Professional Predators: Entitlement Is Not Strategy

By: Imani Cohen

There’s an undercurrent in every industry…..

A heavy energy of entitlement and desperation that’s easy to overlook unless you’ve been on the receiving end of it. People who’ve abandoned integrity move through the world convinced they’re owed something simply for existing. Folks who expect rewards for the bare minimum. Who will manipulate, cheat, and leverage names, networks, and proximity to take what they haven’t earned.

Struggling doesn’t give you the right to violate others.

Just because you have a smaller platform or business, just because you’re in survival mode, just because you feel behind doesn’t mean you get to steal, lie, or exploit access. That’s not strategy. That’s emotional dysfunction.

Survival mode can turn people manic.

It’s not just a hustle….it’s delusion. The desperation, the entitlement, the twisted sense of justice. People start justifying anything… betrayal, deceit, character theft, spiritual manipulation… because they’ve convinced themselves their circumstances make them deserving. That energy is corrosive. It’s parasitic. And it’s more common than most are willing to admit.

I know that frequency intimately.

When my face was in the gutter, so were my ethics. I couldn’t see the forest past the trees! I was too engulfed in my suffering to recognize the grossness of my behavior. And what I’ve learned is: you cannot build anything sustainable in that energy. You’ll rot before you ever rise. And what’s worse? You’ll begin to believe that using people is the only path forward.

But when you help yourself you will find that there are people willing to help to help you!

Some people will extend the hand, open the door, share the light… but you have to earn the reward. Through code, integrity, hard work and principle. Respect. Accountability. Clean intentions!

Let this be a lesson in business and in life:

If your growth requires stealing, imitating, or betraying…

It’s not growth.

It’s spiritual debt.

I thank God every day for pulling me out of that energy.

Because had I stayed there, I would’ve mistaken parasitism for partnership, and desperation for drive. Uprooting from that space saved my soul. And if you’re reading this and it stings…..it might be time to let it save yours too.

Having Chiron in the First House makes me especially susceptible to deep, personal lessons around identity, worthiness, and boundaries. It’s a wound that lives in my body….one that says you must prove your value through service or you are only lovable if you’re useful. That frequency had me constantly showing up for others, even when it cost me my peace. I’ve had to learn that my gift isn’t meant to be a sacrifice.

S/O to @shesvenusian for breaking this aspect of my chart all the way down. It illuminated so much.

I’ve had such a strong inclination to help others that I unconsciously make it a responsibility and not always from a pure place. Sometimes it came from the wound. From the version of me that thought if I hold enough people up, someone will hold me. But healing Chiron is about learning to hold yourself.

Ascending and up-leveling my energy doesn’t mean being more visible or more accessible.

It means being in a space where people can see me but not touch me.

This is the real work I must do now!

Love you but not more than I love myself

- Imani