I’m in an industry of charlatans.
We don’t sell toasters. We sell intangibles: happiness, peacefulness, confidence. Or at least that’s what our customers are looking to buy.
This means we’re let into peoples’ minds, allowed to look around and see what’s in the shadows. We see things overlooked. We see things that are supposed to be hidden from view.
And when we pull these things out and hold them up, it appears to be nothing short of magic. We become mystics, curing blindness, healing the body.
How did you do that?
At this point, the mind softens, lets us further in.
This is an important moment. What we do from here, as healers, as coaches, shows our hand.
You see, people will do anything to feel the good stuff again. And they will ask us to take them there, to show them more things they haven’t noticed.
But not all shadows contain treasures and no one person has all the answers. That’s the unglamorous truth.
Still, some of us, the charlatans that is, will pick things up, anything at all, and give those objects more meaning than they deserve, try to turn the simplest of items into a golden key that glows bright enough to coax a gathering.
That’s how to spot them — the ones with the cold hearts, the ones who are rummaging through your mind like a thief through a glove box — they give themselves away because they need you, even more than you need them.
They need the crowd, to make them magical, to provide the oohs and ahhs.
And that’s when it’s obvious that they don’t have what you’re looking for and never will.
Because they’re looking, too.