sucked in by online gurus who will make you the promise that if you just follow their advice, you’ll be able to transform your life in a set number of gimmicky steps.

I’m here to tell you to stop wasting your time on this junk.

There is a gigantic difference between a guru and an expert.  A guru is a cult of personality type.  They photograph well, they present well, they’ve got the charisma, they’re entertaining, and they’ve got some kind of schtick that’s easy to digest or laugh at or admire or to even want for ourselves.  Gurus do well as influencers and gain big followings online, and often make money peddling their systems or through strategically placed ads for other sponsored products.  If you’ve listened to my podcast for any amount of time, you’ll know I’m an experienced tattoo artist and tattoo studio owner.  I’ve been in the business for a long time, and I’ve owned two shops.  As a business owner, as much as it’s not fun for me, I HAVE to keep up on social media, because if you don’t, well, you’re just reliant on underground word of mouth for marketing.  Not bad, but you’re not going to be as busy as you could be.  Lately I’ve been on tattoo tiktok a ton, and it’s just insane to me the number of young tattooers with hardly any experience out there giving HORRIBLE advice to potential clients, along with just incorrect information.  Now look, you might be pretty, you might do a decent tattoo, but if I’ve been getting tattooed longer than you’ve been alive, I might actually have better information to share.  And THAT - that right there is the difference between a guru and an expert.  An expert has actual experience.  An expert has been there, done that.  Experts aren’t just doing things for the ‘gram or the shares or the likes.  Experts know their craft or their discipline, where a guru - well, a guru just has a bunch of pretty fluff to share.

Our problem is it can be hard sometimes to differentiate between the guru and the expert.  And the guru’s advice on how to change your life might seem to be the path of least resistance, so we buy into it.  I think about my poor mom back in the 80s when infomercials started, and she bought this knockoff Nordiktrack thing called the EZ Glider that was supposed to magically make your butt and waist smaller.  Did it?  Sure, about as much as the Thighmaster magically shrunk all of our thighs, and it became a glorified dust collector - I think even the pedals fell off after a couple of uses, even before those monthly 9.99 payments were completed.

Anyhow, if you want to make a real change in 2023, don’t get sucked in by the easy way out promised by a guru online.  Yes, watershed or pivotal moments happen in all of our lives, but real change takes time, it’s sustainable, and it happens in increments that often take years, not a magical couple of weeks.  Here are some ways to help you figure out if a system or an expert advice can work for you.

One - assess the change that you want to make.  WHY do you want to make this change?  Let me tell you, without a valuable WHY behind any action, it’s not going to be sustainable.  Without a why, that inflection point where things shift from running on motivation to running on discipline will become a cliff you’ll just jump off of.  Believe me, I get it - I’ve been doing this podcast consistently now for 78 episodes and I’ve even hit walls with this, weeks where the last thing I want to do is record, even though you’ll never hear it in my voice.  What I rely on in those moments is the discipline and habits I’ve created, and this much larger WHY behind those.  Why am I doing this podcast?  Mainly because I want to reach my demographic of middle aged women (and men too) to let you all know you have much more inner resilience than you even realize, ways in which to channel that, and to stop thinking something’s wrong with you when you’re simply just human.  Additionally, there’s a huge hole in the world of personal development when it comes to female voices.  The vast majority of women in this space are focusing on pastel images, and cutesy little mottos, and boss babe identities.  Where are the strong women?  My why is to be a strong, tough, no-nonsense and intellectual role model for other women, mainly because I don’t see a hell of a lot of that in popular culture or the podcast space.  So what’s your why?  If it’s to lose weight so you look good for someone else?  You might want to rethink that, I mean that’s just caving into some kind of societal pressure to look or BE a certain way for others.  Maybe a better why is to take control of your nutrition and fitness so that you can enjoy your life and your health span into your older years.  THAT is much more sustainable.

Two - do your research on a public figure before taking their advice.  In fact, do your research on ANYONE who offers you advice.  Does this person have the thing that you want, be that fitness or bank balance or career?  If someone’s offering your advice on how YOU should act, well, while none of us are perfect 100% of the time, that person should have accountability.  They should have a real track record.  Going back to tattoo tiktok, how is someone who’s only been tattooing for a couple of years going to be able to give expert advice to other tattooers on how their tattoos will look in 10+ years?  I mean, really?  They can’t.  In short, there’s no substitute for real experience, so do your research on any so-called expert out there - and there truly are some on social - in order to make sure you’re not misplacing your time, energy or money buying into something that doesn’t work.

Three - this one’s a real litmus test for me in the world of personal growth.  Before following someone’s advice, do more research and find out - did this person get to where they are by following their own advice, or did they get to where they are by telling other people what to do?  Seriously.  Here are a couple of examples for you from the health and fitness industry.  I’ve recently been getting a bunch of ads on my social for a gal peddling an 8 week vegan strength training program using only resistance bands to quote - get your arms and butt shredded, even if you’re completely out of shape and have zero experience with strength training. As an athlete, I have no words for this; the gal in question is indeed shredded herself, but I guarantee you her looks came from more than an 8 week vegan plan, and are likely mostly due to a combination of genetics, surgery and a lot of steroids…just saying.  But she’s selling a lot of products with these FAKE promises that she clearly hasn’t followed herself, and she’s making a bunch of money off those false promises.  If you want a more mainstream example of this? Go look up the Liver King when you’re done with this today.  This guy promised his followers - his hundreds of thousands of followers - that if they took his supplements and ate a bunch of raw organ meats that they’d end up as ripped as him.  And what happened a couple of weeks ago?  He admitted to massive steroid use, but only after making millions off of selling misinformation and systems that don’t work.  Again, someone clearly not following their own advice.  The moral of the story is to do your research, ask a bunch of questions, and if someone hasn’t followed their own advice, don’t put your faith into them.

In closing, if someone’s promises sound too good to be true, they usually are.  Don’t take the path of least resistance.  The real road to change is challenging, it’s uncomfortable at times, it’s going to stretch you, and it’s going to take steady sustainable effort in the long term.  But that’s the truth.  Don’t get sucked in by gurus…learn from the experts, and then become your own.