Many influencers seem to have a morning routine more complicated than a NASA launch sequence.
They do yoga, meditate, run several miles, do a cold plunge, and warm up some raw milk from their pet goat—all before the average person hits snooze for the first time.
There’s a whole parade of people who diligently follow every commandment from the self-help gospel—from waking up at the crack of dawn to enduring the icy ordeal of cold showers that leave them shivering and questioning their life choices.
Yet the promised nirvana still remains just out of reach.
Instead of feeling enlightened, we’re left scratching our heads, pondering whether maybe we didn’t meditate quite right or perhaps our smoothie lacked that crucial superfood.
This pervasive feeling of falling short has become a silent epidemic. It’s a cycle of seeking and not finding, underscored by the sneaking suspicion that the roadmap we’re so fervently following is leading us in circles.
It’s a paradoxical journey where the more we strive to adhere to these one-size-fits-all prescriptions, the more we stray from the very essence of what makes us content and fulfilled.
These unrealistic standards also lead to feelings of inadequacy and disillusionment among followers, exacerbating the very issues they seek to resolve.
Let’s pull back this curtain of “perfection.”
I’ve now spent enough time with enough influencers behind closed doors that I know one thing: Their off-camera life is rarely Instagram-worthy.
The people we put on a pedestal often don’t live up to their carefully curated public personas. The best-selling low-carb diet book author shoves his face with foods that make your cheat meals look healthy. (I’ve seen this firsthand numerous times.) The famous productivity expert wastes an hour every day scrolling through social media. The meditation guru, a champion of zen in every aspect of life, transforms into a horn-honking monster in bumper-to-bumper traffic. These contradictions aren’t just hypocritical quirks, but powerful reminders of our shared humanity.
And my goal isn’t to discredit these influencers. It’s to inject a dose of reality into how we consume their advice, and remind people to take the “crush it” culture with a healthy pinch of salt (or a full shaker, depending on the influencer).
After all, if the people selling us the roadmap to enlightenment aren’t following their own advice, perhaps the path isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be.
As the saying goes, be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.
We’re often given a single plot about what makes life worth living. Just follow this one path, the story goes, and you’ll get your happy ending. But the paths and the plots are multiple. In attempting to duplicate someone else’s seemingly happy ending, we end up deleting the possible plots of our own life. We become a silent extra in the background of someone else’s movie.
In the end, the journey to self-improvement isn’t about copying someone else’s highlight reel.
It’s about finding what genuinely works for us, imperfections and all—and maybe laughing at the absurdity of milking a goat at dawn.
P.S. Here’s another open secret: Although some influencers publicly give AI the cold shoulder, many of them are quietly harnessing ChatGPT in private as their secret weapon. Why? Because when deployed properly, tools like ChatGPT are akin to having a creativity turbocharger at your disposal.
That’s the heart of my blockbuster course, The AI Advantage, reopening its doors on April 23rd. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill course; it’s designed to help amplify your unique flavor of creativity, transform mundane tasks into sources of joy, and grant you the freedom to focus on what truly matters to you—instead of following someone else’s highlight reel.
👉Get on the waitlist at this link for a special surprise when we launch.
Your journey to leveraging AI in a way that’s unmistakably you starts here.
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