BTW: That Life-Advice Guru Might Not Be Speaking to You
Take more risks they say… but to who?
Everyone wants to give you advice. “Gurus” on your TikTok feed, your family, friends, teachers…
But, who should you listen to?
While one guru tells you that you need to take more risks, the other will tell you that you need to be calculated, cautious, and conservative.
At the same time, your local fitness influencer is telling you to spend 3 hours a day in the gym, while the next guy says that 1 hour a day, 3 days a week is enough.
It seems that people’s advice often conflicts with each other.
So, once again, who should you listen to?
Build your self-knowledge
You cannot take advice properly if you do not know yourself. This is the easiest way to accidentally take a step back.
Jeff Bezos famously encourages others to take risks. This advice might be great for someone who doesn’t take risks. But, for someone like me who takes over-the-top risks far too often, it can be potentially damaging advice.
Now, I’m lucky that I know myself well enough that I understand I don’t need to take more risks and instead need to calculate my risks better.
That comes from self-knowledge.
With the proper level of self-knowledge, you can absorb advice, know whether it applies to you and figure out what to do with it.
What could be more important than that?
There is an infinite amount of valuable knowledge and advice out there.
Unfortunately, the majority of it will be no good to you if you do not first build your self-knowledge.
Here are a few ways to improve your self-knowledge:
Meditation
Regular journaling
Constant reflection
Professional therapy
Identify your goals
Goal setting is ultimately what helps you determine what sources to take advice from.
If you want to be a professional fighter, you will not take advice from Justin Trudeau (I hope not anyway). On the other hand, if you want to be a politician, you wouldn’t take advice from Connor McGregor.
With the infinite amount of advice out there, you need to be able to filter through it.
Your goals serve as your north star. It’s the direction you want to head in, but there are steps along the way (or levels if you will).
Throughout your journey, if you understand what level you are at, you can keep shifting your sources of advice.
For example, if you are starting as a basketball player, you likely won’t follow the routine Lebron James followed when he was 35. You should instead follow what he did when he was at your level.
Identifying your goals is one of the best ways to filter the vast amounts of information out there and eliminate what is unnecessary.
Understand that life has ups and downs
Regardless of your goals though, life will still have ups and downs. That means everything always changes.
As life changes, so should your sources of advice.
If you become too narrow-sighted and only focus on your goal to become a politician, you may miss advice on how to be a good person.
You will be so focused on becoming a powerful public speaker, great salesman and negotiator, that you end up forgetting the other valuable aspects of life.
Again, that’s where self-knowledge comes into play.
Regularly evaluating your life and self as a whole will help you identify when a shift needs to be made.
You may notice a shift happening. Now, your relationship needs more attention than your career.
So, you reopen your filter, shift where you get your advice from to the appropriate channels and your life will gradually come back up.
Instead of taking Donald Trump’s relationship advice, you’ll be taking Logan Ury’s.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, what worked for Jeff Bezos or Alex Hormozi might not work for you.
You’re in a different place, a different era, and are a different person altogether.
Maybe you’ve already taken a lot of risk and it didn’t work out. They don’t know that. They are just letting you know what worked for them.
That’s why there is a good chance that most people’s life advice will be no good to you until you build up your self-knowledge.
Thanks for reading