Stop Giving Advice. Just Live Dammit.
In response to Derek Sivers article on a warning to receiving advice, how we should look at it, and how we should trust our own gut.
I recently read this article right after just writing a piece on my addiction to save the world, and it was just another needed slap in the face (we all have our vices), that allowed me to see that I really do have a problem, and that’s okay.
Because I’m learning, and growing and smiling while doing it.
After reading his article, which was great in pointing out just how we should value the advice that I receive from others, in which I have always took it with a pound of salt rather than a grain, I realized that, once again, I have been doing it all wrong. And that’s okay.
I ended up writing back this response to his article because, (and I never really like to comment, I like to be a lurker), but I just had to say a quick AMEN because for one my insomnia is keeping me up and just cuddling me as I learn these lessons, and two, I found it ironic that it would come up NOW as I deal with so much including getting over a very serious respiratory infection:
This is such an on point article because I realized a couple days ago–well my friend pointed out–that I am addicted to other people’s problems. I had to actually think about it because I had consciously swore off giving advice last year because I realized that in order for me to really feel good about the advice and not be upset at the person that was going to criticize me or get angry at me later for it not working, that the best advice I could give was proof. Living out the words instead of actually trying to tell people what to do with the “information that I was given”.
I’m not all knowing, I thought I was, but since being on a medical leave for a having a mental and emotional breakdown and getting extremely sick, I’m starting to learn different.
I speak for a living as well, a motivational speaker, which is hilariously ironic and I point it out every time I speak that, I always go back to a line that Jay-Z said in one of his raps (cause rappers know all): “Everbody can tell you how to do it, but they never did it.”
And then I pair it up with words my friend said that was: “This is everyone’s first time here at life, no one can tell you the right answer cause, we are all winging it”. #impostersyndrome
Great article, I am going to start taking my own advice, for once, and have fun time embracing this incredibly crazy journey, that we call life.
So go read the article, and go out and be you already.
