What the Personal Development Industry Gets Right

And what it gets so wrong....

The unglamorous part of travelling is flying overnight from 1am to 6am. 🫩

I’m now in San Diego 🥳, having flown in from San José in the early hours of this morning. So if this post has the odd typo, I apologise in advance.

We spent our last few days in Costa Rica in a rather washed out Monteverde and the lovely town of La Fortuna. (I highly recommend La Fortuna for the volcano we didn’t see as it was covered in clouds - and the thermal baths which we spent the entire afternoon/evening on Thursday floating about in like a pair of hippos!)

There’s a volcano under there!

Baldi Hot Springs, La Fortuna

But going back to Monteverde. I was attracted to it because of the famous cloud forest, which in my head, evoked visions of Avatar-style floating trees, green lush forests filled with sloths, monkeys and the most incredible wildlife, and something that vaguely resembled Pandora shimmering in the distance.

What we actually got was high winds, sheet rain, and hanging bridges that were less ethereal romantic vision and more wet, soggy and cold.

The one highlight was a rather overconfident monkey who began to chase my husband along the bridge which brightened up an otherwise very grey day no end. 😂

Anyway, on returning from the cloud forest with no let up on the rain, I parked myself in a little cafe for the afternoon to get on with some work. And in true doomscroll fashion, I got completely sidetracked by a video Alex Hormozi had apparently deleted from his channel.

(Talk about clickbait, right? A big creator removes a video from his channel, and what do we instantly do? “Oh, let’s go and watch the video.” Seriously, sometimes I’m so ridiculously predictable it hurts.)

The video though was actually a very interesting watch. It was an interview between Alex Hormozi and Tony Robbins. If you don’t know them (and I’m sure you do), Robbins is the don of the personal development world, and Hormozi is a younger business titan worth somewhere north of 100 million, possibly several times that.

If I were to summarise the whole thing, it was literally 90 minutes of one very successful man telling another very successful man that he wasn’t living fully enough.

But their conversation has been playing on my mind, because this is where the personal development movement has got it so right, but also so wrong.

What started as a potential interview, quickly became a coaching session as Alex revealed that even after massive financial success he wasn’t fulfilled.

And Robbins’s central message to him was that he needed a moonshot. Something enormous. A goal so big it would be terrifying and ridiculously exciting at the same time.

He talked about the things that light him up, like feeding a billion people, freeing thousands of children from trafficking, and planting a hundred million trees. Genuinely staggering, admirable things.

But everything they discussed was so…. BIG!

I asked ChatGPT to give me a list or personal development books with the word ‘Big’ in the title. The list was too long for me to mention them all but they included:

• The Magic of Thinking Big

• Think Big

• Dream Big

• Big Goals

• Big Life

For some people this is absolutely the right fuel. The Robbinses and Hormozis of the world are wired for the big moonshot, and the world is better for it.

But it’s been shoved down our throats so much over the years that it makes those of us who maybe don’t want something quite so BIG feel like we’re failing.

That if we don’t have that one moonshot we’re chasing, that one big life changing or world changing goal, somehow we’re lesser.

But that’s not what the true stats tell us is it.

The reason most of us know and recognise household names like Tony Robbins or Alex Hormozi is because they are outliers. They are not the norm.

And yet they are who people look to for the examples of ‘the right way to live’. (If there is such a thing).

I would argue that, in actual fact, most of the rest of us want something smaller. Just as worthwhile, but not a terrifyingly big moonshot.

Maybe a business that funds a good life. Work that means something to the handful of people it reaches. A reason to get up in the morning that we enjoy. The freedom to potter, travel, create, just be, and not feel guilty that we’re not conquering anything or changing the world.

Let me clarify my position, because I’m a true believer in ambition. I wholeheartedly advocate for moving out of your comfort zone and stretching yourself beyond what you think you’re capable of.

I also believe in Tony Robbins theory that true happiness comes from growth & contribution. If we’re growing as people, learning, experiencing and expanding our minds while trying to impact others positively, we’ll be much happier than if we’re stagnant and self obsessed.

Makes sense right? Didn’t really need a best selling book to explain that one.

( I would however, love to have the menopause conversation with him. Especially when he says ‘change your language, change your state’. I’d love to see him say that to his wife when her oestrogen is crashing and she’s chopping the veggies with a sharp knife… 😉)

But, (moving on), where the industry has gone so wrong is assuming the same level of challenge is appropriate for everyone.

It’s not.

For some people, a billion-meal moonshot, is genuinely what’s in their heart. For others, it’s a daily writing practice and a small shelf of books they hope someone reads in twenty years. 😁

But I think a lot of people in their 50s and beyond carry a low hum of guilt about this. A sense that they should be doing something bigger, and that winding down, even slightly, is a kind of failure.

That if they’re not striving relentlessly toward some grand legacy, they’ve somehow given up.

I offer the opposite.

You don’t need a moonshot. You need a reason to get up that makes you feel alive. That might be a business, a book, a garden, a cause, a craft, a grandchild, a daily walk, travel, a project nobody else cares about but you. The scale is nobody’s business but yours.

The goal isn’t to be the biggest. The goal is to be alive in your own life, doing the thing that’s in your heart, at whatever size that thing happens to be.

So by all means, if a moonshot lights you up, go and chase it. The world needs the people who do.

But if it doesn’t. If what you want is something quieter and smaller and entirely your own, that’s not a lesser life. It’s your life.

And how you live it is entirely up to you!

I'd love your thoughts on this. Moonshot or no moonshot? Let me know what you think!

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