On deciding who to listen to in life...

I saw this slogan on a shirt last night:

You're the artist of your life. 
Don't give the paintbrush to anyone else        

Sound advice but fiendishly hard to stick to.

Over the span of 50 years I've often found myself at various crossroads and with doubts about which path to pursue, and not all professional.

I recall when I got a call from the doctor who was on scene as my mother was dying. On the spot I had to make a decision for the doc if to airlift my her to hospital with very high probability that she would be in a coma for the remainder of her life (she was without oxygen to her brain for longer than it is safe) or terminate the efforts (wouldn't wish that decision on anyone).

Sometime it is more trivial, but no less important.

Do you shut down that business you've been pouring sweat, tears and blood for years over? Do you keep working on that personal relationship that doesn't seem to go anywhere? Do you stick with that employer despite how they treat you? Do you give that staff member one more chance?

Asking for help

Our lives are filled with countless decisions, often in unfamiliar territory. So just like a road trip in a new area, it is tempting to ask for directions from locals who know the area well.

But who should you truly listen to?

I'd love to hear your advice in the comments below!

Here are my tips:

• Do they really know what they are talking about or are just couch experts? Generally speaking only listen to those who walked the talk. How to tell them apart? The real experts will ask you lots of questions before volounteering answers while the pseudo-experts will volounteer opinions without asking questions.
• Try not to look for answers but rather for direction. Your own circumstances are exactly that: your own. The advice that my fellow entrepreneur is getting might sound temptingly relevant but will be interpreted differently according to one's own specific. By all means listen to people, but don't seek "the answer" but rather information to help you shape an informed opinion.
• Don't ideolise people. Everyone has biases and errors of judgement. It is SO tempting to listen to famous, seemingly important or succesful individuals thinking "they know". Use their advice (incl mine!) with a pinch of salt and also not as an absolute truth but one person's perspective. What often happens when we listen to famous people who achieved things in life is that we project their success to other areas (e.g. look at how many people listen to movie actors on other areas where the actors are probably not the right person to listen to: e.g. dieting and exercise advice).
• Learn to dissect what you're hearing into sections. It is easy to hear a great perspective and then assume everything else that is being said/suggested also is correct. I encourage you to listen with a critical mind to WHAT is being said and not WHO says it. So I could be sitting with you and you say a number of things and I will agree to point 1, 5 and 7 but disagree wit 2, 3, 4 and 6. Never trust the source blindly.
• Learn the skills of critical thinking... You can start with the legend that is Neil de Grasse Tyson. Below is a cheesy but very good summary of this approach and tips around critical thinking.

• Question your own advice. If you find yourself making a decision on an assumption ask yourself how do you know what you know. I was recently dicussing something we are creating for our city clients because they want it... until we realised (caught ourselves?) that we don't actually know that it is what they want. This little realisation saved us a LOT of work.
• Sometime you do need to go on a limb... It is virtually impossible for you to make the right decision all the time. It is a balancing act of trying (not always succeeding) to make small enough mistakes that they don't sink the boat. Many times you won't know if you made the right decision for a long time (sometime years) so I really recommend the following piece of advice:

Make the most informed decision that you can make and run with it. Most decisions you make are about making a call based on current circumstances. Keep adjusting your trajectory as you travel on your big adventure called life. Keep looking up and making corrections to your journey as the terrain changes. Only the fools stick to the same path regardless.

Not sure where to start?

In case you need more people's views here are a few compilations we put together (free of course) with lots of awesome people sharing their life advice...

How to deal with difficult times

How to handle when reality starts becoming very different from your plans (especially around growing a business)

How to cope with mistakes

Hope this helped you.

Please let me know what you thought about it in the comments. I look at all comments as I love feedback but also to hear what other suggestions you might have!

Yours

York