30/05/2026
I’ve started to wonder how much online empowerment is just dependency in disguise.
I started noticing the same people buying the same things, just repackaged in slightly different language, then following the same coaches into the next group, the next offer, the next level.
And it just stopped making sense to me.
I couldn’t stomach it.
People spending thousands trying to learn how to make back the same amount of money they had already spent trying to learn the thing in the first place.
A never-ending cycle of learning, buying, preparing and searching.
I have worked in these spaces.
I have taught in these spaces.
And there are moments where it does not feel ethical to keep taking money from someone who has not moved forward from the previous advice, support, course or conversation.
Not because they are doing anything wrong.
But because at some point, more support is not always the most supportive thing.
I do not think most coaches set out to create dependency.
I think a lot of it happens unintentionally.
A bit like a mother who loves her child so much that she forgets that part of love is letting them go and make their own way.
I have seen people become so disconnected from their own decision-making that they struggle to move forward without constant reassurance, even when they already have support.
At some point, personal growth can quietly become the inability to trust your own judgement without reassurance.
And social media has only made this worse.
People feeling under pressure to figure themselves out faster. To heal faster. To become the version of themselves they think everyone else already is.
There is this quiet message online, like a constant hum, that who you are right now is not quite enough.
So people keep searching.
And while they think another strategy, blueprint, code or course is the answer.
They are actually looking for confidence.
Support.
Guidance.
Something that makes them feel less alone with the uncertainty.
Every day, people are handing their power away to those whose identity feels more certain than their own.
And while learning is good, support matters and guidance can change things.
The end goal should always be action.
Not more preparation.
Not more circling.
Not another package bought in place of doing the thing.
Self-development was never meant to become another place to lose yourself, and yet that is what I think is happening in front of our eyes for so many people.
No deep lesson is ever fully learnt from somebody else’s formula.
At some point, people have to stop endlessly preparing for their lives and actually live them.
Because rarely is another course, another coach or another breakthrough dressed up as a mother’s love the answer.
Action is.
Experience is.
Failure is.
Reflection is.
The most empowering thing a coach, mentor or guide can eventually say is:
That’s it now.
Go and try.
Go and fail.
Go and learn.
Then come back with reflections from your own life, not just notes from somebody else’s and certainly not mine.
🙏
