I've actually had some thoughts on the subject, which are the following. All of that stuff is my own interpretation of the picture, which might/might not be accurate. This started as a comment on that topic, though I've noticed it has become a bit too wide for a single comment, so I decided to make a post.
First of all, you can't really be manipulated unless you do not know you are being manipulated, and that's the core principle here. How do you know you are being manipulated? By being aware and 100% honest of what you are doing, why you are doing it, what thoughts/ideas/feelings led to your actions and also where have those thoughts/ideas/feelings come from. You are also aware of the results of your actions (both tangible and emotional) as well as whether you are satisfied with them or not. If you see the big picture, you can easily spot all the benefits/damage you got from engaging in some activity and objectively decide whether it makes your life better or not. Having this in mind, let's take the whole Actualized.org and look at it from a 1000 ft. perspective — what is this whole thing about?
On the very fundamental level, we have some guy sharing different ideas and concepts about how you can improve your life. He does this mostly through his free videos on YouTube, free blog posts on his site, his free forum and 2 (at the moment of writing this) paid products, which are a 200 book list ($35) sorted into 22 categories supplied with short reviews for each book and "The Ultimate Life Purpose Course" ($249), which promises to help you find your life purpose and build your career around it. Booklist can't be refunded. "The Ultimate Life Purpose Course" can be refunded within 50 days since purchase, provided you've completed all the exercises in the course. This right here is some Wikipedia-level description, though I think it's still important to get the facts straight.
Now, let's get to why YOU have started watching those videos and reading those blog posts in the first place. I think the reason for most of the people is that they are not satisfied with their lives — in other words, they want changes and don't really know how to implement them. Or maybe they know, though still struggle with implementing those for some reason. And let's ask why one more time — why am I not satisfied with my current life? In my own contemplation I've gotten to the next point:
I'm not 100% sure what true satisfaction means to me because I've never really put time into discovering it. Hence (ironically) the stuff I have in my current life is not really mine, because otherwise, I would be satisfied with it. This leads me to the conclusion that I need to really get to know myself if I want to improve the quality of my life.
Ok, to put it simply, you want to know yourself and Leo claims to know how to do it and he is willing to share this knowledge with you — for free. The only things he tells you to do, though, is to be open-minded and put the theory into practice if you actually want to see the results. And I personally have been doing the practice and could see the results for myself, which I will not cover here.
Now let's get back to the manipulation topic. Consider the table below:
IMO, the information you can get from free videos (which literally transforms your life if applied correctly) is definitely worth $0 the bald guy is taking from your wallet. And yes, you can be a sly fox and even get the $249 course for free using the refund. And, as stated above, the only way you regret your booklist purchase is if you can't read.
So, is Leo manipulating you to make YOUR life the way YOU want it to be so he could gain some bucks from the ads? Oh man, this dude's a Devil himself.
Though without being sarcastic, all I personally see is a guy that acquired some wisdom, applied it to his own life and then decided to share it with others while asking absolutely nothing from them in return. Seems fair to me.
