Parts of my MLM story and how it actually taught me so much about my religion!
I started with Scentsy back in 2011.
I advanced quickly and used my payday money to buy more products to have on hand. My Scentsy sponsor was so proud of me🤣
One day my Scentsy sponsor shared a post about a free workout group in her hometown that she would want to go to if she was still living there. It was close to me so I thought it sounded great! I went and we worked out to P90X. I committed to going twice a week to workout with them. I borrowed my brother's P90X DVDs and worked out at home on the other days. I was eating healthier, and guess what happened?!?! I started losing weight!
Each week the workout group (hosted by local Beachbody coaches) would offer samples of Shakeology for guests to try. I was introduced to Beachbody through this group and because I felt a difference, I started believing in it! I kept putting off ordering my own Shakeology because it was so expensive. However, at the end of one of the months, the coaches were offering $20 cash back for anyone who ordered a bag. (Come to find out later that they were part of this team cup challenge and just needed more points that month). I bought a bag and noticed a difference, so I signed up as a coach for the 'discount'.
I cancelled Scentsy because it was a conflict of interest and I was going 'all-in' with this Beachbody thing! (Side note: My Scentsy sponsor later said to me that she regretted sharing that workout post because it took me away from her and growing her team. 🤢🤮)
Now I was officially a Beachbody coach! I started attending all the suggested team meetings, team calls, and events. I made my dream boards like I was told. I posted multiple times daily on social media about my workouts and how exciting it was to be losing weight and staying home with my kids! I started recruiting others and hitting goals and higher ranks. I hit diamond level and helped my husband get his rank up to ruby! We were close to star-diamond and things were looking up! All those dreams coming true very soon! With every recruit, we were getting closer and hitting those goal numbers! I earned free prizes and free vacations for hitting success club quotas. Traveled near and far for conventions and other events. The higher up I ranked and the deeper I got, the more I started to notice things. Fishy things. Things that didn't sit well with me.
People were being treated differently depending on their rank and who their upline was. Higher ups were glorified and praised while saying if you weren't succeeding it was because you weren't trying hard enough and just didn't want it bad enough. Becoming a star-diamond coach in Beachbody is no longer about YOU working hard enough. It is about you convincing your downline to work harder. I wasn't really into the convincing or manipulating others. I signed people up mainly for the discount like I had done. I started seeing other things that I couldn't ignore. The hurtful conditional friendships. The body shaming was out of control! Judgment of others who 'needed the products'. It got to the point where I could no longer in good conscience continue recruiting and posting about it.
In 2014 I quit.
But NOT without the guilt. Because of the information I had been taught during events and team calls, I was made to believed that by quitting, I was literally giving up on those dreams I had put on my dream board. The guilt and shame was overwhelming!!
I felt this guilt and shame DAILY.
Any time we struggled for money, I blamed myself. Any time I heard about people in Beachbody upping rank and income, I wondered why I had quit and thought 'if only'. I felt like I was letting everyone down by giving it up. I went ANTI-Beachbody and stopped the workouts and unfriended anyone who promoted it. I gained weight back and felt guilt and shame for that.
EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
FOR FOUR YEARS.
2018, my heart had softened and I decided to consider it again. I thought maybe it was me. Maybe it was all in my head that those bad things weren't really as bad as I made them out to be. Maybe it was my fault for not having my head in the game. I didn't work hard enough. I gave up too soon. Maybe it would be different if I tried it again with a different perspective.
So what did I do???
I signed back up as a Beachbody Coach.
Almost right away, I start to notice the same patterns of rank and judgment and body shaming and manipulation. The push for rank advancement was immediate. I quickly saw that it wasn't just as bad as I remembered----IT WAS WORSE.
I quit again within the same year.
But I was CONFUSED.
I'm a smart girl. How could I fall for this not just once, but TWICE?!?!?!
So I found the anti-mlm community and during 2019 started learning about experiences of others and seeing that it wasn't just me. People were having the same experiences in any mlm! They were all the same! I listened to The Dream podcast and learned that the reps/coaches/consultants are actually just the customers. The 'discount' prices they recieve are still marked way up so the company is still making money.
I came across a video that was life-changing! It taught me about cult tactics and how MLMs are actually commercial cults. This put me down a rabbit hole! Learning about cults was fascinating!!! Seeing how these cult tactics had been used on me and had worked so very well. The years of guilt and shame were BECAUSE of the cult tactics. That's how they are intended to be.
The more I learned about cults, the more parallels I started to see with the religion I was in!🤔😱 Many examples that I personally experienced were:
•The way they continuously shame people that leave and put that fear into those still in it so they become afraid to leave.
•They use you to recruit others.
•They gaslight you to believe that if you quit, it's because you didn't try hard enough or have enough belief/faith.
•They use your 'hopes and dreams and goals' to manipulate you into staying, and make you believe that if you quit, you are giving up those dreams and you will hurt your loved ones.
•They try to control what you read and how you spend your time.
•Even if you don't see benefits right away, you just have to believe in the system and keep following the'guidelines'.
•They talk bad about those who leave, as to discredit their experiences. People who leave are judged and looked down upon.
•They have regular meetings and events that you are expected to attend so they can indoctrinate you with their beliefs.
•If you leave them, it's on YOU. It is never their fault (Or so they say).
•They preach that they 'help' people, but then they turn around and take more than they give. The higher your rank, the more expectations they have of you.
•Your 'worthiness' is based on your rank and status in their system. You are only 'worthy' of their time if you are hitting their expectations placed upon you. They even hold exclusive events for those who meet THEIR requirements.
•They continue to contradict themselves and the judgment they place on everyone.
•They tell you that you should cut out anyone who doesn't believe the same as you. And anyone who questions the leader is in the wrong.
•The higher up you get, the more time you are expected to give up for them.
•They place this illusion of popularity on those higher up and higher-ups are considered the leaders and are given a celebrity-like status.
•You are taught to feel bad for those who leave and made to think that they are negative, confused, and have lost their way.
•You can never be good enough. They set unrealistic expectations upon you so that you are continually driven by this sense of guilt and shame.
•They believe they have THEE ANSWER TO HAPPINESS in life and what they have to offer will ultimately bring happiness in whoever invests their time, money and efforts into it.
The list goes on..... and the cult-like traditions do too.
Using manipulation and guilt to control people? Craziest part, I learned that people can be in a cult, and not even know!
Here it was 2020 and at 38 years old I was just now learning that I had actually been participating in a religious cult for the majority of my life and I had NO IDEA!!!
MIND-BLOWN!!!
There are way too many details in this part of the story to even begin to sum up the things I was learning and the parallels I had found, but studying cults and Steven Hassan's book COMBATING CULT MIND CONTROL was a huge lesson. His BITE model described what I had experienced and was now putting my children through the same practices! It was so much to take in, but brought me so much peace to finally have the answers as to why I had been so easily manipulated. Fear tactics are very real.
Well, since I had already been through the years and years of guilt and shame for leaving a commercial cult, only to learn it was all BS, I was not about to go through that again. It was NOT an easy decision to make, but it was the right one.
I walked away from that high demand religion! I taught my husband and kids the things I had experienced and learned and they were 100% on my side and agreed that they wanted out as well--we were able to leave Mormonism GUILT-FREE!
After realizing the information that I had been given about the church during my entire time within the church had been heavily controlled and restricted, I was now curious as to what else I didn't know about the religion I was in. Having been taught to NEVER LOOK at outside sources, I was very nervous. I started on the church official website and the gospel topics essays taught me more than I had ever been taught in church. The more I read, the more I realized I didn't actually know much about the church I had spent decades in. I immersed myself in books, articles, podcasts, personal stories, journals, historical accounts and anything I could make time for! It has been fascinating to learn more in the past year about church history than I had been taught in the 3 decades IN the church. Needless to say, we are happy to be out!
For the last year, we have been CULT-FREE and are loving life, happier than ever! Sad to see so many of my loved ones still being manipulated in MLM and high-demand religion, but we all learn in different ways and through different personal experiences. But just as MLM and religion taught me, you have to share the truth and speak out! Don't be afraid to share your story. So that's what I do. Some people don't like it. I have had family and friends unfriend or unfollow me. Some have even blocked me. 🤷♀️ But I have done nothing wrong.
I was a victim of cult tactics, manipulation and coersion and there is nothing wrong with sharing my personal experiences and things I have learned. Fear and shame are very real and are used to recruit and keep people in these kinds of groups. It's sad and scary. So speaking out could be helping someone and saving them from heartache.
My biggest hope is to be understood. My hope for my children is that they will learn from this and not fall victim to a high-demand religion or group. They are free! We are free! (Oh, and I still have some of that Scentsy stock I bought as a consultant in 2010 🤣)
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