Marketing is predatory. Especially the self-help kind.

I listened to a podcast yesterday, and the ads struck a chord. Why would you tell me to enroll in a course that could "change my life"? Why would you suggest that I can "be the person I've always wanted to be"? Why would you tell me to "align to the right frequency" to have "the life I always dreamed of"?

These promises are bold, immeasurable, malleable. Let's take a look at one that gets thrown around a lot—"change your life."

My first question: what the heck does it mean to change your life?? I can "change my life" by eating a potato every morning instead of coffee. Boom, life changed. Obviously, the implicit notion behind the phrase in the marketing context is that your life will change for the better in some significant way.

When I think of defining what it means to change my life, it means changing it from the fundamental building blocks. Starting from our moments, to our mornings, afternoons, evenings, to our habits that carry us each day, to broader goals that steer our behaviors and determine what our habits are, these are the building blocks of our life (see this post, reference to quote on moments composing our lives). At the most fundamental level, our thoughts and emotions are the starting point of all our behaviors. Change the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, change the behaviors that arise.

I suppose then, when someone markets their course stating that it will change your life, it's possible. Maybe the bar for "changing one's life" is too low, and the narrative too charged to resist. Of course, I want to change my life! I'm dissatisfied, gosh darn it, and I want that to change—so let's change this damn life!

Clickbait headline aside, I'll admit I want to change my perspective on marketing. I have a reflexive skepticism of marketing and media messages, all of which are aimed at directing someone into a sales funnel that benefits the owner or author of the marketing. When there is an incentive for profit, I approach the messaging or product with caution. One cannot trust that a message marketed to them is altruistically for their own good; it is for the good of the marketer, which may also be good for the audience.

Master marketers like Seth Godin have healthier perspectives on marketing. Marketing in its purest form is more gospel than snake oil—it is spreading the good news of the value of someone's offering to the world. If you can solve someone's problem, broadcast it far and wide—and beyond even a profit incentive, healthy humans feel good when they can offer something to help others.

There is also a notable downside to a pessimistic, skeptical attitude towards marketing. It keeps you poor. Clickbaity, yes, but hear me out—if you resent marketers, you can never become one. How then can you confidently, without shame, share your gifts with the world? Marketing is an excellent craft for the distribution and dissemination of ideas, the attracting of people to products, storytelling the context of a capitalist market. When we hate someone, our psyche will go to great lengths to protect us from becoming that which we hate.

So, I'd like to change my story that marketing is fundamentally predatory or self-interested. It doesn't have to be.