I can understand your skepticism with the whole success guru movement. I have been a big follower of the law of attraction for years now, and found a lot of help from it in my own life. It inspired me and kept me going when my reality was quite hard, and I just really needed to believe the idea that positive thinking can lead to positive events and dream fulfillment.

But it has also been quite a tough journey with a lot of ups and downs thus far, and is not for the faint of heart. If you move through the Maslow hierarchy to ascend toward enlightenment, it's quite a complex and obstacle-filled trip.

I have personally been able to move through a lot of issues with anxiety and depression, and retrained my thinking from being primarily negative using a lot of techniques like practicing gratitude, mindfulness, meditation, affirmations, etc. But I've done all of these in conjunction with other forms of healing.

I would never agree with avoiding negative conversations, or even avoiding toxic people. Each experience has the potential to teach us a lesson that we sorely need to learn. In the case of the toxic person, it can be learning to stand up for yourself, tell them off, and then, yes, cut them out if possible. Can covid kill you? Yes, it absolutely can. I honestly give anyone the side-eye that is vehemently anti -vaccine for reasons beyond a medical inability to take it. But, to each their own. Just please don't come around me or my family members if you don't believe in wearing a mask. Climate change? Yes, it definitely is real and rapidly getting worse day by day.

Do success gurus tell people what they want to hear in order to sell products? I am sure most of them do, particularly once they become these massive corporations that Tony Robbins and others have created.

I take each statement as it comes, and use my own intellect to decipher whether it's something I want to try. I think many of us do that, as there is so much information out there on every subject under the sun.

Some of what is said about the LOA can be discarded. I, like so many writers on here have mentioned, ignore any of the 'hustle hustle hustle' stuff, particularly during harder times when survival is a struggle. It's smart to avoid the babble when you have more important things to deal with, and a lower bandwidth for trying new things.

This is such a huge topic. Thank you for writing about it.

I look forward to reading the comments here. It's great that we can have open and honest discussions about these topics.