Nobody Gets a Pedestal. Nobody.

There's a specific kind of disappointment that doesn't just sting — it makes you question your own judgment.

I know it well. I've earned it.

More than once I've found someone brilliant, generous, apparently wise — and quietly handed them a level of authority over my thinking that no human being should ever hold. Teachers. Mentors. Public figures. People I looked up to with something close to reverence.

And every single time? Epic disappointment. Different people. Different contexts. The gender changed. The pattern didn't.

The most recent one hit different.

The Deepak Chopra Thing

I was mid-session in one of my Audition Accelerator workshops, referencing something I'd read in a Deepak Chopra book. Mindset stuff. Good stuff — or so I thought.

One of my participants — thoughtfully, kindly — sent me a link afterward. Said he wasn't sure how clean Deepak's actual life was behind the guru facade. Suggested I take a look.

I looked.

You know that specific cocktail of disgust and deflation when someone you'd quietly installed as an ethical Northstar turns out to be something else entirely? Yeah. That.

Deepak — your books are off my recommended client reading list. Effective immediately.

I've felt this before. I'll feel it again if I'm not careful. And I'm done pretending that's just bad luck.

Because it's not bad luck. It's a pattern.

The Pedestal Is Always the Problem

Here's what I keep relearning the hard way: the pedestal is always the problem. Not sometimes. Always.

Because the pedestal isn't really about them. It's about us. It's about the part of us that wants someone else to have figured it out — that wants a shortcut to wisdom, a guaranteed North Star, a person so evolved they've already solved what we're still working through.

That's not admiration. That's abdication.

And here's what abdication makes possible: it creates the conditions for abuse. When we stop questioning someone because of who they are rather than what they're actually saying — when we grant unconditional access to our trust, our reverence, our silence — we don't just make ourselves vulnerable. We make everyone around them vulnerable too.

We maintain the status quo. We keep the machine running.

And the machine has been running on this particular fuel for a very long time. People in positions of spiritual, intellectual, or institutional power who use that power to harm the people beneath them. It is not a new story. It is not a rare story. We've built entire systems — in classical music, in wellness culture, in academia, in politics — that quietly protect it.

And classical music is not off the hook. Not even close. We have built an entire culture around the unquestioned authority of conductors, principal players, and conservatory teachers. We train young musicians to defer, to absorb, to never push back. We call it mentorship. Sometimes it's just power with better PR.

The pedestal is the first brick in that wall.

The Part That Actually Matters

I'm angry. I'll say that plainly.

I'm angry that abuse gets dressed up in the language of enlightenment. I'm angry that people in genuine pain hand over their trust and their money and sometimes their entire sense of self to people who haven't earned it. I'm angry that the packaging is so good. That the books are well-written. That the brand is immaculate right up until it isn't.

I'm angry that I fell for it. Again.

But I'm also grateful. That these things come to light. That someone in my workshop cared enough to send me a link. That the ceiling of silence around powerful people keeps getting lower — slowly, painfully, imperfectly, but lower.

Every time someone speaks up, the pedestal gets a little harder to maintain. It costs something to say it out loud. The people who pay that cost deserve to be believed.

I believe them.

The Takeaway

No one is above me. No one is below me. That's not arrogance — it's the only sane way to move through a world full of complicated, flawed, sometimes deeply harmful people who are very good at packaging themselves.

My voice is the one I should have been trusting all along. Not because I have all the answers. But because I've lived what I teach. That's not a pedestal. That's a track record. There's a difference.

Admire people. Learn from them. But the moment their status becomes a substitute for their integrity — you've handed over something you can't afford to lose.

Stay skeptical. Stay curious. Stay your own.

And if someone is selling you enlightenment from a stage? Peek behind the curtain. Then peek again.

Chris @ Honesty Pill Coaching