Take advice only from those who have solved the same problems that you’re facing and are aware of the steps to do so.
Learn the solution from those who have the solution.
They must have experienced it
You can’t give what you don’t have.
As obvious as it seems, many people seem to not understand that if you have never solved that problem for yourself, you cannot solve that problem for anyone else.
This shows up as people giving advice to you on something that they have never done, or even never learned before.
“Oh you can’t do your business this way, it will never work”, from someone who has been an employee his whole life; “Oh your communication is problematic. Don’t talk to people in that way!”, from someone who literally can’t peacefully interact with anyone without making a scene; “Oh why are you studying in this way? No wonder you have so many questions!” from someone whose academic performance is below you, … etc.
If you have never successfully achieve certain things, how on earth do you know what actually works??
“To teach is to show. You can’t teach what you don’t know. You can’t guide where you don’t go.”
-Kevin Peter Hall
Teaching is showing how you have done it. If you’ve never done it, you have nothing to show!
So, the past experiences of the people you take advice from should fulfil two conditions:
- have been in the exact situation you are currently in, and
- have became how you want to end up as.
You want them to have walked the path that could lead you to your destination, so that they can show you the way.
They must be aware of the “how”
Ideally you would want to find someone who has learned in order to achieve what you wanted to achieve, instead of doing everything right intuitively which is under his awareness and can’t transfer to you.
Take a straight A student who came from failing his exams as an example. You may ask him for advice on how did he make it, and he says something like, “I started paying more attention in class, jotting notes, and revise everyday.”
You may follow exactly what he said yet still unable to replicate his results. Why? You duplicated his actions, but not his mental processes.
The way he “pays more attention” is actively trying to associate what the teacher is saying to what he’ve previously comprehended. The way he jot notes is writing down his new insights. The way he revise is by active recall. But what you did were, paying attention to every single words so as to create verbatim notes (as if you’re a hardworking secretary), and rereading your notes.
How will you end up the same, then?
It is not that the straight A student is trying to hide anything away from you, but he himself is unaware of the mental processes are. Or, he is unaware of the fact that people maybe doing the exact same things at the surface, but completely different mental processes underneath.
Not everyone is able to dissect and examine things in this way, after all.
Best candidates: those who learned their way to success
The straight A student couldn’t be “unaware” of his mental processes if he acquired those by explicit learning.
Say he used to pay attention, jot notes, and revise just like how you’ve been doing. And he still failed.
Then he went on to read a ton of researches and books teaching him how to learn. So now he understands that he has to actively associate between knowledge, and actively recall what he’ve learned in order to boost his memories. After learning about, he learn by putting the learning skills into practice by, learning. He filtered out the “dysfunctional” parts and retained the useful ones he tested with his first-hand real-life experiences.
This learning (learning how to learn) process will not only give him the right results, but also the ability to transfer the “how to learn” skill to anyone else. Because he is completely aware of how he made it.
Of course, you could “be” the straight A student himself, reading a ton of researches and refine the way you learn.
But why won’t you just ask, and shave hundreds of hours from your learning curve?
Getting advice is shortcutting your sufferings, after all.
Try now!
What problems have you been facing? Who is your best candidate to ask advice from?
Take action now and create a better reality for yourself!
Thanks for reading! Your attention and feedback matters to me.
-Learning How to Live 2.0
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