Dealing with opinions and advice being thrown at you lately?
Don’t do it. Yes, go ahead, do it. You know it’s what needs to happen.
You should consider doing this, I’ve heard it’s what everyone is into now.
Yeah, I thought so.
People tend to weigh-in on your life and offer free advice and opinions. Long ago, I learnt that free advice is the most expensive kind of advice.
When you’re confused about making a choice, usually it’s because you’re trying to factor in too many people’s opinions. You’re valuing the voices on the outside more than the internal one.
There’s an inherent risk with doing this. That is that by valuing everyone else’s opinion and advice, you’re devaluing your own. So when you’re factoring everyone else into your decision, you think you’re making others happy and pleasing everyone, but you’re actually sacrificing what you want.
Not only that, the decision you end up making based on everyone else’s opinion will probably not suit them anyway.
Examples of this are people who have their opinions about the stock price on certain companies but hold no shares of that company in their portfolio. Another example is people who have advice and ideas about how a business should be run but aren’t in a managerial or executive position.
Or worst still, those who offer advice on how to navigate mindset challenges by parroting Tony Robbins, Louise Hay or the local therapist because they sound like they know what they’re talking about.
Don’t get me wrong. The three people I mentioned above have a lot of valuable insight. The trouble is the person who’s regurgitating their insight. The parrot is offering the advice they heard someone else say. They’re also the last person to take the advice they’re dishing out.
It’s like being told to buy an Audi by someone who’s been driving a Honda for 10 years. “Oh yeah, Audi is a top brand. It’s really high quality, and they’re German-engineered. You can’t go wrong. I’ve never driven one, but they’re top class. You should definitley buy one.”
This is what the car ‘expert’ is secretly driving
You might be laughing at how ridiculous this is, but many people who pose as insightful are just reciting real insight they got from elsewhere. Don’t be fooled by what appears to be authoritative.
The same is true for dealing with anxiety. Just because these experts were trained in dealing with anxiety, they know some people who have gone through it, or they’ve read an anxiety book once, does not mean they understand anxiety.
Sometimes I get asked where my certification and expertise comes from when it comes to helping people with anxiety. My answer to that is simple, I tell them that I endured anxiety for years, got myself out of it and have helped many do the same.
Many people are toting themselves as anxiety experts all over the web. As far as I’m concerned, they’re only experts at making people like my clients and me anxious. So they’re not entirely dishonest. There is expertise there, just not in the way we’d all prefer.
So here’s the most expensive free advice you’ll get from me — trust yourself. When others are hurling advice, opinions and tricks at you, listen to your inner knowing — your intuition, your gut, your quiet intelligence — it’s telling you whether you just scored a nugget of gold or a bag of garbage.
The reason this is expensive advice because if you ignore your intuition, it’ll cost you a lot.
Just look at the people throughout history who chose to follow their inner knowing or intuition in the face of popular criticism and judgment. It proved to be valuable for them to listen within and trust what they heard.
Trust yourself. Don’t settle for what you’re being told just because they’re loud or appear to be important.