[Katrina]

Originally Posted by bix

Forked from this thread.

I am one of those concerned with the apparent decrease in the quality of articles on this site. Over the last two years I have found that the articles are discussing increasingly abstract things and are less and less applicable to real life.

I think this is largely because Steve has started treating his self-improvement skills as a tradeable value and has started relying on them to generate money.

I do not have any problems with people making money any way they like, but there are several areas which can not be monetized without adverse effects. I believe offering advice on self-improvement is one such area.

Imagine a casual tennis player. When he goes pro, he starts playing better.

Now imagine a casual self-improvement advisor. When he goes pro, he does not start providing better advice, he starts providing a different advice and he starts providing more of it. Best self-improvement ideas come not from "experts" on self-improvement who do this full time but rather from brick workers or software developers or working moms sharing their thoughts and recipes on how to go by in everyday life.

There are numerous reasons why the advice offered by self-improvement "experts" generally sucks. For one thing, such "experts" do not spend enough time in real life and thus do not know what the real problems are. Thus, they all try to "bring the discussion to a higher level" where they can try and talk abstract things. Every now and then, they may also give some practical advice in a real-life area that they recently had to touch, eg, how to speak to people, or how to plan a travel. You can tell that the advice given in this area is immensely more useful than the abstract stuff they throw at you. Alas, the number of real-life areas that they can give advice on is usually not very high and besides that, how many times do you have to hear that if you have to talk to a group of people then you'd better sleep the night before and feel calm and perhaps do a self-rehearsal.

Second, self-improvement "experts" are preoccupied with the requirement to make a living. You know, one day they will be having "an unconscious intention to manifest" some money. You can be sure that they will "recognize" that intention and if they will have any "fears" related to the "outcome" of that intention, these fears will ultimately be overcame. That's where you start seeing tricks aimed to bring more people to the website, recommendations for products, and even ponzi schemes (please tell me how much self-improvement advice you got out of this post on Ing Direct). You also start seeing articles which are either controversial or are written with a tongue in cheek. The purpose of these articles is to bring traffic (oh, why, of course, to "initiate the discussion" and get some clicks on ads). The amount of practical advice offered by the site decreases even more.

There are other reasons, too.

The moment someone starts treating self-improvement as a business, the value in his advice evaporates. I am deeply saddened that Steve has decided to go this route.

I think you're making the mistake of equating Steve's choice of topics with the desire to make money, which you really have no proof of. And if I might go a bit further, you're equating what doesn't interest you and what you don't consider to be "self-improvement" with bad or non-applicable advice.

But as someone who is *very* interested in what he's been talking about recently, I can honestly say that I'm enjoying the blog more now than before. Because more than just "do this" it's been "think about this". I'm learning more about myself, my motivations, my fears and that is infinitely more valuable to me than a lot of other things he could be posting about. If I know myself better, I can tackle more problems and I find getting to the core of why I live my life the way I do (my fears, my desires, my purpose) more valuable than more articles on getting up early or goal setting. If I can dig down to the root of myself, I don't need all the other articles about how to organise my life, make money, etc because I can start solving my own problems. These articles force me to think instead of just following instructions. But that's my personal opinion and how I interact with the content he's posted. Not everyone is going to use the site in the same way.

Also, remember that Steve posts about what he's interested in, what he feels works for him, etc. He's writing for his own growth and others who might take some value from what he's learned. Take some of it, leave the rest. Not every article he writes is going to be of interest to you and I think it's a bit silly to say you're "saddened" to see that he's gone this route. He's a person with opinions and beliefs and not everything he's going to be interested in is going to resonate with you. If you feel there's a lack of the topics you're interested in "personal development", then you are more than welcome to pursue those topics yourself and post them.