Tony Robbins has been getting some bad press over the last few days, because a few people who did the “fire walk” over hot coals at his recent event in Dallas were injured.

A couple dozen participants experienced “hot spots” on their feet, but only 5 of the 7000 required medical attention. Attendees claimed that some of the injured stopped to take selfies while on the bed of hot coals.

A few things stood out from this story:

1) It’s not a good idea to take selfies while doing the fire walk (at least wait until you’re back on normal, cool ground.)

2) A lot of people in the world have a chip on their shoulder about personal development, and will use anything to run down those trying to improve.

When I was reading the comments on the stories online, people were calling the participants “idiots” for paying to attend a motivational seminar.

I saw plenty of jokes about people getting burned financially in addition to their feet, or telling a story about their relatives paying for a program that didn’t give the results that they wanted.

There were even attacks on Robbins’ role in the 2001 comedy Shallow Hal.

People have no problem spending a lot of money on cable, toys, fast food, or vices that hurt their health (and wallets,) but heaven forbid someone pay to improve their lives!

Like any industry, there are bad apples. But as someone who’s benefitted from Tony Robbins’ stuff (although I’ve never done the fire walk,) I don’t group Robbins in with the bad ones.

Humans are, by nature, a pessimistic and cynical bunch … I’ll stick with being around the positive ones.