Someone in a LinkedIn group I’m a member of posted: “If I hadn’t followed all the crap that Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Seth Godin speak, I’d be living much better off.”
For one, you’d have spent less money purchasing all their stuff.
For another, we can be lured into buying into someone else’s philosophy, catch-phrases, buzz words, or way of life – when we are “not them”.
It’s more productive to use their successes as case studies that are applicable primarily to them, but can offer useful tools that we can choose to apply strategically to a specific problem in our lives.
These figures are not deities no matter how their celebrity statuses are elevated and at what internet speed.
They are useful teachers whose usefulness ceases once that role is adulterated into guru/deity status.
We’d spend so much time worshiping them and replicating and disseminating what they say – and we lose time living, shaping, and creating our own lives.
When taken to the extreme, it becomes a form of enslavement through abdicating your free will and giving up your personal freedom.
Related post: http://janechin.com/blind-devotion-to-role-models
