How Good Are You at Taking Advice?
This is how I changed my life.
What do you do when someone gives you advice that you asked for?
Does your brain — in its never-ending quest to protect you — serve up every possible reason why the advice doesn’t apply to you?
Do you think a lot about the advice or try to do it your own way and then convince yourself that the advice is broken?
Me, too. It’s so much easier to decide I can’t, when really, I just don’t want to.
I’ve had a lot of success in the last three years.
I started a business that changed my life. I sold a book to a major publisher, when I was pretty sure my traditional-publishing career was over. I earned an MFA. After twenty years of trying, I figured out how to make a living as a writer.
If I follow the threads of all those good things back three years, they all wrap around one thing.
Three years ago, my life was at a low place and something had to give.
I decided to seek out expert advice.
I looked for people already doing what I wanted to do. Successful writers. People earning a living online.