I'm not certain which is worse right now. The gurus who claim to know everything about their particular soapbox or the people that claim that anyone with a soapbox is a guru?
Guru, myth, scam.... all these terms are quickly becoming synonymous. Look up any topic and you are likely to get more hits with these terms than any other on any given topic. Of course that is the nature of the internet.
Guru is the term used when describing a Buddhist or Hindu spiritual leader (at least that is where I first heard the word used many years ago). It was popularized later as a term used to describe anyone who is an expert in a field and can teach or lead others in the same field, a stretch but acceptable. Now it is often used as a derogatory title implying that a person claims to know all and be able to teach all when, in fact, they probably don't or can't.
As far as teaching, nobody is really in a position to teach something unless they know it cold and have or are using it themselves. You cannot know what you have not used, and successfully. How can anyone expect a student to learn and apply something that the teacher has not.
Try learning golf from the local hacker, chances are that you won't ever get much better than them. If your aspirations involve going pro, then you have no chance whatsoever. Now, if you followed a multiple PGA champion (Tiger Woods for example) and he showed you how to not only physically play the game but how to think the game, live the game and observe other's weaknesses and strengths, then you have a decent chance to get there. I don't know, but would be willing to guess that his game, or any other good pro's game, is better than 99% mental... how much time is actually spent hitting a ball compared to how much time they've spent considering any single stroke? But that is a whole other topic.
In his book "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell describes the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become highly proficient at anything. I haven't read the book in about two years but I believe that one of the factors that he misses is that having a mentor or capable teacher can improve the attainment of proficiency dramatically. While it may or may not change the observed 10,000 hour, it certainly increases the odds that a high level of proficiency will be attained at all.
It may sound like a tangent but having a mentor, or at least someone who you can observe or emulate in the picture can make a huge difference in addition to the actual teaching as they can easily provide opportunities and personal connections that you might otherwise not have.
This gets into a whole other topic of associations that successful people have had that work toward giving them the extra opportunistic edge that the vast majority of people never know about.
One short example is Bill Gates. Sure he put in the time playing with computers seriously through school but the opportunities that he took advantage of would never happen under "regular" life circumstances. It started with him being in a private school that had technological capabilities that were rare in any school. He would have contact with people that would notice his activities and give him opportunities that no other school situation would likely afford to him. His success was certainly not based on a garage computer shop.
Consider carefully what guru or gurus that you may choose to learn from. Are they in a position where their teachings have been used to provide proof of their theories, or are they just that, theories and stories that have no basis in real life?
Jeff.
