Hello Lovely!
If you’ve ever been following an influencer/teacher who suddenly pivoted on their ‘schtick’ without acknowledging that they had influenced many people to follow said schtick - claiming that it was the SOLUTION to whatever pain point people were coming to them for - it’s a sign that they are/were teaching from a place of their own path vs. teaching from a place of expanded wisdom. Either that or they were teaching from a place of seeing that what they were speaking to was 'popular' and thus made them money, and when it stopped being popular they switched to the next 'latest and greatest' to keep themselves relevant.
Either way, when there's no acknowledgment of their pivot in terms of how much they influenced people to do what they were doing before we need to understand that this teacher wasn't teaching with the sole intention to help others - they were teaching from a limited experience that they were projecting onto 'everyone' or they were simply grifting.
It’s showing you that they were never as transcended as they may have been presenting themselves to be, but rather were trying something on in the hopes that it would deliver them, and they were sharing from a place of lack of long term experience.
When They Tell You 'THIS is THE Way':
One of the most common things I see in our current self help/spirituality sphere, is a pattern of leaders presenting a certain diet/healing technique/way of relating/financial strategy/spiritual path/life purpose path as being THE THING that will solve ALL your problems.
They offer a certain modality/lifestyle as the ultimate way and in either subtle or not so subtle language suggest that anyone who isn’t able to do ‘the way’ perfectly is of a lower caliber morally, physically, mentally and emotionally.
There’s a shaming of anyone who doesn’t get the results they’re getting or that they are seeming to get and an assertion that anyone CAN transcend the way THEY have transcended (or present themselves as having transcended) if they just follow the program.
These leaders often look incredibly confident, claim to be in a heightened state of health/awakening/awareness that is DUE to the path they are presenting as gospel. Their main selling tool will be a 'personal' testimony which includes a before and after OR they have testimonies of their followers before and afters to PROVE that their method is pure and true - and this is how they position themselves as a leader. They may or may not have credentials but that isn't really what matters. The thing that matters MOST is their personal story and the transformations of their committed followers. With this we will often see that there’s little to no context, nuance, recognition of societal or structural factors, there will be a clean and clear narrative that leaves out any complicating or contradictory information making the progress from the 'before' to the 'after' appear very linear and 100% due to JUST the tools being sold, leading people to believe that they too can have a streamlined success journey. Finally, there will generally be a sense of ‘if you can do what I do exactly as I do you are one of the elite and if you can’t you should be striving to become one of the elite. If you can't, you should be striving to do as I do exactly as I do.’
Anyone who can’t live the life the leader is presenting will be seen as lesser, or at least as people who need to be ‘working towards’ the ultimate goal of perfection being presented.
There won’t be any room for adjustments, alterations, modifications or the program not working in any way - if any of that occurs it’s all on the followers to take the blame for how they messed it up.
There will be a continual celebration of anyone who’s following the program to a T, and a perpetual defense against anyone who has criticism or doubts and especially against anyone who claims to have tried the program without getting the promised results.
There will be no room for any kind of questioning and anyone ‘outside’ ‘the way’ being offered will be considered a failure/less enlightened/ignorant.
There again will be no mention of complicating factors, no mention of systems, no mention of people all coming from different backgrounds and experiences, no mention of different needs and circumstances.
The program is PERFECT and the way is PERFECT and if you do it right you will get perfect results.
Any lack of perfect results are YOUR fault.
Period.
Because look! The leader is getting those perfect results or their clients are all getting perfect results.
It works every time, clearly.
And when it doesn’t it’s because someone messed it up.
The path is perfect.
Just follow the path.
Now, just right here, with this, I want to offer - if you're seeing this in anyone you're following - consider it a red flag.
Lack of nuance, lack of complexity, a clear, linear story, a personal testimony as the main selling point and a lack of capacity to hold any kind of reasonable feedback/criticism means that the teacher is not in a place to be teaching.
It means they don't have the requisite experience to be inclusive, they're not acknowledging the scope of practice that their work does and doesn't cover, they aren't acknowledging the reality that life is never linear and clear cut, they aren't making room for the fact that their 'thing' could never work for all people at all times and they aren't ready to actually work with anyone other than themselves.
They are still in the evangelical phase of finding something, or are digging their heels in on a thing that they PERSONALLY need to believe is fully correct and for all people for THEMSELVES.
Their work isn't really for you. There may be elements of them who want to help others, and their dogma may be coming from a truly innocent part that was hurting, found something that helped and they now just want to get EVERYONE to feel better too - but overall, they're teaching to bolster their own sense of rightness via crowd validation or they're teaching to make money with a 'program' that is easy to sell due to it being simple, easy to understand, specific and seemingly fool proof/miraculous.
Don't fall for this.
Before the pivot, before the let down, before the crash, before you hurt yourself - look for the above, and walk away. Or at least take what's being shared with a MASSIVE grain of salt.
When The Pivot Happens:
Now, back to our guru and how they are promising perfect results from this perfect program.
Often times we will watch as they sell their programs, coaching sessions, books and videos continuing to drive home the message that their thing is the thing.
Then slowly, we will start to see that their results start to wane. They disappear or start pulling back. They are less and less present.
We will notice that the train starts to slow down.
THEN.
When the leader eventually slips from the path, when the leader gets to a place where the path isn’t ‘working for them’ as they thought it would/should, when life happens and they have to change their way of being, when the inevitable shifts that come with being alive shift and the program no longer works how it was working, when the simplicity/extremism of the ‘perfect’ path starts to show the holes it inevitably has - there will be little to no recognition of their error.
Rather, there will be:
A shifting into blaming the ‘community’ (because there’s always going to be a broader community they were getting their information from/that was feeding into their dogma) for teaching THEM the dogma they were preaching - a projection that their actions weren’t their own and that THEY were lied to and should be pitied.
OR
There will be an explanation offered that sounds something like ‘this is my journey and I’ve evolved my understanding and NOW I REALLY get it, NOW I’m REALLY on it, and NOW you should REALLY follow what I’m doing. That old thing was fine but this NEW THING, THIS is IT! And all my TRULY enlightened followers will transcend that old way, just as I have, and will step into this new thing with me now.’ Or the old thing was WRONG and you should be just as outraged as I am about anyone who is/was promoting that non-sense, and you should follow me into this NEW thing because I GET IT NOW.
Every so often we will see someone say that the path that they were preaching before is still the ultimate thing, and that their fall from grace is simply their own failure, that the path is perfect, the path is still the thing, don't stop listening to (ie. buying) everything they were selling before, and don't use their slip from perfection as a reason to have doubt. Rather, keep on the straight and narrow and just realize that the teacher is flawed in some ways. The path is still perfect, this pivot is just my own weakness.
We will see the leader:
Swing wildly to something that’s the polar opposite to what they were doing before, looking for an equally straightforward, non-nuanced perfect path that gives them the same ‘high’ that the OLD path gave them when they first found it.
They will add true, requisite nuance to their current path rendering it less sparkly and in so doing they will will look to save face by stating that what they had before is still the ideal and they are just working back up to it.
They will claim that the new nuance is still simple, don't worry, and they’ll teach it to you simply. YOU just need to add this new thing EXACTLY how I did. Follow me.
The bottom line will still be:
Follow me.
I have the answers.
Just do as I do and you will be free.
I just understand more now.
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Are you starting to see these patterns in some of the people you follow?
Are you recognizing this in what you're seeing online these days?
These tactics aren't new to the internet - they are just easier to spread now that we have the internet.
Let's take a pause here, and come back to this next week. We'll take one more look at the patterns of our influencer market, and then we'll explore some mindset shifts to help with navigating these offerings in a way where we can get what's actually GOOD and useful without being swept up in what's harmful/caught off guard when our gurus change their minds.
<3
Getting off of the self improvement path and onto the self love path is hard.
Because everywhere we look in society, we are TRAINED to be in a perpetual state of self improvement.
We're trained to be in a perpetual state of feeling like we aren't enough, like our pain is a reflection of something being 'wrong' with us, like if we are failing to live up to the expectations of those around us that this means that we are flawed, broken and messed up and we're trained to CONSTANTLY feel like we are lacking something - because this is what keeps our society functioning how it functions.
Learning to understand WHY we have the habits we have, why we self sabotage, scapegoat and numb, why we can't seem to 'get it together' in our relationships, health and careers, why we have emotions, why our thoughts don't seem to help us move forward and why we struggle so much to be nice to ourselves is a MASSIVE key to building a life that actually works for us.
Learning where we don't need fixing, healing or changing, but rather where we need SUPPORT, self awareness and tools to help us EXPRESS and GROW is even harder work.
This is why I created the Aliyah Mystery School.
The School is your one stop shop for exactly how to:
Be your own safe place - and why that matters
Learn how your body speaks so you can better support it
Learn how your emotions speak so you can use them as guidance
Learn how to problem solve so you don't feel like every challenge means that you're stuck or that you need someone to come tell you want to do
Determine for yourself what is and isn't working in your life - and how to change even when that means upsetting others or being different
Support yourself through feeling the pain of your past so that you can integrate and move forward
So much more!
This school contains all the tools you need to really get to KNOW yourself, so that you can figure out what you need to feel your best in any given time - step by step, in a methodical way.
If you resonate with the content around here, but you want something more organized, a clear map for how to get on the self love path and how it will change your life - this school is for you.
Below you can find a video showing you EXACTLY what's in the school and how it will support you on your quest to build a life that feels amazing for you
Check it out, and let me know what you think when you do!
