Seems ironic that this piece of advice is on not taking advice. A little backstory: I stopped taking advice from 99% of people many years ago. It’s not because I’m “better” or “smarter” than they are. Actually, I would prefer to receive more advice… if it was beneficial. But most of the time, it’s not.
And I think most of my older readers would already agree with this statement. Advice many times, can just be plain ridiculous.
Like when the overweight coworker suddenly becomes an expert on nutrition & fitness right when you start dieting – and tries to tell you to follow some fad diet.
This is a facade. It’s an appearance. Whenever you hear the words like “used to” or “when I did that”, they are usually trying to sell you on something they are not actually doing themselves.
But more importantly, there is a value conflict with advice that is often overlooked.
Why You Shouldn’t Take Advice From Most People
Your values, your goals, your ideal results ~ They don’t 100% match with anyone else. This is the core problem with advice.
Do you value money over free time? Free time over job security? What is your risk tolerance? Is work culture or the actual job description more important? There’s thousands more of these value-deviations that are evident between humans.
And it’s exactly why advice can be so unhelpful. Others may not have the same goal(s) that you have.
If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, and talk to an established corporate worker that has been at the same company for 30 years, your values will not sync. He/She will not be able to understand why you have a desire to “be a free spirit” in the world of business.
Does this mean his advice would be wrong? No. But it almost definitely would be wrong for you. The corporate worker values stability, the entrepreneur values expedition. This core value conflict is incompatible when giving advice, and would be useless to fulfilling any goals an entrepreneur may have.
In fact, it could actually be damaging. And I could relate.
When I was younger, I was pushed very heavily to go into certain career fields based off of advice from many elders/peers. So I did. And after graduation I realized I hated working in all of those career fields with a passion.
And in my heart, I always knew I’d hate those career fields. The prospects of that kind of work always made me imagine running the other direction. But I trusted the ‘wisdom’ and did it anyway. Which was a mistake.
Luckily, I’ve since turned that around and found something I do enjoy. But I can only fathom how many other people fall for the advice trap, either in a big case such as mine, or something as small as dieting tactics.
What Advice Should You Take?
So I’ve given a few reasons why you shouldn’t take advice from most people. But what advice is noteworthy?
Not only should you take advice, but you should actively seek it. But from a very small amount of people.
People that you know would have similar values and goals to you. If you prefer free time over money, and you know someone else does as well – find them and get any advice off of them as possible. Use sparingly, and always question it. But definitely seek it.
It’s just an obvious answer hiding in the woods. If you’re dissatisfied with something, you can’t seek advice from people that are satisfied with that exact same scenario.
You have to think bigger, and figure out your goals/values and how they conflict with the anyone else giving you advice.
You can tell when you’re moving in the right direction. Others can’t tell you that.
Once you have this down, you’ll be set to actually gain something from advice.
Read Next: The Fear Of An Uncertain Future
Nice article Avi, I definitely learned this a bit too late in my own life (college and all!)