F*ck the Naysayers

We meet quite a few people in our lives. Some of them are so called naysayers. Everything we want to do or are thinking about doing gets smashed by those kinds of people. Let me demonstrate.

“Hey man, I was thinking about building an app that …” “Nah, stop wasting your time, already tried it and had no success.”

Or

“Man, I hate my job, I’m thinking about leaving and started my own business.” “What? You’re crazy. I tried starting my own business but it’s impossible to get any customers nowayads.”

I mean, WTF.

Without knowing the context and background, any advice is useless.

And it’s the same with the yaysayers. If they succeeded in something, that doesn’t mean you can just emulate it and be successful. You have to know the background, the context and every other aspect to trully learn and extract value from their experience.

So, how to deal with it?

I have two different approaches.

1. Nod kindly and ignore whatever they’re saying
2. If you really think you can get some value out of their advice, try to find out more about the background/context and THEN make a decision based on the advice you got.

Most of all, be careful how you filter advice and remember that if someone already tried something similar before and failed miserably, it doesn’t mean you will too.