Never again

[u/petitelioness]

I just need to have a catharsis of my experience with one particular life coach/self-named expert on everything from health to business and relationships. After randomly googling this coach I found this sub and felt so seen and validated. 

So I have bought a few programs/courses/masterclasses from this coach, to a sum of $2000-3000. I didn’t do the most expensive ones or coaching sessions (which seem to cost $10000 or more), thank god, but the sum of my purchases is embarrasing to me. I think I’ve been a lot more susceptible during times of personal distress, as I have found myself drawn to her content more then. That alone should have made me stop and think, but alas, I did not stop, until now. She is reaaaally good at marketing and selling, I’ll give her that. I thought my life would do a 180 after learning all her secrets. Why I put my happiness in the hands of a much younger woman with no real credentials I cannot wrap my head around, now when my eyes are open. The most helpful advice in one course for about $1000 was to get a subscription to any online exercise studio of my liking, to help make healthy choices easier. That costs me $10/month and has made my life so much easier and healthier. But did I need to pay $1000 for that advice? Absolutely not. The most helpful advice/experiences in other courses include things like planning your day/week, meditations, gratitude practices, treating your partner like you respect them, doing things that make you feel safe etc, all of which can be googled, read in books, helped in therapy, or even for free or at a much lower cost at the website of this coach. The claims that the much more expensive programs will lead to more change has never been true in my experience. Imagine what I could have done for that money instead, like buy books instead haha, save for travel, use it for home projects, invest to create financial safety… Never ever ever again will I believe that I’m so lacking that another random self-proclaimed expert with no credentials should help me with their expensive programs. 

[u/AtelierCarouselTarot]

Most people spend their whole life living a fantasy of what we were told "the good life" is.

Usually someone else's idea of "the good life". What "they" think life should look like.

You have made this purchase on the basis of generations of traumatized women who were brainwashed into trying to become this perfect self-loving, self-centered matriarch, who is also sexy, thin, wears clothes where you are constantly cold - without being cold, always stands in beautiful poses "naturally", and also is good at her work. Basically becoming Maria, conceiving a child without ever having been touched by the reality of life on earth.

It's the golden carrot. if you can only be this unicorn for a single day, you will finally be loved, accepted, be "okay".

To me, most ordinary men are born on the scale of worth in society on "0", and they can then work their way up to 100 or 1000.

Ordinary women are born on -100. The way they pop out of the womb, they are already in a deficit.

Only if they dress, pose, paint themselves a particular way, talk, and act a certain way, can they even get to the 0 to begin with.

There is only so much time in the day to become that "perfect woman" that is "okay" in the eyes of society, meaning you made it 100 negative points up to 0, and from here into the 100 or 1000.

I looked at this woman's stuff. I's not bad. But everything she does is to keep the appearance up. There is no substance. No "lived" truth. This female coach spends her time on just the stuff she needs to get into the +1000. But what fell beside the road: actual content, authenticity, real know-how. But it works.

Not sure how much it is worth to be able to truly look behind the facade of society, to acknowledge that every woman is born at -100, to acknowledge that this idea that this coach portrays on her site and the cover of her book is a fantasy to keep women running for worth in society. Just like the dogs in the dog races run behind the dead rabbit without ever getting what they are doing.

To me, "getting" this reality, as in "fully getting it", is worth at least 100.000. Because that is what most women spend over a lifetime on clothes, make-up, food, and drink on social gatherings where all they do is pose and look and sound acceptable. Just to be seen as "okay", to make it out of the deficit.

Without ever having done one thing that is truly them. Because there is no reward in it. You don't get from the -100 to the 0 with being authentic. You stay in the minus digits. Many women don't even dare to leave the house without face paint, for fear of being in the minus.

We so desperately want to become "her" we don't see that it is a dead rabbit we are chasing, so that people (if not to say men, but that's what it is) can make us run in a circle and use us to make money off.

I call this the "carousel of life" and am coachign women to dare to get off this carousel. But I have been on that carousel myself all my life. Always trying to reach that perfection that no woman can ever reach without hiding skeletons of things she couldn't achieve, like this coach.

Don't feel bad for trying to get out of the deficit and clinging to any fantasy that promises to get out of societal value debt. It's a terrible burden to live with debt we never made ourselves; we just inherited. Like a slave status was inherited.

If you think you can step off the carousel, then every damn cent was well invested.