Hustling is out, healing is in: what I learned following 400 online gurus

The Guardian

6 days ago

Some years ago, I started writing a novel. The novel satirises the world of executive coaching and, as part of my research, I began to follow some coaches and motivational speakers online.
It started with corporate leadership coaches preaching banal management advice. But it slid quickly into chaos as I surrendered – with dreadful compulsion – to the algorithm.
Within months I was following every kind of online coach in the Anglosphere, from divorce coaches, parenting coaches and habit-stacking coaches through to neurolinguistic programmers, flow-state TEDx gurus, money-manifestation mentors and Ponzi-style coach-coaches. I was inside a teeming ecosystem; a lawless jungle of competing advisers, all of them hawking prerecorded masterclasses.
Now I'm sharing my key learnings from this confusing period – but with one caveat: I am much stupider now than I was when I started this journey.
Hear me out! I implemented the one-touch rule for a tidy house recommended by a habit coach. It really helped with my household overwhelm and despair, until I stopped doing it. A wellness coach told me to give myself a gold star on a physical calendar for every day I exercised – and it worked. I was motivated. I resisted the urge to drop $399 on a pdf handbook written by the same coach; I may be desperate, but I'm not rich.
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This is especially true in the world of dodgy business coaches. Who signs up for a pricey passive-income content portal run by a seasoned grifter? Aspiring grifters. Although the offer is actually pretty enticing. Who wouldn't want to learn how to build an evergreen sales loop? Now if I were rich …
Punters have grown cynical about charlatan coaches with their luxury lifestyles and super-polished Instagram feeds. In response, many coaches have pivoted hard into realness, setting up cameras to film themselves blubbering in their most vulnerable moments. 'Truth is: even after building the life I dreamed of, I STILL get impostor syndrome.' Every time I think we have reached peak internet mucus, someone ups the ante.
Coaches want to be raw and real. They'll teach you to 'get shit done'' and 'unfuck the world'. My favourite example was a Denver-based wellness expert who stormed a TEDx stage shrieking, 'Time to get holistic as fuck!'
Even before the pandemic, the #riseandgrind lifestyle promoted by leading Silicon Valley coaches – 5am wake-up followed by treadmill, breath work, supplements and back-to-back strategy meetings – was starting to look tired. Today self-care is ascendant. Self-discipline is for chumps. Most coaches now teach us to navigate boundaries and comfort zones, avoid burnout, process our past, regulate our nervous systems and be kind to ourselves. Tedcore reigns supreme, with its soothing blend of therapy-speak and pop-philosophy, its confusing mishmash of science and pseudoscience, its incessant pathologies and its endless cult of the self.
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This is especially big among the feminine embodiment types but also, interestingly, among the money-manifesters. And – look – I wish them well in their erotic endeavours, I really do. It's the logical conclusion of the cult of the self, after all. But it is hilarious to imagine the pre-production work that goes into their spiciest aspirational and erotic content. Imagine arranging candles, flower petals and some rented Louis Vuitton handbags around your bedroom, then pressing record to film yourself either actually wanking or delivering a breathy lecture about why it's such an enriching pastime.
I'm suss on the self-care gurus who always lure me into luxurious self-pity. Is my procrastination a sign of laziness? Of course not. Coach Katy says it's just my chronic perfectionism. Or maybe a trauma response. Take me back to the biohacker guys with their growth mindsets and solemn data-driven daily protocols.
Now I've finished researching, I don't need all these advisers any more. I have slowly begun to purge them from my feed, burrowing myself out of the unsavoury self-improvement hovel I've built for myself.
I am emerging like a blinking mole into the daylight, an over-counselled, disoriented mole – unsure if she needs to heal or habit-stack. A post-truth mole who sniffs the air and finds her instincts totally scrambled. My nose – once keen and reliable – can no longer distinguish between TEDx horseshit and actual horseshit, let alone pseudoscience and actual science, queasy therapy-speak and solid advice. God help me.
Sophie Quick is the author of The Confidence Woman (Allen & Unwin, $32.99)