We live in a world where everything has an expert.
They call themselves coaches, write self-help books, or host podcasts claiming they’ve solved life’s problems and now want to help the rest of us do the same.
Somewhere along the way, we outsourced our growth.
We stopped learning through experience.
We stopped allowing mistakes to teach us.
Now we look for a course, a program, or an influencer to tell us how to live.
Children being difficult? Read Stephen Biddulph.
Gained some weight? Try a new diet.
Feeling stuck? There’s a mindset coach for that.
We’ve forgotten how we got here in the first place, by living, failing, adjusting, and trying again.
Leaders once became great by leading, not by listening to someone who had never led.
Now, people who’ve never built anything tell you how to “build your best self.”
“This diet worked for me, so it’ll work for you.”
Until it doesn’t.
“This book will stop your procrastination.”
Until it doesn’t.
Then it’s on to the next one.
The search never ends.
And that’s the point.
Because the moment you stop searching, they stop selling.
The Price of Positivity
Add to that the constant messaging:
You deserve more.
You deserve better.
You are entitled to whatever you want.
All you need to do is think positive.
Visualise success.
Manifest abundance.
Oh, and make sure you have enough money to “invest in yourself.”
Because none of this comes cheap.
The Corporate Conversion
Now even the workplace runs on the same logic.
We can’t work without a course or a mindset fix.
Businesses feel obliged to run endless “development programs,” usually packaged by consulting firms that sell meaning rather than skill.
You no longer learn to do your job better, you learn how to think better, relate better, feel better.
Just wanting to do your job well is no longer acceptable.
You must want more.
You must want to progress.
Leadership and development companies now compete to sell their product, their ideology, each convinced it’s the best.
“Human transformation” is now a product line.
An investment.
One with no guaranteed return.
The Business of Hope
Tony Robbins is an expert in one thing: selling hope.
That’s why people go back time and time again, because they never succeeded the first time.
Maybe the second. Maybe the tenth. Maybe the twentieth.
Think and Grow Rich was inspiring, too.
But while I sat there thinking, I didn’t grow rich.
Maybe Napoleon Hill wasn’t the expert he made himself out to be.
Well, we know he wasn’t.
Now we have Mel Robbins and her Let Them “theory”, which isn’t a theory at all, just a thought.
Yet she inspires millions.
With no expertise, no qualifications, just a platform.
And that’s the modern formula:
Find a story, polish it with confidence, package it as wisdom, and sell it as a solution.
It’s not self-help.
It’s self-commerce.
And the only guaranteed growth is in the bank accounts of the experts selling it.
The Real Work
Real growth never came from a course.
It came from living. From getting it wrong, reflecting, and trying again.
But that takes time, and time doesn’t sell.
We no longer trust our own capacity to learn.
We’ve been taught to distrust it.
To hand it over to the next expert, the next book, the next course.
And so we keep searching, endlessly outsourcing our humanity to those who profit from our uncertainty.
We call it progress, but maybe it’s the opposite.
Maybe we’ve just forgotten how to grow on our own.