My one piece of advice.

Most advice is bad advice.

Case in point, I found this post which basically said “everyone should know how to do this in order to be a well-rounded adult”.

It was followed in the comments by many people offering their own additions to things that are “mandatory to be taught in school”. Things like: vacuuming, understanding supply chains and stock market trading.

How useful is this advice? Is it really mandatory for someone in New York to learn car maintenance when they will never drive? And wouldn’t teaching someone survival skills just mean there’s more competition for the scarce resources when the zombie apocalypse comes?

Luckily, one commenter helpfully pointed out these mandatory subjects “…are very subjective to culture, religion, demographics and geographical area.”

That one comment highlights everything I think is wrong with most advice out there.

Advice tends to be either too generic to be useful or too focused on what the advice giver would do and believes as opposed to being focused on what’s most useful for the receiver.

We are all unique people with our own backgrounds and goals, so a one size fits all solution isn’t possible.

How helpful is it to you if someone says “just put yourself out there” if your confidence is shot and you’re incredibly shy. Or if someone says “you need more work/life balance” when you can hardly pay the bills.

There is Good Advice Out There

Don’t get me wrong, there is good advice out there and some people give great advice.

The key is that the advice given is personalized to you. It speaks to your specific situation and personality. It helps you achieve the goals you’ve set out for yourself.

I find people who give good advice unknowingly follow a principle called Feedforward.

The idea here is that

1. You ask permission or are asked for your advice before giving it.
2. You provide personalized suggestions to help the person reach their goal.
3. You have no attachment as to if they use it or not. It’s not that you don’t care, it’s that you recognize they are capable of using your advice as they best see fit.

Think of it as a personalized, thoughtful gift where you aren’t offended by how the gift is used or isn’t.

It all comes down to respect for the individual. Respect for who they are, where they are at and their ability to move forward and make their own choices.

My One Piece of Advice

Let’s be honest, it’s hard to give personalized advice without deep understanding of a person. So you’re probably not going to get it in most aspects of your life (ie. workshops, in passing, motivational quotes), so ignore the stuff you don’t like.

In fact this trick is really the only valuable generic advice I give clients so I’ll say it again...

Take the advice you like and get rid of the rest.

It’s as simple as that. If the advice doesn’t resonate with you, don’t use it. If there are pieces you like than take those and get rid of the rest. ?(I know it can be hard to do because of the societal pressures to use the advice you’re given, but that’s a topic for another day).

All that’s going to happen if you’re trying to apply advice that doesn’t work for you is that you’re going to stress yourself out.

I see this all the time with clients. They are told things like “they need to be active on LinkedIn” and then stress out because they know they are never going to post even though someone told them this is the way to get what they want.

How much better would that person feel if they ignored that advice and found another way to achieve their goal. An approach that aligned with their personality. Something they would actually do. It would not only lower their stress, it would also help them move forward.

So lower you’re stress and focus on the advice that actually helps you…toss out the rest.

Smile, Life’s Great!!!

Dave

PS. I actually own that book “Damn Good Advice”….and it does actually have some good advice; if you toss out what doesn’t work for you.

?www.DavidMcCurdy.ca