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by brightlancer
1032 days ago
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> Everyone who offers advice is just telling you their life story, dressed up as a simple directive. "Work harder" often means they wished they worked harder in some part of their life. I think both parts of these are wrong. There are a lot of times that folks who will advise others to do the thing(s) they wished they'd done themselves, but it's definitely not everyone all the time, and I'm not even sure if it's most people most of the time. As often, probably more often, folks advise others to do the thing(s) that they _did_ do. Occasionally, folks are able to give advice that is specific to the recipient. It's definitely not the norm, but I've run into it often enough. tl;dr Don't dismiss someone's advice because you think it's all about them, particularly because you think it's all about their mistakes. |
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it absolutely is most people most of the time. just ponder how many advice columns and platitudinous commencement speeches and gurus and old cranky uncles and pretentious 8th grade teachers (and etc etc etc) there are. hell think of the likelihood of getting XYed in our very own industry.
> folks advise others to do the thing(s) that they _did_ do.
the meat of the point isn't that people exaggerate. even giving people the benefit of the doubt, that they don't exaggerate, they're giving you advice that's 99% of the time non-transferrable, i.e., completely useless for you and serving only the purpose of enabling them to take a nice trip down memory lane. if i'm asking someone for advice, that's an expert, i'm not asking them what worked for them in the instance of the problem they face; i'm asking them about my instance. and it is a very rare person that knows you well enough and takes the time and care and effort to advise someone individually and/or germainely.