BEWARE OF THE INFLUENCERS

Hey you guys, welcome to the Karen Kenney

show. I'm wicked excited to be here with you, and I'm going to

tell you, I just, I'm just going to, oh my God, Jesus, help us.

I'm just going to keep this one like, probably pretty short. I'm

considering this episode just like a little PSA, little PSA,

from my heart to yours, from my brain to yours. And for, maybe

for some of the younger viewers, right? Like those are the people

who are Gen X, who are like my generation. You remember the

PSAs? A PSA is a public service announcement for those of you

who might be a little bit younger and you're like, what's

a PSA? Because so many people don't watch live TV. I don't

even know if they do PSAs anymore, but back in the day,

when we were kids, teenagers, whatever, you'd be watching TV,

and all of a sudden it'd be like, this is a PSA. This is a

public service announcement, and this is what it is. And I got

the exact language so I wouldn't mess it up. So a PSA was a

message that was add or published at no cost to the

public. So this is basically it was to the purpose of a PSA was

to serve the public interest. It wasn't for profit by some

company. Some company wasn't making money off of making this

announcement, right? And it often had sponsors, like

nonprofit organizations or grassroot movements or sometimes

it was the government Okay, and it was usually done over TV or

radio or web or print or whatever. And what it was used

for was to raise public awareness about a significant

social issue, to educate people or to encourage positive

behavior change, which is really kind of cool. And these

campaigns aim to influence attitudes on topics like health

or safety or literacy or environmental protection. And it

kept it very simple. It used clear, concise and sometimes

emotionally impactful messaging to prompt action. Now, growing

up, some of the things that we heard about, we learned, Smokey

the Bear, right? Only you can prevent forest fires, right? So,

where there is forest fire prevention, there was drunk

driving awareness. Friends. Don't let friends drive drunk,

right? There were health screenings. They would tell

people to get checked, you know, for cancer or for heart disease

or, like, whatever they were like, sometimes ads about

animals, like making sure you get your animals neutered or

spayed, and things like that. And then, obviously there were

things about environmental conservation, so PSAs were,

like, always really helpful in a very normal pot of us growing

up, I think as adults right now, I think of as people right now

who are kind of experiencing and being bombarded by so much

information on the interwebs, like every time you turn around,

your phone is literally like a tiny computer, right? People are

on their phones all the time. We all know this, right? So we are

constantly bombarded from our phones, from the internet, from

TV, whatever. You have all these people that are Hawking their

way as you have all these people that are quote, unquote,

influences, right? And I did a podcast so long ago, and I

basically said we're all influences, meaning we all

influence each other in our day to day lives based on how we're

showing up, how we're talking to each other, how we're presenting

if we're being kind, if we're being dicks, what we're selling

like what we're doing, we are all constantly influencing each

other. But now there is a whole group of Grifters, right?

There's a whole bunch of people out there Hawking their wares.

And if you are unawares, right, I say that I know bad grandma.

I'm doing it on purpose. But if you are unawares right, about

like these people, it is so easy right to get hurt, to get

harmed, to get screwed, to get scammed, to get taken advantage

of, like, whatever. I mean, I know people not. I would say my

family, adjacent, older women, who are totally, totally being

scammed by online dudes pretending to be these young,

hot men who want relationships with them, and these people are

sending them money. I'm like, Oh my God. And here's the other

thing you know right now, with all the Epstein file stuff,

right names, big names are coming out, the names of of male

bro science influences, and everybody thought, who just had

books coming out. And everybody loves them. They have millions

of followers, and you start to realize, Oh, this guy was pals

with Jeffrey Epstein, even after the whole world knew that he had

basically trafficked young women for prostitution. This guy is a

is a level one, whatever class sex offender, and we're still

going to be pals with him. I guess the. The only purpose of

this message today, like I said, this is my little personal PSA

is I cannot encourage you enough to do your homework, do your due

diligence, and nobody really is going online. Right to how do I

say this to basically tell you what a shit bag they've been,

what a deviant they are, what a like, what like, what a like, a

sick person they are, right? Everybody's out there like

Hawking their wares. And I started thinking about this when

I saw the word influence. There's a quote that I love from

Bruce Lee, and he says, A good teacher can never be fixed in a

routine. Each moment requires a sensitive mind that is

constantly changing and constantly adapting. A teacher

must never impose this student to fit his favorite pattern, a

good teacher. Listen to this line. A good teacher protects

his pupils from his own influence. A good he says, a

teacher is never a giver of truth. He is a guide, a pointer

to the truth that each student must find for himself. He says,

I'm not teaching you anything. I just help you to explore

yourself. I 100,000% agree. You heard me. If you listen to my

podcast the last couple of weeks, I always say, I as a

teacher of anything, I am not interested in creating

codependence. I am interested in creating independence. I always

say, any good teacher who's teaching something right an

external teacher, because I believe we all have internal

teachers. I think we all have this knowing, this divine

intelligence. Yes, there are things that we need to learn

from other people, because we don't have that skill set like,

really, I'm talking like tangible physical skills, right?

We do often need external teachers to teach us very

specific physical skills. And within us, we also have a divine

intelligence. Some people might call this intuition, some people

might call it gut instinct. You can call it spirit, Holy Spirit.

You can call it divine intelligence. You can call, I

always say, you know, GPS, God's pretty smart, right? There is a

part of us that is usually aware, oh, this person isn't

safe. Oh, this person, like, you get that funny feeling, but then

you just want to, like, push it away, right? All the red flags

come up, and you go, no, well, so and so says they're nice. So

and So says me. I reserve. I reserve. I can't usually tell

how I feel about a person until I meet them, either in person or

I have some sort of a zoom call or whatever, but I like to get

my eyeballs on people and put them in a room with people, and

I like to see how they act all throughout the day, because it's

really easy to get on stage and to get online and pretend that

you're a certain kind of person, when in your day to day life,

you are not that person.

And you you sell, you sell a good you like you do a good job

selling, selling this idea of you, but that is not who you

really are. And I just think that right now online, it is

rampant. It is rampant. And I said, you know, a lot of times

we give our power away to quote, unquote influences, to people

you see online that have a huge following, or just had a book

come out or whatever, and and I'm always like, these are just

regular people who get wicked good at marketing, or they hire

a marketing team to help them craft a brand. And I jokingly

say to my friends, remember when people? Remember when we weren't

brands? Remember when we were all just like people. We're all

just like normal people. And so as stuff continues to come out

and come down in the Epstein files, and names are going to be

named, and I'm just like, You guys look, you're going to start

to get a little disappointed, you're going to start to get a

little like, horrified. You're going to be like, Oh my God,

that guy or that person or whatever. Yep, them too. So I

just want to say, please use your critical thinking. Please

use your discretion. Don't just follow people willy nilly. I go

in all the time and I look at stuff and I'm like, I don't even

know who this person is. Like, I don't even remember this person.

When did I follow this person? Like, whatever. And I'm just

like, unfollow, unfollow, unfollow, unfollow. And you just

start to realize a lot of times, people with wicked, big

platforms, like I said, they're just regular people who got

quote, unquote internet famous. It doesn't mean you should be

taking their medical advice, their health advice, they. Of

relationship advice or advice on mental health or spirituality or

anything. There's a lot of Grifters out there. It's a lot

of people that can just hang a shingle, call themselves a thing

and start selling their fucking supplements, or whatever, you

know, their pyramid schemes and like all that stuff. And because

people, we know how much influence there is out there,

because we hear these horrifying, these heartbreaking

stories all the time of young men and women, young people,

right, harming themselves, dying via suicide, right and alive in

themselves because of pressure or things that they're the

comparing that they're doing, or the things they were told all of

it, and it just it breaks my heart. A good teacher protects

his pupils from his own influence, and that's what I

have always told my yoga students, too. I'm like, don't

take my word for it. You've got to try things and experience

things for yourself so you can figure out what's true for you,

so you can come to realize what's true for you. And I've

always said, like external teachers, what any good external

teacher is doing is we're pointing it's like what Bruce

Lee says, but I've said it a little differently, which is,

all we're doing is we're pointing back at your own

internal teacher. So when people start to do like, and I think

I've mentioned this before in the past, like, you know, in

yoga culture, you add the word like, the letters j, i after

somebody. So somebody might call, be called like, they'd

say, Oh, this is my guru. This is Guru, G, right? And

sometimes, well, there was this period of time where somebody

was calling me Karen, G, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, nobody's guru, Nope, just a white chick from Lawrence

mass. Nobody's guru. Just don't put me up there. Don't put me up

on the pedestal. Because I am human and I am clumsy sometimes,

and I am fallible and I screw up, and I will just let you

down. Do us both a favor, and don't try to put that on me. My

greatest job is to Yes, I can share through my own lived

experience. I can share through my my learning, my training,

right? All the work that I've done to study and to research

and to come to try to understand some things, but I am not the

authority on other people in their life. All I can do is say,

Hey, have you thought about this? This is what I learned.

This is what I experienced. Here's this book. This is what

my teacher taught me. What do you think? Right? I can ask

really good questions so that a person can decide and decipher

and discern for themselves what they believe. And it's getting

extra fucking weird out there, and it's also getting more and

more and more suspicious and dangerous. And I'm like, I

believe in the goodness the core, goodness of human beings,

of humanity. I believe that at our core who we truly are is

love and kindness and compassion. But I also believe

that a veil, a thick and heavy veil, has been pulled down over

so many of our own eyes, and we forget this truth about

ourselves. We forget who we are and the temptation in this world

to behave and really

unethical, awful, brutal

Ponzi scheme, greedy, bat shit, bullshit ways

is so strong, right? The pull is so strong, like when I think

about the metaphors of of Star Wars, right? The dark side,

right? The dark side is really strong out there. So this is a

time, you guys, when I just want to keep encouraging you and

empowering you to think for yourself. Don't drink the Kool

Aid. Don't just buy everybody's stuff because, oh, and I'm

trying not to name names, because my big thing is not

about, like, calling out people. And I mean, obviously I'll talk

about, like, certain, certain people and politicians, right?

When I'm saying something specific about that. But all you

have to do is Google, you'll find out who I'm talking about.

The latest name, the bro science longevity coach guy, right? It's

like these guys, all these male bro science podcasty, promoting

each other. And then you find out, like, Oh, they're in this

network of like sickness, like, this is not soothing. This is

not good. So it's just again, I just want to encourage you to do

your homework, do your research, find, listen, listen and trust

your own intuition, your own in a teacher, your own internal

guidance system when things feel off, and not only online, but

also their people are grifting in, you know? And here's the

other thing, too, when you look at a lot of the big names, some

of these women too, who have podcasts, who have best selling

books, where they basically stole ideas from other people.

And now. Trying to trademark, I'm gonna make a shit ton of

money. The thing is about knowing a lot of people. You

know, I tend to know a lot of people. And I used to live in

LA, I lived around that whole scene. This is what I often say,

right is I've seen too much. I've seen like the Wizard of Oz.

I've seen too much behind the curtain, and I know a little too

much sometimes. So I don't follow a lot of like, trends. I

don't follow a lot of people be like, Oh, I love this one's

books. I'm like, yeah, not for me. Like, I just can't get on

board with that person, right? And even in my personal life,

there have been periods of times when, you know, it's just human

nature. We want to believe that people are being honest and

transparent and they are who they say they are, you know. We

want to believe that people aren't, I don't know, totally

full of shit and running a racket, but there's so many

people running a racket out there, and a lot of people have

blind spots, myself included, you know. But I ask my friends,

I ask my sweetie and my friends, like, Hey, you gotta, you gotta

make sure that you check me, you know. Like, if I start to get a

little weird, or if I start to get whatever, like, you gotta

let me know if I have a blind spot. It's a blind spot for a

reason, because I can't see it, and whether that's because I

don't want to see it, or my conditioning, my trauma, my

upbringing, my whatever, my filter. But you need people

around you who are going to say like, Hey, you might want to

check that out, that belief, that behavior, that whatever.

And there have been times in my life where I really, like, you

know, you know, bought coaching programs or did whatever

thinking that I needed this person's wisdom, and then I got

into these programs, and I was like, Oh my God, get me out of

this burning building fast, because it doesn't take me too

long to recognize something is not right here. Something is off

here. This person is really good at selling an image or selling

an idea of them, of how they want you to perceive them, but

there is so much cognitive dissonance, you know what I

mean? And look, I'm not saying I am perfect. I'm sure that there

have been, you know, times in my life and and I look back

personally, but this isn't about this isn't about you know me,

but I'm not saying that I'm off the hook and that I've never

been clumsy or I've never done those things. I've had humbling

moments in my own life where I had to have like, you know, that

come to Jesus moment with myself and be like, Oh, was that really

the best thing to do or say or to behave or whatever? But I try

to check myself right. And it's not like, like I said, I try to

be the alternative, right? So much, so much of you know, so

much of what I try to pour into the world is to be helpful.

Doesn't mean I don't screw up sometimes, but I really am

trying to be and to live from the most loving place that I

can. I don't always get it right. I am clumsy. I do

trespass, but for me, it's like I especially at 57 I am learning

to just trust my own wisdom and my own counsel, and that of a

few select people who I really trust, to give it to me

straight, to be honest with me, to tell me things from you know,

the great thing about my sweetie is his brain works slightly

different than mine. His experience is slightly different

than mine. So I can always just say to him, like, am I looking

at this wrong? Like, what are you seeing? What are you hearing

when you read this? What do you think? And my sweetie has a

excellent and excellent bullshit detector, and he will often red

flag things way before I do. Because I just am like, a little

bit like, oh, like, I want to see the goodness in other

people. I want to believe. And even when I see people fuck up,

you know, I'm like, I understand the potential, that divine spark

in them. I understand and can see who they can be, how they

can be, but at some point we have to stop making excuses for

people's potential, right? You can't just keep hanging on

because of somebody's potential. I'm not saying you cast them out

of your hat. Sometimes you got to cast them out of your life.

Though there are relationships and people, and, you know,

online people too, we have to say, oh, yeah, this is not good.

I don't want to be associated with this. I don't want to do

business with this person. I'm not promoting it. I'm not

sharing it. And you go when you unfollow, and if you had done

any harm in your association with that person, you got to

make amends and apologize.

So that's it. That's all I got to say, is more and more and

more is being revealed, and this is the time to stay shop. This

is the time to like, like I said, read some shit, do some

homework. And the thing is, is that everything online is

designed to sell you, whether it's an idea. Idea or a brand or

a product or a supplement or whatever it is when people are

Hawking their services, whatever it is, right, they're designed

to look a particular way so that you will buy. And whether that

means physically, with cash, with your hard earned money,

whether it means you are buying what they're quote, unquote

selling, meaning their image, this idea of who and how. Oh,

they're so spiritual. They're so whatever, right? People are

almost always talking their way as and we have to really be

paying close attention, not only to what they're saying and doing

and seeing if they match. If there's, you know, the I always

say the assignment is alignment, and if there's a misalignment

between what's coming out of their mouth and what they're

doing, notice that. Check that. Don't push it away. Don't put it

under the rug, because, like, we see it silence in families,

like, if you grew up in a family where you weren't allowed to be

honest about feelings or tell the truth or or point out

hypocrisy. You know, a lot of children like that end up

becoming adults who don't want to stir the pot or cause waves

or cause trouble, or, you know, everybody wants to just keep the

peace. Well, sometimes we can't keep the peace. Sometimes we

have to say, Hey, that's not right. Hey, I'm going to stand

up and say something about that. You know what I mean. So right

now, it's like, remember, good teachers protect their pupils

from their own influence. A teacher is never a giver a

truth. We're simply a guide. We are pointing to the truths that

each student must find for himself, and that's it. You

gotta find out for yourself. Sometimes you might get burned.

Sometimes it might be staring you in the face, and you just

refuse to see it. You know, I talk about this in my memoir.

There were times in my life when I didn't want the truth, the

truth, because it would be too painful to accept the truth of

those people, those situations, and I had to learn the hard way,

and I'm still learning at 57 but this is, again, just a little

PSA, a little public service announcement from my heart to

yours. Just like, again, pay attention not only to what's

going on out there, pay close attention to what happens inside

of you when you come across another person's content,

another person's programs, another person's, you know,

business, whatever they're selling, whatever they're

offering, look religious. They're like, pay attention

right to what the culty, the culty preachy, like everything,

even, even like, you know, authors who supposedly are

selling, like, a little, you know, a little book, and then

all of a sudden they get a lot of influence, they get a lot of

attention, and shit gets weird. People get weird when they are

given power. People get weird when they get a lot of money,

sometimes, not saying, all people, a lot of people, they

get weird when they get a little bit of fame, a little bit of

fortune, a little bit of attention, a little bit of

whatever they think they have power and influence, and we see

it all over the place, but you, my dear listener. You are a

smarty pants. You are a little more mindful. You are a little

more aware and awake, so make sure you do your due diligence.

Be discerning, right? Be be just be aware. Pay attention, be

mindful and trust yourself. And when you know that somebody is

like doing some harm, may you have, may you have the courage

to speak up, may you have the courage to speak up. At the very

least, I'm not saying you have to go online and call people out

and do a whole thing. But like, if you were promoting that

person, you got to maybe acknowledge it with some other

people and let people know, like, Oh, I just learned some

stuff. And that's the other thing you guys, is we have to be

willing to say I was wrong about that. You might have voted for

somebody who is not who is not right, or in this case, like

with Trump, I would say he's always been telling us who he

is. He's always been telling us who he is and what he's gonna

do. So that shouldn't be that big of a surprise, but for some

people, it's still gonna be a surprise, like, Oh, I didn't

know that. That's what that person was really gonna do. You

know, we have to be willing to admit when we've made a mistake.

All of us, me too, right? All of us, we have to be willing to

say, Oh, I got that one wrong. We got to pay attention and

just, you know, don't drink the Kool Aid, everybody. All right,

I love you guys, wherever you go out into the world today, may

you and your presence and your energy and your love be a

blessing wherever you go. Leave the people, the place, the

animals, the the planet man, if we can, better than how we found

it. Bye, bye.