In an effort to create a new tourism phenomenon, China is now calling an ancient rocky peak in its Hunan Province “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain.” The government there claims that a location photographer had come to the area in 2008 and that clearly the mystical mountains used in the film were inspired by the rocks formerly known as “Heaven and Earth Pillar.”

But, why rely on paltry old heaven and measly little planet Earth to convey something majestic about nature?  They don’t look nearly as cool in 3-D and last I checked they have not grossed almost 2 billion worldwide.  As a self-help professional, I can only see this kind of thing as a dangerous trend.  Blithely renaming great monuments or natural formations to suit the arbitrary whims of commerce could cause a crisis in individual empow-WOW-erment.   Humanity could lose touch with something elemental in itself and give its inherent potential over to things that represent its lower consciousness.

Here, then, is a list of new, show business influenced monikers for old things.  I only hope it elicits the proper terror.

TOP FIVE NEW NAMES FOR ANCIENT AND/OR HISTORIC PLACES

Old Name: Angkor Wat – The amazing complex of 12^th Century Cambodian Temples

New Name: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Estates

Old Name: Christ Church College, Oxford – The great university’s enormous constituent college, named after Jesus Christ.

New Name: Casa de Harry Potter

Old Name: Pont Neuf – The oldest standing bridge across the River Seine in Paris, completed in 1672.

New Name: Bourne Identity Chase Scene Corner

Old Name: Monument Valley – Ancient power combines with a breathtaking variety of sandstone buttes in the Colorado plateau.

New Name: Marty McFly’s Old West Back to the Future Part III Basin

Old Name: Palace Square, St. Petersburg – Central square of the former Russian Empire, where the October Revolution took place in 1917.

New Name: GoldenEye Mall

Feel free to supply your own showbiz name for a venerable and majestic place.  As long as you experience an ache inside when you do it.

The common complaint about James Cameron is that he cannot write convincing dialogue.  Well, before we add an inability to come up with a convincing name for a fictional mineral to his list of wordsmith-related infractions, it should be noted that the term “unobtainium” has been used in the scientific community for some time to describe the often impossible material needed to carry out one’s plans.  It is possible that Mr. Cameron thought, “Look, we’ve dropped 500 million on digitizing the Navi, I just don’t feel like pulling the name of a mineral out of my ass right now,” and then became too busy to deal with the minor details until it was too late.  No matter what the circumstances, I am grateful to Avatar’s director for shining a larger spotlight on the term “unobtainium,” since it opens up an even bigger question to those of us in the self-help industry.

And that question is: what essential minerals are you  missing in your quest to live a fully actualized life?    Here, then, is a list of the often-unobtainable  components we need in order to reclaim our true  potential. Like the substance that Earth so desperately  needs from the planet Pandora in order to survive, these  are the Top 5 materials we should be seeking on the  road to personal growth.

TOP FIVE DIFFICULT TO FIND SELF-HELP MINERALS

ShutUpDadium – This extremely rare substance turns off the part of your brain that still hears your father telling you that you will never amount to anything.  Tiny filings of ShutUpDadium have been known to sell for $200,000 an ounce on the black market.

IDoNotSuckeryte – Then there is your own chattering monkey mind doing its best to undermine your attempts at success by devaluing what you bring to the table.  Exposure to a chunk of IDoNotSuckeryte immediately convinces you that you are a whiny sack and should get over your damn self right this minute.

IWillAskForHelpapene – Opportunities are lost everyday by people who think they are an army of one.  A recent Ecuadorian excavation uncovering many tons of IWillAskForHelpapene ore should mean good news for these misguided loners who will not advance in life until they admit they need assistance.

It’sAnAbundantUniverseophane –  So you didn’t get hired even though you thought you aced the interview.  Suck it up and realize that there’s plenty out there for everybody.  Merely rubbing against a stone flecked with It’sAnAbundantUniverseophane will shift your perspective so that you become more aware of this basic truth.  This substance is sometimes found in the Central California desert, leading to the not uncommon site of businesspeople braving triple digit temperatures to shamelessly dry hump boulders believed to contain even traces of this mineral.

FailureIsNotAnOptionium –  Everyone instinctively knows that there is no such thing as failure and that it merely represents another mechanism by which to get things just how they should be.  Though it may require traveling to the Himalayas in order to snag a bit of FailureIsNotAnOptionium, it may well be worth it so that the rest of us don’t have to listen to your incessant self-deprecation.

I urge my readers to ask themselves what vital minerals they lack and what they are willing to do to find them!

Everyone and their blogger makes a top ten scary movies list around Halloween time, but how many of these lists have the stones to identify what’s really scary about a movie: its dysfunctional, unenlightened characters?  (For even more ghoulish fun along these lines, do revisit my collection of the top Halloween costumes and what they say about you.) It’s all very well to be frightened by torture porn, or a guy in a hockey mask or ethereal Asian toddlers who stand there looking eerie, but there isn’t a dismemberment out there that can hold a candle to the terror of watching people whose unconscious behavior keeps them from coming to a proper sense of their personal power. Here, then, are:

The Top Ten Scariest Movies Of All Time From A Motivational Speaker’s Perspective.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK – Indiana Jones is a  man afraid of intimacy and stuck in the belief that outward achievement is a substitute for finding  wholeness through work/life balance.  Rather than  confront any of his shortcomings and develop into a  successful, well-rounded individual, he siphons off his  inner power in the foolish pursuit of graven images,  adrenaline-charged adventure and wisecracks. And the ever-present whip may hint at another, more unsavory addiction.

GOOD WILL HUNTING – Hey, I got zippo validation  in childhood, too, that’s why I went into public  speaking. But I don’t go around letting Robin Williams  lock me in his hirsute embrace and tell me it’s not my  fault over and over again.  This self-forgiving blast of  shameless new-age ickiness makes a weeping emotional  outpouring on Oprah look like a Mixed Martial Arts Beat  Down.  Perhaps this whole movie was an elaborate pre-publicity stunt to prepare us for the warm, uplifting ride that was Patch Adams.

THE DARK KNIGHT – Of all the screen heroes to  squeeze their denial of self into a suit of body armor, this  Bruce Wayne is perhaps the least evolved Homo sapiens  in cinema history.  Too emotionally blocked to confront  the pains of his past (okay, so your parents were killed,  do some regression therapy and get over it), he lives in  seclusion, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy around his  lack of true love and puts all his trust in a loyal, sexually neutered butler.  It might be fun to watch him kick butt for two and a half hours, but if you ran into this Davey Downer at a party you would seriously harbor suspicions about whether or not he has any former lovers in his crawlspace.

STAR WARS – I got news for you, Luke Skywalker: everything does not come down to you and your expertise with the force.  Real growth occurs in community.

PRETTY WOMAN

I just don’t want to know what  happened to the two deluded characters in this scenario  a couple of years after the film ended.  Both so fully  succumbed to their fantasy images of each other (knight  in shining armor, whore with a heart of gold) that once  the daydream dissolved, as it inevitably would, their  moorings would be completely loosed.  If Reality TV had  been around back then, we would undoubtedly have seen a show chronicling their downward spiral, as they took long pulls on Jim Beam straight from the bottle and hurled ashtrays at each other across the rented Airstream.

TITANIC – James Cameron gives us Rose, a wealthy socialite who gets off on  slumming it with an unwashed guy from steerage, and,  after he dies in her arms, convinces herself that nothing  will ever top the experience.  Her teenaged infatuation  with the free spirit who showed her that the dirt poor are  much better at sexual congress than uptight rich guys  held her back her entire life.  As the ending of the film  implies, she did get to do all the things she had promised to do with Jack, except that without him it wasn’t quite as hot.  This is the romance equivalent of the high school football star whose job at Goldman Sachs will never match the exhilaration of completing an 80 yard touchdown pass.  Thanks to the unrealized dreams of that guy and others like him, our economy is in the crapper.

CITIZEN KANE

Classic self-loathing manifesting  itself in an obsession with material wealth.  Plus, it’s  overrated.

PULP FICTION – This one’s more about the director.    Let’s be honest: when you need to throw a plot twist into  a chase scene and it turns out to be someone who keeps  a leather clad man in a wicker basket to stand watch just  in case someone comes by who needs a good ball-gag  enhanced raping…sir, you should not be making films,  but rather urgently seeking professional counseling.  Really.  Urgently.

THE GODFATHER – Michael Corleone had a chance  to forge his own identity and live in his own personal  truth, but he succumbed to co-dependency with his  unhealthy family dynamic and because of that a guy  gets shot in the throat right in the middle of dinner.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS – Undeniably moving,  but irresponsible in that by  anthropomorphizing our  web-footed cousins it sets the  bar for human fidelity and  service unrealistically high.    We should not expect our  mate to wait with the kids in  sub-zero temperatures for  eons or to trek across the  same sub-zero temperatures  for  eons with some grub  just to prove one’s love and  devotion.  Let’s just see how  much progress we can make in couples counseling and call it a day.

I’m sure you can think of many of your own movies that are horrifying from a self-improvement perspective. Feel free to add to the list!