The Roman Empire took several centuries to fall, and I don't think stevepavlina.com is going out of business any day now. But all things have a natural life span and I have a feeling that the best is passed rather than to come. The basic model Steve has used is to give an interesting an unusual spin to some fairly obvious ideas all of which can be found elsewhere if you look for them. I am not knocking this, far from it. I find it an entertaining place to spend time and often quite refreshing and thought provoking. But it does have an Achilles Heal.
Steve has an overall framework he calls subjective reality. This can be summarised as he thinks the Universe is constructed in his own head. Or something like that anyway. I don't think he actually believes this in any meaningful sense. What it does do is allow him to tackle some things in ways that suit his purpose and avoid others. I imagine it was something he found convenient early on in his marriage. His wife makes a living as a fortune teller and subjective reality must have been a handy rationalisation for what might otherwise look a lot like scamming the gullible. Steve would probably call it a 'lens'.
Subjective reality has also allowed Steve to dress up a lot of basic stuff you can find in any number of books on the self help shelf in his own jargon making it both sound more profound and to giving the illusion of originality. Once again, I am not criticising. It is easy enough to describe what he has done but actually doing it takes a lot of thought and the results can be both interesting and sometimes useful.
But there are drawbacks. For a start it does create a barrier to entry. Steve styles his approach as personal development for smart people. It is true you do need a certain level of commitment and understanding to get it when compared to other self help gurus. But while you do need to be smarter than average to get the Pavlina programme, it is far from the case that being smart is going to predispose you to it. In fact the high woo content is going to put off a lot of smart people.
Subjective reality makes it a niche offering rather than a mass market one. Compare it with say Zen Habits. Anyone can drop into Zen Habits from anywhere and understand any post. On the internet niche is good. With the whole planet reachable a niche can be very big.
But there is another problem. Subjective reality is nonsense. I won't trouble with an argument. If you take it seriously I suggest you stop reading this and have a serious look at your own brain instead. The problem this creates for Steve as a businessman is that it reduces the long term appeal of his offering. As they explore his work the credibility it holds steadily diminishes. I think it is very noticeable that the forums are attracting fewer comments than they used to. Steve himself seems to have totally given up on them.
His blog posts recently have been shorter and to long standing readers rather familiar in style and content. I suppose even Steve must run out of ideas eventually. He's had a good run and I hope his work stays up because there are some gems in there. I imagine he has done pretty well out of it financially as well and I think that is well deserved. But I think he would have done even better if he hadn't based what he was doing on a daft foundation. Perhaps that is the biggest personal development lesson of them all. Before you start a project, remember you will end up in a dead end if you aren't based in reality. By which I mean actual reality, not a version that happens to suit you.
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