It’s not surprising that almost all the “success” influencers dominating social media and podcasts are men. Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Robin Sharma, Lewis Howes, John Assaraf, and Scott D. Clary have built massive followings telling people how to get ahead, achieve more, and live their “best life.” On the surface, they seem to offer tools for personal growth: mindset shifts, productivity hacks, morning routines, visualizations, and efficiency strategies. People buy it up because it promises control, results, and quick gratification.

But what they sell is not sustainable well-being. Their methods are seductive because they bypass the harder, slower, and messier work of actually supporting ourselves: our bodies, relational needs, and the capacity to integrate our experiences. They push performance on top of stress, exhaustion, and emotional overload. Quick wins feel good, but they leave the nervous system depleted and the mind disconnected from what it needs. Real growth comes from attention to rest, reflection, connection, and tolerating discomfort. These aren’t sexy, flashy, or easily packaged into a product.

The social and cultural impact is another often invisible layer. By framing success as something you earn through effort, hustle, and optimization, these influencers reinforce existing domination hierarchies. Authority, corporate power, and social status become the benchmarks of value. People are nudged to comply with the system’s demands, push themselves to perform, and measure their worth by standards that were designed to permit exploitation for the benefit of those at the top. The same messages that promise personal empowerment subtly encourage submission to a hierarchy that profits from our exhaustion and disconnection.

So yes, people love these programs and podcasts. They offer the illusion of control and the rush of visible results. But they rarely deliver long-term resilience, joy, or authentic well-being. They ask us to perform on top of dysregulation while pretending that this is the path to personal mastery. Doing so, they prop up the hierarchy, leaving our deeper needs for connection, rest, and integration ignored, dismissed, or undervalued.

True growth rarely comes from hacks, shortcuts, or quick-fix mindset tricks. It emerges from creating space for ourselves to notice what we need, to connect deeply, to slow down, to reflect, and to integrate. That’s the path that supports real resilience, creativity, and sustainable success. It’s also the path that the hierarchy doesn’t want us to see.