A Triple A Story:
Advice About Advice
“Do not follow any advice, be inspired…”
We all know those amazing, inspirational and motivational speeches from equally amazing people. They tell us their life stories and what they got through and what they did in their way to ‘success’. I also watched those and apart from that received and gave a lot of (un)solicited) but above all well-intended advice. But when you stand still for a second and think about all the messages conveyed to you throughout life about life via texts, talks and videos it is pretty disturbing to realize how confusing, contradicting, exceptional or even meaningless they are.
To be clear, firstly I refer in this post to advice on personal development (not about how to make a good salad) and secondly I don’t suggest a ban on any form of advice on life, in contrast! I would even stimulate you to listen to others and reflect! But there are some things I like to say about advice to create awareness about the mixed messages out there. And hopefully it helps you to better asses and apply them (or not) in your life! Below five aspects you might want to take into account the next time advice comes to you, and you might even want to already apply it on this advice itself 😉.
1. Contradictions all over the place, it already start with the infamous sentence “money doesn’t make you happy BUT it does make things easy”. So, should I then focus more on happiness or money? And all those motivational talks, news, articles and other media on personal development are telling you either to “pursue your dream no matter what” or “relax, be mindful, cause you are already perfect”. So, what is it?
A. Be #mindful and #authentic and live in the #now? In other words, not taking life too serious, not getting stressed, enjoying the little things, loving yourself and others, follow your passion, do what you like doing most and live a peaceful and meaningful life, or;
B. Be a #winner that #workhardplayhard because #yolo? In other words, run, perform, be competitive, don’t waste time, life is short, everything can always be better, overcoming obstacles, climbing out of pitfalls, stand up and keep on fighting, being persistent and patients especially at those moments you almost want to give up and never give up until you reach your dreams.
These are roughly the two messages which interchangeably come to us. And whatever advice you follow, it will be stressful anyways. Going for A might give you guilt (and therefore stress) feelings cause you wonder if you’re not being too relax and maybe waste valuable time which you should use now in the peak of your life to built up something.
But going for B equally gives you stress cause of the huge workload which occupies your life and is supposed to bring you closer to your dreams but at the same time you doubt whether “candy-crushing” (as in brainless time wasting activity) your mailbox and numerous meetings might actually burn you up.
So, don’t let them or those messages make yourself crazy. Cause whatever advice you follow, in all cases it comes down to what your passion, purpose and dreams are in if your actions are in line with them which will be discussed in the following aspect.
2. Your Purpose and passion are the only genuine advisors in life. Which brings us to Alice in Wonderland’s infamous conversation with the Cheshire Cat, to shortly rephrase it: “if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will (not) bring you there!”. This is the starting point to whatever advice reaches you, will this get you closer or further away from you purpose and is it ego- or passion-driven?
And here lies the crux, it is common that inspiration and advice comes from exceptional people who seem to have “made it” or “all figured it out”. It is exceptional however that inspiration and advice comes from the everyman on the street which perhaps has more in common with you. Thus what happens, people want to be like exceptional like the exceptional people. How? To have as much power, influence, possessions, appearance, clothes, fans, followers as they have.
Following ego-driven purposes is far more clear, tangible and easier for that matter than figuring out and following your true passion, purpose and dreams. And, despite a speakers, writers or singers own intentions, it is hard to not get blinded by the status (in whatever form) they have and to desire the same. And yes, it is perhaps the most challenging quest in your life to know you passion, purpose and dreams!
But it might also occur to you that that is the same reason why the growing group of unhappy, depressed, burned-out, dejected and confused people has always been the biggest. Because pursuing ego-driven (extrinsic happiness) purposes are straightforward and nice in the short term, but always dissatisfying in the long term.
In other words, if you put effort in identifying your passion, purpose and dreams early in life, you are ahead of most people! But apart from that, all advice you get can be put in that perspective and context and be more effective to you (or less destructive to put it the other way around). And it is one of the main reasons I dedicate my time in writing these stories, because you are not alone in facing the most challenging quest in your life to identify and pursue your passion, purpose and dreams!
3. Projections all over the place, keep that in mind! Whenever you read, hear or see something, just be aware that this is a representation of a persons reality, belief and perspective on life. There is no such thing as ‘fact’, but more about that here. Moreover, whenever you give advice to a person, it might be good advice, but bottom-line it says a lot if not everything about you! And the same is true the other way around. It is okay if someone, whether it be your parent, sister, friend, boss or neighbor advices something in a very convincing way. But bare in mind it is a projections of that persons view on life and based on how it worked in that person’s life. It might be useful to you but maybe it might not be applicable to you at all, cause you are a different person, surrounded with different people, in a different time and perhaps different location which brings us to the next aspects.
4. Uniqueness is the rule, not the exception to it! To put it simply, and in addition to the projection aspect, everybody (even your twin brother if you have one) is unique and therefore lives a unique live with unique challenges and desires. Stories from Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Oprah Winfrey, Van Gogh, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ghandi or even Jezus Christ, just to name a few, are absolutely phenomenal, extraordinary and inspiring. Nevertheless, their life is as unique as it gets. In fact, when it comes to it, not many (if any) people really want to swop their life having to go through the same events in life (in terms of agony and efforts) to get where they are now.
And that is actually very okay and logical, cause you have different parents, friends, skills, physical traits, zeitgeist, wisdom and above all passions, purposes and dreams then they have. In fact, it is very illogical to blindly follow advice from exceptional people, it is like trying to scram in a puzzle piece from another puzzle into yours. The very reason these people became exceptional is because they followed their own path against all odds, staying authentic and willing to sacrifice certainty for the unknown.
Does anybody of the above exceptional people would have become what they became if they didn’t had followed their own gut feeling? Do you really believe that Jezus Christ in his life would have blindly followed a messiah such as he turned out to be? Moreover, would Jezus become what he became if he did that? Of course it is inspiring, but rigidly trying to be, act or look like your hero doesn’t make yourself one. In contrast, how many stories do you know about a pure follower reaching his full potential?
In addition, each and everyone’s unique journey may include failure or victory, fortune or misfortune, pleasure or trauma, as safe or unsafe upbringing, a broken or stable family and I could name another 500 factors which influences a person. And a similar event could influence one person to get fueled and motivated while another person’s spirit gets extinguished at the same time. For one person being bullied might actually have been the trigger to become the ‘World Champion K1 Fighter’ for others this trauma might have been the basis for a life of fear; for one person a safe and emotionally open family might have led to become the authentic star one had become for others this same situation might have led to a comfort zone lacking the motivation to stretch out of it; and so forth.
My point here, the probability the audience of a messenger is totally different is pretty much 99,99%. Even if they both had divorced parents, came from the same town, have same interests or ethnic background. Of course there are things which creates a bond and connection among people, I just argue that in any case people should think for themselves and avoid blindly following someone else’s advice which might just lead to deviate too much from your own authenticity, passion and dreams.
5. Doing is easier said than done! It is like anything, reading, seeing and listening to advice (mostly while comfortably sitting) is nice, inspiring and “easy” but then, what happens? My estimation is that in more than 98% of the time people are like “wow, inspiring, nice, want that to!!” and then just continue their life without making or doing any change. The doing pretty much makes all the difference! You can elaborately read books, learn, study, watch all there is on YouTube, get all the wisdom, but if this is not transformed into action, it is simply fiction in your mind (more about that here).
After my study in International Business, the professors and textbooks had taught me how to earn, manage and spend millions of dollars within and on behalf a triple A multinationals. It raised the question in me how such huge organizations all started when there was still nothing. So I went to the academic surrounding of Oxford in England to study Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship. It was inspiring and enriching and definitely a read the most articles, journals and books I ever did in my life knowing all the ins and outs of entrepreneurship, creation, change and innovation you could know.
But with all that knowledge and being able to write comprehensive business plans, still nothing much happens. In fact, the best way to summarize the secrets and very meaning of entrepreneurship is in one word “doing”. Which is ironically the whole meaning of the word Entrepreneur from French “entreprendre” which in turn simply means “to undertake”. And I say this a lot in conversations with leaders, my opinion is that all people should be “entrepreneurial” in their lives! Which is not to be confused with being an Entrepreneur running your own business, but the characteristic of being “entrepreneurial” which is (under)taking initiative, action and responsibility for your life and create it as you go.
A characteristic which we don’t learn or actually even delearn throughout our upbringing, education and working life which generally evolves in giving up responsibility to strict and well defined planning, targets, structures, rules and guidelines. But more about this in “Freedom = Responsibility”. The point here is, advice is nice, but doing is key if you really want to make a change for yourself or others!
Maybe after reading the above, my blunt and ambiguous “quote” at the start of this story makes better sense now. Obviously giving advice to not follow advice is very contradicting and confusing, cause literally following that advice and therefore not following would mean to follow all advice. Anyways, even if you wouldn’t get that mind-twister, the point is, be aware, think for yourself and be inspired as opposed to be blinded, pressured or manipulated by advice!