People can give solid advice even when they are struggling or even when they failed in the same area. A smoker can tell you smoking is bad. Someone whose marriage ended can still recognize unhealthy patterns. Someone who made financial mistakes can warn you about the traps they fell into. Two things can be true at the same time.
A useful skill is learning to tell when advice is grounded in reflection versus when it is shaped by unprocessed regret. People often speak from a mix of past experience and current emotion. Some insights are helpful, some are fear driven, and it takes a little judgment to sort out which is which.
So instead of accepting or rejecting advice automatically, it helps to look at where it is coming from. Are they sharing something they have actually thought through, or are they reacting to their own past? The value of the advice depends less on whether their life went well and more on how honestly they have understood it.
A professor once gave me similar advice when I was trying to get into grad school. I repeated a bunch of advice I had heard from other students who were struggling with the same thing, and he said “Why are you listening to them? Go ask the grad students here who have already gotten into grad school.”
It was such obvious advice in retrospect, but it was eye-opening for me at the time, and I’ve applied it to many other parts of life.
There is a difference between “advice” on how to do something vs. “advice” on what to avoid or how not to do it.
I would gladly take advice on how to do something from someone who succeeded, and I’d equally gladly take advice on what not to do from someone who failed.
They are both invaluable.
People learn from mistakes, not success.
Agreed. The OP makes it sound like you should only take advice from successful people, but successful people might just be lucky. We should also be careful to not take investment advice from lottery winners.
Yep. In my experience the real trick is to find the value in advice, regardless of who/what/why (as I give this advice haha). For example, we’re trained to call out hypocrites but really, hypocrisy shouldn’t be immediately discounted just because it’s hypocrisy. A drug addict can absolutely tell someone they shouldn’t do drugs. Hypocritical? Yep. Good advice from someone who really knows? Also yep.
Critical thinking is the single most important skill a human can learn.
A drug addict can absolutely tell someone they shouldn’t do drugs. Hypocritical? Yep.
It’s not even hypocritical, the risk of addiction is literally the reason why you shouldn’t even try certain drugs, and the addict not being able to quit even though they know that it’s bad just proves the point.
Just watch out for people projecting their specific problems onto your situation when you don’t have those problems. Mostly a problem with unsolicited “advice”
listen to people who warn you about something that fucked them up.
don’t touch the fire - person with burned hands
Listening to the regrets of others in the context of their lives is how you get wisdom, at least without first hand experience from making the same mistakes.
I love that I had the same idea as most people in here. You level headed assholes are the best.
Sounds like this guy keeps getting shitty advice from everyone. I’m not going to listen to someone like that.
survivorship bias speed run incoming
stop worrying about where advice comes from and just actually think about shit
That’s the first thing I thought when I read this post and I don’t understand why you are not upvoted more.
OP wants me to take advice from the person who won the lottery and disregard all the others who sunk stupid amounts of money and got nothing to show for it? I’d rather hear them all and make an informed decision.
I advise the opposite actually, seriously consider the source of the advice. I’ve seen people in relationships that I wouldn’t want to be in give relationship advice and I made a point to consider such advice as part of how you wind up in a relationship like that. Meanwhile I have people I respect and when they have advice on issues relating to why I respect them I take it seriously even if it’s something I would brush off from most people.
Now obviously think about all advice, but framing and weighing it off the advice giver is valuable. The positive financial advice (do this with your money) of a broke person is worth a lot less than the negative financial advice (don’t blow your money like I did on this) that they may have
you misunderstand, that’s the thinking part
put advice into context sure
but people just love to dismiss thoughts (including advice) because of their source
hell some of the best advice is in spite of their source and the opposite of their intent
Sounds more like linkedinlunatics than genuine advice.
I mean if they’re saying something like “don’t do this thing, because I did it and it was a mistake”. E.g. Don’t manipulate people for financial gain, because you will lose your friends and die alone like me". That’s good advice.
But if they’re saying something like “do this thing, because even though I failed, you will succeed”. E.g. Lie to people all you want, to gain what you want, just be smarter than me when doing it". That’s bad advice.
Advice given by the same person on the same topic, just with different morals.
Yes it’s much better to get advice from people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Because why would you listen to someone who’s divorced about marriage it’s not like they’ve been married, oh wait.
What? The best thing you can do is to learn from other’s mistakes.
I love when fat people tell me to eat 6 times a day, avoid fat and sugar, avoid white bread and pasta, drink and eat light products, yet sneak in a snack now and again to keep up my energy level, and to remember that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
I have to bite my lip to not blurt out: Yeah, so how’s that working for ya’?
I used to work in the trades and the worst advice I ever got was from older men who forced their advice on me. I never asked for their advice. They just felt the need to trauma dump on me for all their regrets by giving me “advice” that was always meant for their younger selves.
If I had ever taken any of their unasked and unwanted advice, I would have ended up as miserable as they were and feeling like I lived a life of regret.
Personally I believe that’s this is the best people really can do. Wisdom is learning from ones mistakes. Domino this is sharing their wisdom
It’s is up to you to do whatever you feel is best with it.
My divorced friend can tell me that their marriage went terribly wrong. It doesn’t mean that I should not marry either. Ask why, ask what went wrong and take that into consideration.
I’d rather have advice and feedback from personal experience than theoretical advice from someone who has not tried (and failed) at the subject
When I give advice, I usually do my best to tell people about the things that worked for me and what lessons I learned while having them work for me.
This is the way. People respond better to non-directive information like this anyway.
Elon Musk successfully did the thing. Donald Trump also successfully did the thing. And several others like them successfully did the thing.
Does being successful at a thing make you a role model? … Not really.
Success or failure matter less than what you learn from it. And I think most of us would agree that the above examples learned the wrong fucking things.
