How To Spot Dangerous Advice

I've been thinking a lot lately about bad decisions, and not just the bad decisions that other people have made or maybe you have made, but the bad decisions that I've made. And when I think about where they come from, they tend to have a couple of common components. First, you've got someone in a transition period of their life. They don't know what to do. They're confused, and in that confusion, they go seeking advice. But unfortunately, the bad decision arises when they take the wrong advice. They listen to the wrong person. Now, the thing is, this is avoidable and it should be obvious, but a lot of people don't know, who should I take advice from, and how do I actually know which advice is bad before I try it? So that's what this video is about. If you're in a transition period, it's going to be excellent for you. Or if you find yourself just bombarded with people in your life that are telling you what to do, this can help. So here's the first thing. When you're considering who to take advice from, only ever take advice from people who are living the life you want. And in that particular field now, it seems incredibly obvious, but all the time, and maybe you've experienced this, maybe you've done this. Have you ever gone to a friend asking for career advice for when that friend doesn't have a career that you want or you're a guy? I see this all the time. You've gotten a girl's number. What should I text her? I see you guys asking their buddies who have never had a successful girlfriend or, you know, texted someone. That went, well. You need to ask the people who have done what you want to do. They're the ones that have the answers now. In my own life, I came up against a stark realization of this when I wanted to quit my job to start the company that became Charisma On Command. At the time, I had this dream that I was going to move to Brazil. I was gonna bring my friends, we'd hang out on the beach, we'd drink caipirinhas, and we'd find a way to pay for it all. It was a kind of a selfish dream, but it was my dream at what, 23, 24 years old. And when I started talking to people about leaving, starting a business, across the board, everyone in my job, all of my friends, my family, said, do not do it. That's a ridiculous idea. Can't be done. Maybe when you're 65, after you've earned it and you've moved up Then you can do it. I want to tell you how I knew not to take that advice. First thing is, when you're trying to figure out if someone's giving you good advice is this. Look at them. You can see where their advice has taken them. And immediately that ruled out the people that were giving me advice. Because I looked around and I saw not bad people, but futures that I didn't want. I saw the people around me in the company and I didn't want their job. I saw friends that were moving up in their companies, and honestly, I didn't want their path either. My family, God bless them, I love them all, but I did not want to be a counselor like my mom or a salesman like my dad. I wanted this ridiculous dream of moving to Brazil. And no one had done that, so they were immediately removed. But say that even that was enough to convince you. The second thing that you can do is go to the people who have followed their advice and see what happened, right? If you're trying to vet whether you should hire somebody, right. If you have a consultant or a business coach or anything like that, go to the people that they've worked with and ask them what has taking their advice done for you? And in my own life, I applied this, right? I looked around, friends that were on this path, cousins that were a little bit older. It did not look like anything that I wanted for myself. So that again, threw it out. This makes it very simple. But the third thing that's going to drive it home is, okay, maybe I'm willing to try this advice, but can I test it quickly? And the answer for this, the advice that I was getting was spend another year half in your job, go to MBA school for two, three years, then come back lateral to a different thing, and then 10 years later, then you'll maybe have enough money to go do this thing after your friends are all married and nobody wants to go to Brazil with you, which was not a testable subject. And I hope purposely, I understand a lot of you have never seen me interact with another person. This is a YouTube channel. The only way I can talk to you is one to one on video. So the way that I hope that I build credibility with you is not through a college that I went to or a GPA or, or somebody saying that I've got a TED Talk or whatever that is. I hope it's by you testing the things that I say and getting results. Honestly, if you're not doing that, then you're not gonna get value out of the channel. So the third thing, can you test their advice quickly and if you can, you know what, give it a shot. But that's how to rule people out of your life. And unfortunately for me, at this point in my life, I've ruled out every single person I knew. Nobody was living the life I knew. So I knew what not to do to get this Brazil dream. But I didn't know what to do. And that's where, thank God, the Internet and books came in. You can get digital mentors and they are out there. So if there's something in your life that you think is an impossible dream, and you're like me, you grew up in the suburbs, you don't have a lot of people around you who have maybe done it before, get on the Internet, find someone who has done it before. The four hour work week in this case became my bible, became the guide. It laid out basically the first year of the existence of Charisma on Command, the way that we were going to grow the company. And within that year I picked up, I'd moved to Brazil. And I don't just mean from a, you know, here's the website I have to start, here's how to get customers. I mean, the mindsets. Oftentimes that stuff is the most important. So if you guys have something in your life, I realize I'm talking generally an area of your life that maybe I can point you towards a resource that has helped me write it in the comments for getting out of your job, starting a business, great place to start, four hour work week with other stuff, let me know and I can point you towards a good resource. But that's steps one and two. Who not to follow, who to follow. The third thing is that you're a human being, right? And it is tough. You feel schizophrenic when you're the only one out there who has this vision of going to Brazil and everybody else thinks that you're crazy. So what you need to do is find friends that maybe they don't have the template to do it, but they're supportive. And the question that I recommend you ask yourself right now is which friends, family members, co workers do I have that are genuinely invested in my happiness, even if it means I change? And which friends and family members and co workers do I have that are really only invested in keeping our relationship at a status quo? And you'll know this because the ones that want the status quo, whenever you start to change, even for the better, they shoot it down. They tell you that you're not really good at improv comedy that it wouldn't work out if you did that stand up mic, whatever it is, they tend to shoot it down. The ones that are into change, that are invested in your happiness, see you growing in a positive direction, going to the gym and. And they give you praise for trying. They don't have the path necessarily, but they will get behind you. Surround yourself with as many of those people as you can and cut out the ones that do not want you to be happy. Unless it means you not changing. You won't be happy, you will not change, and it will go to a bad place. And it sucks when those people are close to you. But you have to limit it if you want to make a big change and take the right kind of advice. So those are the first three pieces. The fourth thing often gets missed on people and it's this. When you're going through a big change in life, you're not just absorbing a skill set, right? If you're here on charisma, on command, you're starting to do the things that we say in other videos in terms of how to interact with people. Yes, there's a skill set there, but you are also absorbing a life philosophy. You're absorbing that, yes, you can change your personality into a positive way. You can present yourself better, and that's not a bad thing to do. There are certainly people out there that think that is one, impossible and two, immoral. So you're absorbing some kind of a life philosophy. I see this in marketing. People want to learn to get better. They go to learn from a guy who is a liar. And yes, they get better at marketing. They sell stuff, but they become liars in their writing and in their life. So personally, I had a very bad experience with this when I was younger. I was very shy. And the first place that I went, because this was the most frustrating part for me to get over that shyness was to online things that were like, how do I get a girlfriend? And a huge thrust of that community. At the time, pickup artist community was alpha and beta. And I looked at it and went, crap, I'm beta. You know, how am I doing this? It's going terribly. And so for probably a couple weeks, even bordering on months, I started to try to not be that. That meant that I wouldn't do people favors when they asked, when they asked me to, hey, can you hold this for me? I'd give them back talk or sass or crack a joke. And so over the course of a couple weeks, sure, maybe some of the responses I got from women who liked that kind of jerk guy went better. But that morality that I absorbed was becoming who I was. And thank God I had someone. I was on a trip, we were in a museum, and she just yelled at me in the middle of this museum for being such a jerk. That kind of snapped me out of it. Went, what am I doing? Is this how I want to be? So ask yourself, whenever you're learning from anyone, in business, in dating, relationships, whatever it is, when you're in that transition period, you are receptive and you are absorbing the a life philosophy. Do you want that life philosophy? Do you want perhaps the anger that they feel? Do you want the combative nature with which they view the world? Do you want the kind of scarcity that they feel around money? Do you want to make a buck at the expense of your integrity? These are all questions you have to ask yourself. And I recommend that even if you do find somebody who's effective and has done it, but they don't match your morality and your ethics, that you let it go. It's not worth it. There's so many good people out there that can lay you down the path that has a strong life philosophy and a good skill set. That's just not worth it to go through the experience that I have of picking up these bad habits and then trying to tear them down so that you don't become a jerk. So I hope that that's helpful in terms of advice. Who to take it from, who to not. This was not intended to be the video that I did this week. In fact, this week has been incredibly interesting for me, to say the least. I don't want to tease it too much. I've learned a ton, and I'm really, really excited to share what happened this week, what you can take from it, because I think it's perhaps one of the most important things I learned. But I didn't do it because I haven't wrapped my head around it totally yet. And I don't want to come out of the gun teaching you guys some things that I haven't fully integrated myself. So be on the lookout for that. I'm hopeful in the next week or two, I'll have something very, very good and exciting for you guys on YouTube. Of course. Also, Game of Thrones, new breakdown coming. Muhammad Ali, rest in peace. Somebody that I should have done way before he died. But with all the videos that came in, I want to do one of him. So if you're interested in all of that, hopefully in the next few weeks, make sure to subscribe to the channel. I'm really excited for what is coming in the next few weeks. Of course, if you have any comments about things that you'd like to learn, advice that you would like in certain areas, or gurus that I can point you to where I don't have the answers, I will try to point you in the right direction in the comments. And of course, I hope that you've learned something here. I hope that you are testing the advice that I am giving you and finding it worthwhile. Because if not, shame on you. You need to do that or get off the channel. But I hope that you're enjoying this and I am looking forward to seeing you in the next video.