How to avoid bad advice
Experts are relatively very accessible now— and a lot of them genuinely want us to get to a better version of ourselves. Some experts want us to change what we’re aiming at. Some are happy with what we’re aiming at but not with how we’re going about it. With so much of advice being available, it’s easy to get confused about which version of you do you want to chase and how to go about it.
And I’m saying this because I did get confused with the bombardment of advice from various forums, thought leaders, and youtube channels. I could see nothing wrong with their advice as such. So, in trying to clear this confusion, I started questioning the way I look for advice. I focussed on these two questions: i) How do I know that I need to get external advice, and ii) How to evaluate good vs bad advice.
In thinking about this, I realised that to understand the impact of any advice, we can try to evaluate it’s potential role in leading us to a better future. Let’s avoid any attempt on a universal definition of a better future. Instead, let’s roughly assume that each one of us has a picture of future for ourselves that we are working towards. It can be a future away from our present or towards some goal, either ways, we have to find a way to get there.
Which is where we seek help from experts. Experts who have done the ‘journey to our desired future, or beyond’ themselves and have helped other people reach there as well. Often, the advice from experts is consistent and similar for all people who visit them — it might work only for few and not for a majority of cases. Still, most of us feel that the experts had a role to play in the success of a few and are not to be blamed for the failure of the majority. What can we make of that? We typically infer that those who succeeded were more committed and capable than those who failed. We know that being interested in something is not same as being committed to something. Then what actually is the role of expert advice here? And why ‘interested’ (but not committed) people are wasting their time with experts? And more importantly, how does one cross this bridge from being interested to being committed?
Let’s start answering these questions. To understand the role of expert advice, let’s imagine the steps involved in making a journey to the desired future:
- One needs to know what one wants
- One needs to know how to act to get what one wants
- One’s actions should be continuously aligned with what one wants
Most of us, quickly go through steps 1 & 2 and start focusing on step 3. We think we know what we want and we also know how to act to get that. Our focus then remains on point 3 — and then we look for formulas. If one formula doesn’t work — we change it and then we change the next one and so on. Our thinking is focused on tricking the journey through a secret and when we can’t seem to find it, we start loosing hope and it becomes difficult to persevere. Or worse, we figure out that the goal is not worthy enough and look for someone to tell us what to desire. Maybe we don’t know what progress looks like for us and we believe someone else knows better what’s good for us.
Then come the advertisers, they know that we want something — and they know that we are looking for a readymade path, with credibility, and they sell it to us. If they’re more creative, they might even sell a new path — like eating cereals for better mental abilities. Or they know we are primed for new desires, so they plant the new ones which we gladly accept.
What I infer then is, most of us get bad advice because 1) we actually seek bad advice, and 2) bad advice is available more easily because it’s easy to scale.
A better form of advice however, should make us go back to step 1 — or even prior to that. Which sounds like, I know what you want but tell me why is it important to you? We need to question why we want what we want and how badly do we want it. How can that happen?
That can happen when we are able to see, clearly and with sincerity, a new self for us. When we have too much love for a self that we want to attain — or our drive could be from strong hatred towards our current self, the resulting desire is the fuel for us to change and grow. With a deeply felt desire, the path doesn’t become easy, but it keeps you focused on the final outcome. You know that when you are ready to embark on a never ending journey but you don’t feel tired.
So, good advice, in my opinion simply enables you to see your current self and this new self more clearly. I’ll try to spend more time thinking about this.
