The Best Advice I Have Heard So Far

Suppose, you deeply admire something and you want to attain that level. So, you read a book written by a person who already sitting at that point. After reading the book you felt that this is the best advice you have heard so far. You felt happy that you found a way or solution to your problems.

But days later you discovered that there is another person in the same position which you want to attain, but giving you another piece of advice. This advice is completely opposite of what you’ve read before in that book.

Now you are standing at the crossroad where both people are in the same position giving you contradictory advice to make you reach that point.

What will be your next step? How do you know what works best for you? It’ll be really confusing. Right?

Maybe not yet but you’ll definitely come across some contradictory advice in your lifetime or perhaps you already did.

Take an example of very common advice of “Work Hard” and “Work Smart”. Both pieces of advice work differently for different people. Nonetheless, both are useful. It depends on the situation of a person. If a person is already under a ton of workload then ‘Work Smart’ is a bit of good advice for him, but ‘Work Hard’ might be bad.

The whole concentration lies in the perspective and circumstances of seeing things.

Advice or Ideas may resonate with one person while it might not make sense to others until the right time comes.

Likewise, the advice of “Thousands of people can’t be wrong” might work for the people who have little knowledge about certain things and for the low-ability people who do not possess the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence or lack of knowledge.

However, this advice doesn’t make sense at all for intelligent people and for people with exceptional qualities.

But, the advice of “It’s better to walk alone in the right direction than to follow the herd walking in the wrong direction” might apply to them which is completely opposite of the advice that I quoted before.

Now, if you’re thinking between these two pieces of advice which one you must follow, then before that you must want to know- Are you Smart or Dumb?

(PS:- It’s going to be the unexpected twist. Make sure to read this article)

Advice Offers Perspective

We all have our own experiences and situations and drawing a piece of advice from that life experience is good.

Fortunately, we all are unique and at different stages of life and require different solutions. However, It’s good to listen to advice as they are offering perspective.

But even so, you must remember that a person can give advice according to their own experiences and knowledge but it is not necessary that the same advice or path works for you too. It’s up to you to identify as people will recommend the one that has done well for them.

This may be the same reason why you should not trust proverbs and idioms blindly.

Let’s take another example, If you’re advising a poor man or a middle-class man, who are by the way struggling daily to earn a living for himself and his family that “Money can’t buy you happiness” then it might not look true and maybe doesn’t apply to them at all, since they are unhappy or depressed due to lack of money itself.

Yet, it truly makes sense for the people who are depressed just because they can’t buy happiness from the money they hold.

These are highly generalized statements that are based on a specific situation. It all depends on the stage of life in which you are currently at.

And if you believe that the advice you received isn’t for you or isn’t favourable to your current situation then just dismiss it there and go ahead. The more advice you have, the more perspective you’ll get to decide.

Listen and learn from other experiences but always come back to the context you are living in. Always be genuine. Always ask yourself if it is going to work for you or not. That’s how you’ll find a balance that is unique to each person and each situation.

But Why You Should Not Dismiss Advice Completely?

People grow, change and attain new knowledge. Life keeps changing. Strangely day by day everything looks the same, but the time you look back everything is different. Your situation and perception might not be the same throughout your life.

Therefore, the Advice that hasn’t applied to you yet could apply to you later.

You cannot use the same idea all the time, similarly, the advice that works for you today might not necessarily work the same way in the future too.

So, use advice when it’s useful to you. Someone said it right- “Ideas are like tools”, you use them when they are needed. This line says it all. Apart from that always stay open to new information and experiences.

To wrap things up, the answer is straightforward – different situations need different solutions. There is no straightforward answer to dealing with challenges.

It may be possible that it all sounds like a very obvious thing to you, but as it is said “Don’t underestimate the significance of obvious things.” because mistakes are often made out of obvious things.

And, thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I would like to know have you ever been in any situation where you had two contradictory pieces of advice to reach the goal? If yes, how did you manage to choose the right one for you? Join the Comments.

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