WHY You Need To Be Your Own Guru

If you’re on a growth path and like to follow motivational content, whether it be podcasts or speakers, spiritual leaders or influencers, you probably find yourself getting excited and pumped up to be as driven or connected as the experiences you hear in the content you love following. Depending on your mood at times you may even compare yourself and question if you will ever be able to attain their level of success (aka imposter syndrome). You might have one person you consistently go-to, or maybe one podcast, page or channel, that fulfills all your needs with different guests.

IMHO there is one problem within the self-development and spiritual-development world:

the subconscious concept or understanding of experts and influencers as gurus. Some people may intentionally position themselves to be gurus, but most of the time when we are looking to make ourselves better and we end up looking at others for guidance, we perceive them as gurus.

I mean it makes sense, right?!? You find someone who has been able to do exactly what you are struggling to do. They are so relatable and they make it seem possible plus they have a following and there is power in numbers of followers, and the reality is that IT IS possible, but sometimes we end up relying on that person, or their content, to make decisions and take action.

That’s why we need to be our own gurus. Because we begin to rely on others to make our decisions on how to live our lives. At that point, we are essentially giving our power away. There is a fine line between being motivated by someone, and making decisions based on someone else’s standards.

The reality is we all live different lives, we are all at different places in our lives, we all have different past experiences and we all have different current scenarios. When we start to ask ourselves “what would (insert your favorite person here) do?” is when we begin to look outside of ourselves to find an answer.

In addition to giving our power away and making decisions based on other’s results, we also begin to lose touch with ourselves and our intuition. Instead of teaching ourselves, and learning, how to look inward to what feels right, or even to what objectively makes sense for us, we think if it worked for someone else it will work for me too. And again it might work for you, it’s not to say that it won’t, but the point is you are weakening the muscle of self when you take action based on other people.

I’ve learned this the hard way. A few years ago after being in a verbally abusive relationship, I had no confidence in myself to make my own decisions. So when I left that relationship and started working on my personal and spiritual growth, I started looking outside of myself to make decisions. I would ask friends and family or look to my favorite teacher at the time to make decisions. Eventually, I realized I was doing this so that if something went wrong, I didn’t have to take responsibility. I wouldn’t get mad at the person making the decision, but I would also be able to say “well that was their idea, not mine,” so it wouldn’t bruise my ego and make me feel like shit about myself. When we give people the power to make our decisions, we take away our opportunity to learn new lessons and truly grow which is our ultimate goal anyway by following personal and/or spiritual development teachers anyway!

So, we need to be our own guru’s to truly learn the lessons we are meant to experience and grow, to stop giving our power away to other people, and to start learning how to look within to find our own answers on when, where, and how to take action and move forward.