The Best Advice I Have Received (is often stupidly obvious)
The best kind of advice I have received in my life is so obvious that it feels stupid to say it out loud. Advice like this is often ridiculed online for being simplistic (and thus useless). I used to share this sentiment. But I don't anymore.
Turns out, hardly anyone is able to truly follow such advice. I often find it surprisingly hard to. But when I'm able to, it has bestowed upon me great gifts.
Here's some great advice.
- Embrace failure.
- Practice a lot.
- Look for silver linings.
- Be grateful.
- Stand up for yourself.
- Don't care about what other people think.
- “Just—” advice. Effective once I started understanding my own mind.
- Just don't get annoyed? Just let it go? Just be yourself. Just say no? Just do it.
- Take breaks. Drink water. Exercise. Sleep well.
- Work hard. (Also, work smart)
- Don't worry.
- Be kind and patient.
- Stay curious. Never stop learning.
- Be a good listener.
- You can do it.
You get the idea. I don't need to keep listing, I'm sure you can mentally fill this out more.
This kind of advice is often older than literature. It is resilient, not-clever and very lindy.
Highly elaborate or clever advice becomes too specific to a situation and is only useful if you had shared the same circumstances as the fellow who came up with the advice.
“Obvious” advice on the other hand has survived this long because it's simple to share, and more importantly, actually effective.
By elevating such obvious advice, I am exposing myself to ridicule. But I don't care about what other people think.
Appendix: Why this kind of advice gets a bad rep
Here's why I think such advice gets a bad rep.
- It's often unsolicited or given out patronizingly by useless geezers.
- It's given to people who wanted a sounding board, and not solutions.
- People soliciting advice want an easy solution to their specific problem, and classic advice like this is not easy to adopt and lacks the required specificity.
- People receive this kind of advice out of context. “Work hard” should be given to lazy people and “Take more breaks” to workaholics.
- Some people want their advice to sound smart. Rephrased in flowery, intelligent or academic language, the same advice would likely stick better. This trick used to work well on me.