Success authors can lead you to fail

Gutenberg has certainly performed a great service to mankind by inventing the printing press, since it made knowledge easily accessible to a much wider audience.

The Internet is an extension of that idea of making knowledge MORE accessible.

Here's the problem. In today's world where so many people are searching for answers, especially answers that will help them to succeed in life (no matter how they personally define "success" -- health, wealth, relationships, etc.), people turn to success "gurus."

Often, those gurus offer success "formulas" and people, suitably impressed by the fact that those books have been on the best-seller list, begin to study those formulas and try to apply them in their own lives.

That's when everything falls apart!

Not only the formulas do not work, but when people finally realize that they don't work, they become even MORE discouraged than before they read the book or went to the seminar!

In all fairness, a few success gurus do clearly point out (that is, warn people) that their formulas only worked for them, and that it is up to readers to pick up ideas that will work for them. T. Harv Eker is one such author and speaker.

In the end, all self-help books should be called Self-help books. To the extent that they inspire you to find the higher Self within you who will guide you, then those books have performed a valuable service. However, if such success books distract you from looking within yourself (where you find your true power) and turn your attention to external techniques or tools, then those books rob you of your power. (The Internet, in particular, is a powerful tool, and many young people mistakenly believe it will solve their financial problems when it is not the case at all).

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it best when he wrote: "Happiness is difficult to find within, impossible to find elsewhere."