So making choices is difficult, letting other people tell you who you should be is bad, knowing what you want to do with you life is hard. It seems that we need all the help we can get with decision making. And what better way to do it than to listen to advices?

When you read books by people who think they’re smart and talk to people that believe they poses wisdom which is beyond your current state of development (a fancy way of saying they think they are better than you) and here I think mostly of teachers, who are responsible for so much of the brain washing that goes on in the early years of our life, you’ll get a lot of advices. Tons. Which ones are good, which are bad? Which are status-quo defending things that only beat you into submission and which are pieces of common wisdom or genuinely insightful thoughts we should pay attention to?

The sad part is that you have no way of telling, the good think is that there is a trick to dealing with this. The trick is to listen. Listen before you do, watch and learn, just long enough to make your own decisions. Maybe these are influenced by others, most of the time they are, but they are your own, you’ve thought about them.

Suddenly a piece of advice somebody gave you will become your decision, not his advice. Even if you choose to do exactly what that someone recommended you, it’s still your decision, your making. This has a downside and an upside. The downside is that, if it goes wrong, the advice doesn’t work and everything goes crushing down and you can’t blame it on the one who gave you the advice. The upside is that you can’t blame it on anybody else but you.

“What? Did he just said the same thing twice?”, you might ask. Yes I did. The easiest way is to blame bad decisions on somebody else. Sometimes people who give advice are plain incompetent, and have no interest to put too much thought in what they say. Sometimes they are well intentioned and wise and put in the thinking time into it but they can’t see it from your point of view or have different values (think of your parents) and all of the times, they are not you. Advices have to be filtered through your brain, your values,.untill they become your decision, not commands from somebody else. You can’t blame it on others.

Another thing you must learn is to take the risk. It sucks, it’s uncomfortable, failing sucks big time, there is no one but you to blame, but it’s the only way to take a decision. In the long run in pays of in confidence and experience. Learning to filter what everybody else is telling you that you should do and making you own decisions is the first step in doing. Doing is the first step in succeeding or failing.

So if you want my advice: “First listen, than do”.

I leave you with a song mildly related to this post.

Read on, my dear reader.

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