Something else just occurred to me. I went through something similar as part my job once. The boss got suckered by the pretty face of the presenter who was presumably also the sales person. I wish I could remember what it was called. It mostly consisted of watching videos given by a guy who must have been the founder of whatever this was. As these played the presenter gazed worshipfully at the screen. The idea of the whole thing was basically "The Secret." Oldest bullshit in the book.
But I digress. One specific thing I remember the guy saying, and making a huge deal out of, was "As a man believes, so is he." As a reader of Sartre this immediately raised my hackles as I remembered "a man is the sum total of his acts" or however J-P S phrased it. It didn't help that I found Mr. Wonderful's use of the masculine gender as universal jarring. I could forgive Sartre for that, as a man of the 1930s or so. But I was listening to this in the 90s.
There were also various paper-and-pencil exercises, the last of which was to evaluate what we had experienced. I don't remember exactly what I wrote but it was to the effect that I had done my best, out of respect for the company, to keep an open mind, but I felt like I would have been better occupied just getting on with my job. I also pointed out that while we were treated to endless testimonials, no statistical evidence was ever presented with regard to the efficacy of the program with respect to enhancing job performance. They were collected by passing around an ever increasing stack. I kept track as best I could of where mine was. I saw her start to skim them so I surreptitiously watched. Sure enough, when she was at about the right place she frowned and put one off to the side.
There it is there.