Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 778: They Spent Their Life Savings on Life Coaching

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way, we bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome at today is Thursday, July the I'm guessing 11th, not looking at a calendar, but I think that's about right.

It's about that time. You know, today should be Cecil, but it's not Thursday, July 11th should be sentencing day, but it doesn't look like that's not going to be sentencing day. So if you're listening to this, we're sorry. Sorry that it's not sentencing day. If it was up to like that's gonna happen. It's not gonna be sentencing day. So if you're listening to this, we're sorry. Sorry. That it's not sentencing day. If it was up to us, it would be. I think if it was up to us, if we had the power.

Yeah, if it was up to us, we would screw that case up bad. That's for sure. Worse than it's already been? Worse, Tom. Worse than the Supreme Court already did it? Worse, Tom. Yeah?

Yeah, probably. But what we wanna talk about today is a few long form articles that $2 patrons have the ability to hear me read. And for everybody else, this is a story from the New York Times. They spent their life savings on life coaching. And there were a couple others, BBC, the city underbelly of the life coaching industry, and a third article from ProPublica. When therapists lose their licenses, some turn to they of the life coaching industry. And a third article from ProPublica, when therapists lose their licenses,

some turn to the unregulated life coaching industry instead. So I was peripherally sort of aware of life coaching as a thing. I had no idea until these articles that this is a four and a half billion dollar industry. Not only is it a big industry, but it's also got a lot of very similar traits to multi-level marketing, which I didn't realize either.

You know, with everything that is an entrepreneurial activity, there's always somebody out there who's willing to give you a class, or willing to tell you some things, willing to charge you some money to do some sort of workshop to help you through it. There's podcast coaches out there.

There's video coaches and people who can help you improve your video products, people who can help you write better. There's plenty of those people out there in the world if you wanna create content. So I mean, there's plenty of content creator coaches out there. And then there's also, it seems that there's also a plenty of people here who do this sort of life coaching. And the life coaching is weird because it's got,

there's no regulation. It feels a lot like therapy that's not therapy. And it's also got its ties in this multi-level marketing to make it feel like, I'm sure that there were probably very legit coaches out there that can help people. But at the same time, it's also got a group of people who are praying on others

because they realize that that's a big industry and there's a lot of people who you can pray on. Yeah, I want to start with the idea of the tie to therapy because this is an important theme in all three of these articles. So, you know, life coaching is not a phrase which necessarily means anything specific. Because it's an unregulated industry, the life coaching business, the word life coach can be taken to mean just about anything and just about everything. It's one of these sort of like broad,

intentionally kind of nebulous ideas. And I was thinking about like the way that like life coaching really veers dangerously into the same kind of territory that therapy often is meant to address, but therapists of course are licensed and trained and educated and regulated. I got to thinking a little bit about mentorship

and how life coaching at its finest, I think, would be a way for people to access a kind of mentorship on demand. There's a young man that for several years, I have acted in kind of a mentorship capacity with. And I was thinking about that as I was like reading and thinking about these articles. And I was thinking about what makes that relationship work

between he and I. And one of the things that makes it work between he and I is that like we have a dynamic that is close and personal and like I have a real understanding of who he is as a young that is close and personal. And like, I have a real understanding of who he is as a young man, as a person. I understand his context, his family history. All of those things make that kind of mentor mentee relationship possible.

And I think, you know, in many ways, and from what he's at least said, valuable to him, you know? And then I was thinking about like life coaching, which feels like kind of all of the need of needing a mentor and wanting to be, you know, mentored without the context and then without the education and the training. It's kind of like the worst of all worlds,

I think, in so many ways. Because if I reach out to a life coach, they don't fucking know me the way I know this kid that I'm kind of working with, or have been, I don't say working with, but that I've been sort of helping to set a guide or shuttle along a little bit. Like, I know this guy, I know this, he's 23,

I know this guy, I know his history, I've known him for 10 years now. You call up a life coach, you meet on Instagram, or wherever, they know, I know his history. I've known him for 10 years now. You call up a life coach you meet on Instagram or wherever. They don't fucking know you. They don't have that like history, that context, that relationship. And then they also don't have the training, the expertise, the licensing of a therapist.

It seems like this middle space that feels real fucking dangerous. Because unlike content creator coach, which is really specific, I'm gonna help you build your audience for your YouTube channel. Okay, cool. I'm gonna coach you on your life.

It doesn't even mean anything. It means everything and nothing. It's like Trumpist, right? It means like everything and nothing. What it reminds me of is somebody who wants to do some of the work of a therapist, but not all of the work as a therapist. Like in a lot of ways, what you were describing is a person who you're helping

that you're not responsible for, right? So you can help him and there's nothing that, whether what happens to him doesn't, it's not going to affect you in a big way, right? So in a lot of ways, ways, while helping someone is amazing, helping them get it, helping them, it's a great thing to do, it's also very low stakes for you, right? Very much so.

And so the same thing occurs with these people is it's a low stakes thing that I'm offering you. I'm offering you, I'm doing all the fun stuff that a therapist might do, which is like, give you life advice, but not without any of the really hard stuff that I would have to do. That would be, you know, dealing and maybe uncovering and untying some knots of problems that are in your life,

where, you know, a therapist might be gifted and be able to do something like that. I'm just giving you sort of cliched, boring advice and making myself feel like I'm really wise because I gave you a bunch of advice. That's why it feels to me when they talk about, you know, one of the things we're going to get talking about is a bunch of people who get into this. The reason why I think this appeals as a perfection is that you get a chance to be somebody who gets to be a mentor,

but also in a low stakes capacity. Yeah, it's like all the puffery of being like, hey, I've got real, I've really got something to say over here. I'm really like, I'm a wise sage ass motherfucker. I'm a fucking Instagram guru. Like, I agree with you that when you've got a mentor mentee relationship, the stakes are low,

but the stakes are emotional, right? So like, if you have a good mentor mentee relationship, the stakes for me is that I have an emotional connection with somebody, so the reason it matters is it matters to me emotionally, like it matters to me as a person. If I'm divorced from that emotional connection, then this is platitudes on demand, right?

This feels to me like, you know, it's live, laugh, love the musical, right? Like I don't get the same advice from Chad GPT. Yeah, man, you get the same advice walking through Hobby Lobby and snapping pictures of the fucking little wooden signs, you know? Oh, eat, pray, love. Great idea. You pray love. What do I do?, eat, pray, love, great idea. Eat, pray, love, what did I do today? Did I eat, yeah, what did I pray? I do enjoy today.

You're absolutely right. Carpe diem, don't mind if I do. Yeah, like this feels like all that kind of platitudinal shit just expounded upon in more detail. And I'm talking about the Badwoods, because I imagine that there are people out there that maybe take the time to get to know you. Take the time to work with you.

Take the time to understand who you are. I'm not saying that this is like a 100% of bunk profession. I don't know. I actually don't know anything very deeply about it in particular. The stories that I read though, talk about all the problems in this industry and the problems are legion.

I wanna share a funny story. Haley and I were watching, for I don't even remember the reason we were watching. We were watching a show, it's terrible. It's called 90 Day Fiance, I think is what it's called. It's literally a terrible show. I think we saw, what happened is we saw- It's importing your husband, right? Or you're importing your- Well husband or wife or whatever. Yeah, it's called? It's literally a terrible show. I think we saw, what happened is we saw- It's importing your husband, right?

Or you're importing your- Well, husband or wife or whatever. Yeah, it's basically importing them from another country, right? And there's these insane relationships. Yeah, they import them from other countries. They're essentially just, you're a green card provider. Well, but they're trying to pretend it's not,

and it's like, it's this insane, there's these insane relationships, and we watched it because we saw this little clip, and we're like, holy shit, we gotta find where that clip is from. That was bonkers. We wanna watch it. So he's got sucked in for like a minute

watching this show, 90 Day Fiance. And I bring it up because there's this guy, there's a relationship with this guy is in Australia and he's online dating a woman in America and she flies over to Australia and they're gonna meet for the first time. And he's a life coach. And so she goes to his sessions and she sees over to Australia and they're gonna meet for the first time and he's a life coach and so she goes to his sessions and she sees him in person like giving this sort of dating advice and like

relationship advice to a room full of women and it is Cecil it is the most cringe-worthy you ever watch something where like it's so cringey You're like pulling the covers over your head and you're like hiding from the TV It's that bad. Like I put my hands over my face and you gotta tell me when this is done. It's that bad. And he's like an Instagram influencer, life coachy guy.

He doesn't know anything about fucking anything about fucking anything. Because this is an industry, it reminds me of real estate. One of the quotes in here reminded me of my own industry, which is real estate, which is, there's a lot of money to be made and a low barrier to entry. And when you have that combination,

where there's a lot of potential money on the table and a very low barrier to entry, you have a lot of bad actors. You have good actors too, right? I'm not saying that there are no good actors, but those kind of industries, they draw in bad actors. They draw in bad actors because they're incompetent. They draw in bad actors because they're incompetent. They draw in bad actors because they're grifters.

And then they draw in bad actors who are incompetent grifters. Yeah. Yeah. And then the good people too. So I'm not saying there are no good people, but we've covered stories on this show about people going to these kind of like retreats, these sweat lodge retreats, which feel very life coachy. And dying in the sweat lodges. Remember that a few years back?

Yeah, sure. That Nexium thing. Yeah, Nexium is a great example. Like these are like these people end up in sex trafficking rings and like all this like crazy bullshit. This this whole industry really feels like something that desperately needs regulation, desperately needs professional accreditation. I think, you know, when you talk about the difference between what a life coach is and a therapist, you know, we talk about, and they talk about it in these articles to a great extent, about how there's not just somebody who's trained, but there's also a regulatory

body that oversees what they do. So when somebody does something really horrible, there's somebody who can walk in and snatch their license away, discipline them, maybe bring this up to the authorities because they know what should have been done correctly. And so that happens in these industries where there's regulation,

but there's no regulation whatsoever when it comes to this life coaching in lots of places. There are some voluntary organizations that you can join onto their international brotherhood of coaching or something. You know what I mean? It means something to the people who are in it, but there's no teeth, right?

There's nothing there to sort of prevent you. You could still just do whatever it is that they needed you to do and then just be a giant asshole. There's nothing that they can do to stop you. And so the problem is, is that there's no regulation. The problem is that they're not, they're not trained. I was thinking about when you're talking about like a relationship coach and I think, you know, a relationship therapist can work with you and can figure out, you know, if your relationship is good, I would never in my life take relationship advice. I can't imagine anybody I would take relationship advice. To be perfectly frank, there's not many people, I don't think

anybody in the world, because even people who I think are pretty smart, they have relationships I wouldn't want. So it's like the relationship that you have is not anything like my relationship. It's such a unique thing. And then I was thinking about, well, same thing with life, right? Like same thing with just life. Like your experience time, you're a smart guy. I do take advice from you on occasion if it's something that I think we can. But when it comes to like life stuff, I wouldn't.

I don't think I would be like, well, I need advice on my career now. Right. Yeah. Because you live a different life and you have different values and do you have different things? Different goals. Different goals, different ideas. There's nothing there, right? But I think what, what, when it comes to life coaching and what this does for people is that it allows them an experience to have somebody who feels like they're in their corner, right? Yeah.

Because they might be coming... It really feels like me, to me, Tom, like a symptom of loneliness. And one of these articles really talks about how a person got into it because they're lonely. Yeah. Because they don't have an outlet. A person like you who can turn to you and talk to something about whether or not I'm going to take your advice doesn't matter. Right. Sometimes it's just talking.

I can at least talk to you about it. Right. Yeah. I think that that's really important that a lot of people are missing out on. And instead they're paying for it to somebody who's not regulated and who can, you know, basically just take their money. Yeah. And in a lot of cases, even worse, like there are many, many cases where these people take

their money and then form inappropriate sexual relationships or take financial advantage of them because they recognize that these are people who are vulnerable and in distress. You know, like one thing that occurs to me is that there's a reason we regulate therapists and it's because therapy is dangerous. We regulate things that are dangerous. We understand that without regular, we don't regulate anything that doesn't have a high potential for danger that I can think of.

We regulate things that if we don't regulate them, there's a high risk for things to go really wrong. Therapy and therapeutic relationships are relationships which necessarily involve a power dynamic and a structure that can be easily abused. We regulate these things, we license them, we form accrediting bodies for these relationship types because we understand just how dangerous it is

not to have that stuff, to have just any old fucking person doing it. Life coaching is just an informal way to say therapist. That really seems to be the case. And honestly, having engaged with therapists in the past, it's hard enough to find a good therapist as it is. I will say like a lot of the therapists, I've talked to a handful of therapists in my life

and most of them have been genuinely terrible and worthless. And like you get two appointments and you're like, this is not for me, you are not for me. And these are people that are accredited. These are people that are educated. These are people who are trained to do this work. These are people who in every instance were well-reviewed. Life coaching is always a step down from that

because it is not licensed, trained, educated, or accredited. Holy shit! And they have, these people are spending tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars for this. This feels also adjacent, and I wanted to talk to you about this too, to the role that clergy often plays in providing non-therapeutic therapy. It does feel like that. Right. And some, that's a connection I hadn't put together, but very, very similar, right? A guy who's a celibate guy is going to tell you, right? Oh, your sex life. Well, let me tell you. Let me tell you what you need to do is spit in your head.

Let me tell you, what you need to do is spit in your head. No, but I, what I really think too, you know, you're talking about how it's dangerous. There's a, it can be dangerous. And the reason why it's dangerous too is because of the people that you're dealing with are vulnerable, right? It's a vulnerable population. They're coming to you vulnerable. And I think the same thing's true when you talk about these life coaches and You talk about the people who want to join into that industry to become part of that industry

A lot of these people are sold something That they then invest a lot of money and because they were vulnerable when they took it on. And then there's sunk cost fallacy because now they're already $10,000 or $15,000 into it. And the way these things work, you know, this article goes into great detail, the New York Times one goes into great detail into telling you, you know, how much money these things cost.

They will get you to go to one training. And she interviewed some people who think that the training is literally terrible. The training that they went to is awful. Not worthwhile, not good. They, you know, they're not allowed to question the guru. They have to, you know, but even still, I paid five or six grand for this thing. So now there's a sunk cost in their mind to think, well, I got to get something out of it now. And the clients don't appear. So they talk to people in the industry and they say, oh, well, you need to take this other training or you

need to talk to these other people. And you know what? You're, you're a coach, but no one will listen to you if you're not being coached yourself. So you need to go get coached while you're trying to lay out a coach. and there's so many stories of these people who? They're in a vulnerable position. They need to they need to find work. They don't have work They're thinking well, maybe I can be entrepreneurial and start this new career They learn a bunch of nothing from a bunch of people that keep charging them over and over and then at certain points Give them as a as what do they call it? A downstream.

Yeah, a downline or whatever. A downline where they're now gonna maybe hook you up with somebody, but they get part of your money if you do it. So it's becoming a multi-level marketing thing. It's a lot of really skeezy, shady ways in which to train people. And you're doing it.

The thing that breaks my heart is like, I could see myself in this position. Sure. I could easily see myself in this position. In the last year, I lost my job. I was in a very desperate, weird place for a while afterwards, thinking about, because my whole life has been structured around this time that I go to work, this is what I do

I get this money every week I work on these particular things and they sort of you know, they they they occupy 40 hours of my week So I'm constantly thinking about them When that rug gets pulled off from underneath you Things you start thinking about other things. Well, and now I got to figure something out. I got to do this other stuff I got a I got to put some other things together. I could see how being a life coach could be so enticing, right? I get to choose my own schedule, something I never got a chance to do before. I get to work from the places I want. I get to meet people. I get to, you know,

distill wisdom down to them. And like you said earlier, puff myself up and feel good about myself because I helped someone out with their life today. I could see how this could easily be something I could easily fall into as a person. And I feel so bad for all these people who just pour all their money into this and their heart into this,

and then wind up with nothing except for a gigantic credit card bill. Yeah, well, and to your point, like, these people end up with like these huge, giant credit card bills. And one of the things that they're being sold is, well, you got to coach more coaches. You got to create more coaches. That's classic pyramid scheme shit. This is like selling fucking essential oils, but you're selling people on creating more coaches who create more coaches, who create more coaches and everybody kicks up the line. And that's, and that, but like when you poke at some of this stuff, one of the things that I wonder about is what is the sort of intellectual or traditional or scientific basis that their advice is drawn from.

And there's no answer to that question. If I'm a therapist, for example, here's a key difference. If I'm a therapist, a good therapist will say, and you can ask them, you know, hey, do you practice, let's say, cognitive behavioral therapy? Yes, I'm very conversant in cognitive behavioral therapy.

Great. Well, that's a specific intellectual and scientific tradition and set of tools that you may be interested in learning that has a lot of scientific backing. And so like if you're trying to get through something and you think that cognitive behavioral therapy might be a tool for you to use, you can search for a therapist that is educated

and knows those tools and those things are scientifically and medically vetted. If you're going to see a life coach, where does their advice originate from? What is the intellectual, scientific, or traditional basis that forms this sort of philosophical underpinning that their advice rests upon? And the answer is, let less shrug, man. Nobody knows. It's feng shui. Yeah.

Everybody's got their own. It's exactly right, man. They got their own decision of like how they're choosing it. No, you're absolutely right. I think like that's one of those things that you can look at and say, is this a science? Is it not? I'm sure there are, again,

maybe there are people out there who are scientifically based that look at how, you know, how to give advice and how to do all this. I don't know, right? I have no idea. But just like supplements, it's like, yeah, maybe some supplements contain a hundred percent what they say on the bottle, but there's no one checking to make sure. There's not a person out there making sure.

One of the, another piece of this too, is when you go to somebody to help change your life, you're giving that person a lot of power over you. There is a huge power dynamic shift and your relationship with them turns into a power relationship. And the people who are in some of these stories and the abuses that some of these people do are very cult-like and they mirror

what a cult would do to somebody because the amount of power that some of these people, I'm not saying everybody, but clearly some of the people who they talked about in these stories, they are very much giving a level of power to these people that is cult leader level of power over them. For sure.

Making them, like one person was a relationship coach told this person to move out of the house. Don't, you can't talk to your wife. You need to isolate yourself in this one little small room. I mean, all these little very cult-like behaviors that they're making them do, and then they abuse their power with them because they have a tremendous amount of power

over these people. Yeah, and if you're a grifter, you basically have people knocking on your door and saying, I'm ripe for the picking. Yeah. That's a crazy thing for us to allow to exist knocking on your door and saying, I'm ripe for the picking. Yeah. That's a, that's a crazy thing for us to allow to exist without any larger regulatory oversight. I, I was thinking though, as somebody who has kids, who has written a blog of advice,

a fairly substantive one for my kids who's worked with other people in a little bit of a mentorship role. I think that there's a really well-intentioned, if perhaps potentially misguided, but a pretty well-intentioned idea that when you've gone through something yourself and you've spent time introspecting and reflecting on it, you may decide, hey, I've gone through this thing

and I might be able to help other people get through it. And that can be a really good place that some of this coaching might sort of arise from. But the problem is, it also has the universalization problem, right? Where you believe, and because this is a common cognitive defect in people, where you believe

that because you've been through something, it is universally an experience now that you can use to help other people. And that the advice and the experiences that have helped you gain insight and get through something will be a sort of universal value to others. That is a really hubristic way to look at your own life. It's a trap that I know that I have fallen into.

It's a trap that I know that is very easy for a lot of other people to fall into. I think we have to guard against that in ourselves. To say like, yeah, just because you've gone through something and come out the other side, and you feel like you've introspected and reflected, and maybe you've learned that that learning may just be applicable to you.

And you really have to be able to be honest with yourself and say, is this learning that I've had genuinely universalizable in a way that is useful to others, or is this just an experience you had, which was meaningful and deep and personal for you? Both answers might be correct, right? But the problem with life coaching is it, I think oftentimes is a bunch of folks,

even the well-meaning folks, who are drawing from a tradition of personal self-reflection rather than from a body of literature and studies and science and proven methodologies. So even I think when it comes from really well-meaning good-hearted places, that doesn't make it credible. It just makes it potentially not abusive.

Not abusive, right? Yeah. Some of the things that they said in this article, they said that the one woman was convinced by a life coach to sign over her home. She eventually got it back, but she had to sign her home over to them. Another coach was stealing from someone with a traumatic brain injury. There was another who was abusing their clients. One other one who was sexually has, one of those inappropriate sexual relationships with a client.

Another person who was ordering contact cut off with family. And, you know, these are very dangerous things that people are doing to other people. And it's hard not to see a group of people who's preying on a very vulnerable things that people are doing to other people. And it's hard not to see a group of people who's preying on a very vulnerable group of people and not feel like, wow, is all of that garbage? Yeah, well, yeah.

And like the last thing, like isolation is a classic abuse behavior. You know, that is that, like these behaviors are like textbook abusive behaviors. One of the things one of the other articles, I think the ProPublica one is really details how a lot of folks who were therapists who get booted out of being therapists because their behavior as therapists was out of line with the accreditation and regulatory standards of that industry out of line with the accreditation and regulatory standards of that industry, they just pivot. They just pivot into life coaching.

Because they know that what you've done instead is you've just like licked your thumb and wiped the initials off after your name and hung your shingle out and did the same exact grift. Right? Like if your grift as a therapist was, I am credible and here's the initials after my name that make me credible, and I'm gonna wait for vulnerable people to come into my zone of influence, and then I'm going to hurt them for my own personal gain.

I can just erase the letters after my name, do the same thing under the term life coaching. Honestly, clergy can do that already too. And we've seen how many examples of clergy who are sought after as people who give advice using their position of power as leverage for personal sexual or financial gain. It's the same story.

You see it all the time in the clergy for sure. I was really intrigued too by the sunk cost fallacy of the people who were trying to become life coaches. Cause one of these articles is very specifically about people trying to become life coaches. And then the other ones are about people who have maybe been abused by life coaches. But this one article that's talking about the people

who are trying to become and how much money they have to spend in order to do it and all the scaminess that happens there. One of the ladies said something to, she had said, I just didn't want to be a quitter. I just didn't want to quit. And one of the most vulnerable things you can do is try to create something, right? I find that on the show, when somebody shits on something

I did or somebody says something bad about the cooking stuff I do, I take it really personally. I take it personally. I would never try to have misinformation on the show or something like that. I wouldn't try to do that, but sometimes people accuse me of it. Or when I'm cooking, somebody might say something

really shitty about what I did or how I presented it, or I'm trying to lie to people or something like that. And that always, it really does hit hard, right? It hits hard because you're creating something, you're vulnerable when you create something. And I think when you're creating a business, right, there's a very vulnerable part of you that let everybody know you were creating it. Right? You told all your friends, you told your family, I started my own business. I'm my own boss now. I'm doing this thing now.

And then you got to go back to them later after it's failed and be like, Oh no, yeah, it failed. And then you've got to think about that all the time. And you've got to constantly remind yourself all the time. And you've got to constantly, you know, remind yourself that you said you were going to do something and you didn't follow through because you weren't, it didn't, it wasn't in the cards for you, right? But it might be because it's not a great industry. It might be because it's an oversaturated industry.

It might be because you're not good at it. It might be, there's a million reasons why it didn't work, but it didn't work and you've got to own that. And owning that is hard. It is. You need a life coach for that. No, but genuinely it's hard. It is. It is.

It's really difficult. It's difficult. You know, like I think about, I think about just simple stuff like, like Eli's blog, right? Like it's a joke amongst all the people on Citation Needed that sort of needle him about how he used to have a blog. Right.

But he used to have a thing that he would put his thoughts and his feelings out there. Yeah, all right. And to needle him about not doing that anymore is kind of a dick thing to do. It's a huge dick move. It's a huge dick move. It is. Because it's creation and he's creating something, he's being vulnerable and you know when that doesn't pan out, it hurts. Yeah, because it's a very public kind of moment of, maybe failure is not the right word,

but it is a public moment to create and to present something to an audience. And we've had situations where we've been very much in the public eye and we've done something publicly, done a show or whatever, and it's not gone exactly the way that we hoped it would go. And that is not a good feeling. That's a bad feeling.

What I think we can all help each other with on that piece, so that like the folks in our lives that maybe fall for grifters, is giving grace when people make mistakes, to make mistakes and to not, I told you so even if you did, you know, and to just be like, yeah, I could also have made a mistake just to relate directly.

You know what? I can see myself having done that too. I've watched, I don't know, a handful, a small handful, but a handful of like shows about cults, right? And thought, God, there was a time in my life where I can see how, if the stars had aligned just right, that would have appealed to me. There was a period of time in my life where I wanted my life to be about something bigger than just waking up and going to school or going to work.

Yeah. I wanted my life to be about service to something, service to ideas that would matter to me, a sense of like, I wanted my life to be about something greater than just waking up and punching a clock and getting a paycheck and building a fulfilling life outside of that, which is what you eventually oftentimes come to as an adult, right? Like, I thought there would be something bigger. And so there was a time in my life where I think, man, if things had lined up just so I could have been vulnerable to the right message from the right person. Me too, buddy.

And when I look back at that and I'm like, yeah, well, like, here's somebody who was vulnerable to that message that I was not immune to, that so many other people are clearly, clearly not immune to. We should give space for people to meet them in the middle and say, yeah, man, I didn't fall for that one. I'm sorry. That hurts. Love you anyway.

Instead, I think people feel really embarrassed to be public about the times that they were wrong. And that makes them double down. That makes them buy in harder. Because if they don't win, if they don't keep feeding the next quarter into the slot machine, they have to concede that they've wasted

all those other quarters. Maybe the next one, maybe the next poll is where it shits out all the money. And then I get to, I told you so, all the people who told me so. We gotta build space for the people in our lives that we love so that if they make mistakes, they can come back to us without having to crawl. They can come

back to us with their dignity still intact. I think about all the times in my life when I didn't have a lot. And I think about how easily vulnerable I could be to any of these multi-level marketing things that are out there, whether this is or not, right? Whether this feels like a lot. It does, from these articles, genuinely feels like it is a multi-level, at least some of it is multi-level marketing. I think back in my life to the vulnerable times in my life

when I didn't have two pennies to rub together, and those times in my life, I look back, they're pretty legion. There's a lot of different times in my life where you start to make an upward climb and then it times in my life where you start to make an upward climb and then it all collapses. And then you start to make an upward climb and then it all collapses.

And that happened multiple times in my life. And I think about all those times that I could have been easily vulnerable to something that could induce me to think that this is how you're gonna do it. This is how you're gonna make it. This is how you're gonna make a climb that's never gonna go down.

And this feels to me like a dream job, right? It genuinely feels like a dream job. And like most things that are too good to be true, it's probably not real, right? And it feels like genuinely you get the accolades and not a lot of responsibility of giving somebody advice, right? All the time.

You get to look like somebody who knows a lot about the world. You get to look like somebody who feels like they're a worldly smart person. You get to interact and meet with all kinds of interesting people who are coming to you for help. That you get to make your own hours,

you get to work from home, you get to communicate with people when you wanna communicate with them. There's a lot of things about this that sound like it'd be amazing. You get to have what you want, which for a lot of people, would just have a positive impact on other people's lives.

Such a great point, right? There's so many people, like I would just like think about, like I have always wanted to be somebody that mattered to other people And you could do that. Yes, right this very sympathetic. I feel very sympathetic even as I read this I was like Life coaching sounds pretty good. Yeah, it hurts my it hurts my heart so bad that somebody Felt the same way I do about it Yeah, and then they go out and they gave somebody six or $7,000.

And then they didn't feel like there was a lot into it, but they felt at this point they're on the hook. And so now they take another class and then that person convinces them to become coached by someone else. So now they're paying to be coached on how to be a better coach. And they're falling deeper and deeper into this web

of more money, more money, less results. And then they finally have to just give up and there's nothing for them. They walk away with nothing without even their dignity. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, these three articles I thought were really interesting. This is an industry I never gave a moment's worth

of consideration or thought to. And like, it does feel like a space, an umbrella that we should all be very careful of in a world that's increasingly owned by influencers. Right? We live in an era right now where the influencer culture is more and more a part of how young people interact, where we all get our sort of information

and inspiration from. Life coaching feels like sort of like step two of that influencer grift. And influencing is always, I think, not always, but influencing is very often a style influencer grift. And influencing is always, I think, not always, but influencing is very often a style of grift. It really feels like that. Well, I mean, when you say that, and I start to put two and two together,

I realize that you could call that university that Andrew Tate had this. It's a life coach thing. That's exactly what that is, yeah. It's a life coach thing. I can tell you how to get girls. Macho high or whatever it is, right. Yes. Yeah, it's a life coach thing. That's exactly right. That is. Yeah, it's a life coach thing I can tell you how to get girls Macho high or whatever it is How to be a tough guy how to be a sigma or a ligma or whatever it is

But how to be somebody who's you know, a Greek letter of the alphabet right can teach you to be one of the Greek letters I don't know which one But to be somebody who is like me, I'm a kickboxer, I'm a tough guy, I don't like women, I'm accused credibly of sexual assault in Romania. That's all these things that you could. Good positive things, yeah. But you learn that from these people.

And I think of the same thing. I very much see Jordan Peterson as something like this. Almost like a life coach, right? He's giving these young people advice. Clean your room. He's telling these people what to do with their life. He's telling these people that you're living your life wrong, you need to change it for this.

It's a little more aggressive than I think what a life coach might be, but he's also doing it too. What also should tell you that it's giant load of bullshit is he's telling a giant room of people all very specific advice on how to change their life when they're not, he's not taking into account any of their individualness whatsoever. That's huge, like big broad strokes. This is how you change your life.

You know, that's garbage. You know, that's trash. Look, how is that not a sermon? Yeah. How is that not a sermon? It's a sermon. That's what that is. That's a sermon.

There is a long tradition, and I don't think it's valueless, but there's a long tradition of sort of sages, wise men, gurus, et cetera, that idea. And I don't think that all of them are valueless. I think there is good advice in the world. I think there is wisdom in the world that other people have found and are imparting.

I also think that like most of that is piecemeal. So in other words, like, I don't think that there's any one person where like, that's the guy that's got it all figured out. I'm gonna follow that guy, lock, stock and barrel. I think if you need advice on how to be better, live better, we know that there are tools that can be used to live a better life.

Therapy has those answers because they've done the research. They've literally done the research. They did the work. If you're looking for sages and wise men and gurus and advice, I do think that there is wisdom to be found, but you've got to go hunt and peck for it, right? Because there's going to be a little from this one

and a little from that one, you know, and a little from that one. We find ourselves in a hard spot when we latch ourselves onto somebody and say, that's the guy who knows the answer to all of life's questions. That's the guy who's my coach. For what?

For life. That's a lot, man. It's one thing to be like, who's that guy? Oh, that's my personal trainer. They help me do burpees better. Why? Because they're an expert in burpees. What's that guy an expert in?

All of life. No, you're not. No, like even if you go to a therapist, you go to a specific therapist, right? Like you would go, you would not necessarily see the same therapist for like an eating disorder that you would see for an anxiety disorder. They specialize.

So somebody's like hanging out their shingle, goodatallofit.com. like, I don't know, man. You're probably not. Like, cause if you were, I don't even think you'd be working. You know? Like why are you in my town? I like what you said there too, where, you know,

there's a feeling that I've, I've, I've read plenty of self-help books in my life. Sure. Or productivity improving type books. And there's a lot of stuff in there that doesn't apply to me, right? It's not, I don't read this book and be like, this is the best book in the world,

and this book 100 plus, I go, and it doesn't apply to me, and it doesn't apply to me. You know what, I kind of like that. And I pick and choose. And I take that and I put it in my basket. And then I do that with somebody else. I don't just look at somebody and say, this person has all the answers.

I'll be like, maybe that person has a piece of an answer and I'll find it and use it. And all because it's low stakes in my life. It's low stakes in my life to dig through that book and find something and maybe use something to maybe improve myself a little bit. It's not as high stakes as what these people are getting into.

Yeah, look, I know I mentioned before, but like, I've been writing for years. I've been writing a blog of advice for my boys, and eventually I'll turn that blog into a book for the boys. And my goal is for them to page through it and hopefully find something here or there. Sure. That resonates with them. That's it. Like, I don't have any illusions that they're gonna page through it and be like,

hey, there's 45 essays in here and each one of them changed my life. Each one of them is exactly how I think I should look or think or feel. But I'm gonna be like, hey, here's some things that worked for your dad. Maybe some of this might be relevant. I love you.

Here's what I've learned in my life. But I'm under no illusions that anybody picking up that book is gonna be like, well, that's all brand new. I never thought of that before. I know this, right? Like, cause I'm not a wise man. I'm not a saint, but like, I don't,

I am not immune to the call to advise. Nor am I immune to the call to seek advice. Like I think that's like a natural human proclivity. And I think there's a lot of good in that. But like, I also, I'm sure nobody's got that shit figured out. Yeah, man. Like there's nobody where I'm like, they just nailed it all. Wow, look at that.

Every answer, all of life. All right, let's get a wrap it up for this show. We're going to catch you guys on Monday. Like we said, today is the day that I would have gone live for Trump sentencing, but that has been moved off to September. So we'll let you know as that gets closer. There's not going to be a live stream this month. We were planning on doing a live stream, but Tom's taken a week off of podcasting. So we're recording a little early and we're going to shift everything. And the week that we would have done the live

stream, Tom's going to be off. So we're just going to skip it this month, but we will hopefully fingers crossed. We'll do it next month. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave it like we always do with the skeptic screen. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info Doctainment Leo Pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage death and towers tarot cards

Psychic healing crystal balls bigfoot yeti aliens churches mosques and synagogues temples dragons giant worms Atlantis dolphins truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, You'll love it. And then the red snapper with violets and pine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands.

Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or

validity of any information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you. you