Steve Pavlina is a wonderful source of amusement to me, I subscribe to his blog with a morbid fascination of a gawker at a car wreck. I noticed a few days ago that Steve had decided to auction a one-hour consultation with himself on Ebay (translation: “I don’t think I’m gonna make my mortgage payment this month unless I manifest a grand, fast”). Read more »
Paid $9,000 and All I Got Was Asphyxiated In My Own Puke
Self-help guru James Arthur Ray has been arrested on manslaughter charges stemming from the deaths of three attendees at his “Spiritual Warrior” five-day retreat. According to People Magazine:
During the “Spiritual Warrior” five-day retreat, for which Ray charged approximately $9,000, participants were pushed to their spiritual and physical limits by fasting for 36 hours and cramming into a 415-square foot, sauna-like hut – essentially a wood frame covered in tarps and blankets. People were passing out and vomiting, but still urged to stay inside the sweat lodge.
Hard to know what to make of this one. To believe in one’s program to the point where you recklessly endanger your followers is either the pinnacle of obliviousness or hubris. James Ray has his side of the story posted on his website.
This is Ray’s second fall from grace. He blew himself up financially when the DotCom bubble imploded. He turned that story of overreach into a parable upon which he built his comeback.
With three dead bodies in the closet, the comeback trail might be a tad rougher this time.
The Inverse Pareto Sinkhole
If you’re not familiar with the Pareto Principle, then perhaps you’ve heard of the 80/20 Rule. It’s the same thing. It is a general rule of thumb applied to things like productivity, business, etc.
Examples are that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers, 80% of your support tickets are caused by 20% of your users, or as an incredibly oversimplified generalization: 80% of your results come from 20% of your assets or inputs. The 80/20 Rule was named after an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto who in the early 1900’s noticed that 80% of the Italy’s farmland was owned by 20% of the population.
The Secret Behind “The Secret”
The secret behind “The Secret” is that you can make your entire livelihood teaching losers about the Law of Attraction, which in it’s most basic form states: You attract what you think about into your life.
From this premise, people are advised to think about things they want, visualize abundance, focus their intentions, don’t dwell on what they don’t want or focus on things that are absent from your life. “Energy Flows Where Attention Goes”.
Which is for the most part, all true. The entire Law of Attraction “phenomenon” can be summed up as: Your biases impact your outcomes. It’s really that simple. There is also a hardcore scientific basis for it in physics: Inertia. Things tend to keep doing what they’re already doing.
Read more »
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