Life Advice That Sounds Good But Will Destroy You

Good advice can help you, but the wrong advice can lead you down a path of wasting years. In this video, I'm going to tell you the 5 worst pieces of advice people give out. If you haven't gotten one of these, I'd be shocked. And I'll show you what to do instead so you can build a life you're proud of instead of one filled with regret. I'll be drawing from my research, lessons from my career working in the White House and writing 7 books, even as the dad of 3 kids. Let's go. Dangerous advice number 1: You can be anything you want to be. If this were true, I'd be a retired NBA legend, not the guy who was cut from his 7th grade basketball team and asked to handle the statistics. The truth is, we're just not good at some things. One of my own adulthood's most important discoveries is that I'm not good at most things. There's a tendency among parents and bosses in the wider world to try to fix our weaknesses. And I get that. We should make sure our weaknesses don't hold us back too much. But we will generally be much better off If we accentuate our strengths. For instance, at one point in my life, I thought I should be running something, a big media outlet, an important nonprofit. But I'm not very good at that. I'm a mediocre organizer and orchestrator. You could send me to 5 years of boss training, and I think I'd still be pretty bad. But rather than lose myself in the delusion that I can become anything, I worked to understand my unique strengths, and I've tried to use those. So what do you do? When you're young, try lots of stuff. Sure. Experiment. Play around with different skills, subjects, and areas. By all means, pursue your dreams. If you're both open-minded and hard-headed, though, you'll learn you can't be anything. But you can become really good at a few things. I'm a fan of the Japanese concept of ikigai. Your success, your happiness, your very reason for being sits at the intersection of 4 areas: what you like doing, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for. Look at this chart. It doesn't say you can be anything. Not at all. But it does say there's a narrow patch where you can be something meaningful. That's your sweet spot. On to the second piece of bad advice: make a plan and follow it. On the surface, seems sensible. Deep down, it's flawed. You know, I talk to lots of young people who have an intricately thought out, meticulously designed plan. I'll major in this subject. Which will lead to this first job, which will lead to this next job, which a decade or two later will inevitably deliver me to the promised land of my ultimate life goal. They're approaching their life as a series of chess moves, carefully moving pieces from one square to another to try to checkmate life. But that's a mistake. Life isn't chess. It's more like bumper cars. And you're not always the one steering. There are 2 ways you can make decisions about what to do with your life. You can make decisions for instrumental reasons or fundamental reasons. Instrumental reasons are the building blocks of these detailed plans. They're all about where a decision will lead. I'll study a subject even though I'm not all that interested because it will lead to a job. I'll take a job that seems like a terrible fit because it will lead to the next opportunity. Fundamental reasons are the opposite. They are the antithesis of planning. I'll study this topic because it sounds interesting, even though I don't know precisely where it's going to take me. I'll accept this job because I get to do interesting work, With cool people, even though I'm not sure exactly where it's going to lead. When I was younger, I believed in instrumental reasons. I revered them. I was a master tactician and expert planner. But before long, sometimes painfully, I made a startling discovery. Instrumental reasons often just don't work very well. The world is way too complicated and changes in ways you never expect. You are way too complicated and will change in ways you never expect. And if you're young and don't believe me, try this experiment. Find someone in their 40s or 50s whom you admire, who's doing something you might like to do yourself, and ask them how they got where they are. 9 times out of 10, the people you admire, the people piling up accomplishments and leaving an imprint, will answer the question like this: It's a long story because they were making decisions for fundamental reasons and dealing with the uncertainty of not knowing immediately where those decisions would take them. But that allowed them to sustain their motivation in the face of difficulties, stay alert to opportunities they would have otherwise missed, and revise and experiment their way to becoming great. When we look at people who've achieved, who've gone from one point on the success chart to a much higher point on the success chart, we think the path there was smooth and carefully planned. that it looked like this. But in almost every case, the path looked like this. That's life, folks. And if you get distracted or dispirited when life becomes tangled or chaotic, when you start moving backward, you're not going to make it. So spend a lot less time planning and a lot more time doing. Terrible advice number 3. Follow your passion. This is the undisputed, undefeated heavyweight champion of bad advice. It's embroidered on pillows, plastered on Instagram, and whispered like gospel at graduation ceremonies. And yet it's truly terrible advice. Why? Well, first, it's a lot of pressure. Whenever people used to ask me this question, I'd always freeze. I felt I had to deliver a perfect answer, and I never had one. The question forces you into a performative response, not a true expression of who you really are. The second reason, follow your passion, places too much weight on short-term feeling and too little weight on long-term effort. Trust me on this. I've been writing for 25 years, 7 books, 1,000 articles. If you ask me right now, is writing your passion? I'd say, I don't know. Writing is really hard. Some days I like it. Many days it stinks, but it's what I do. Third, follow your passion places you at the center of the universe, and that's always a mistake. The most successful, impactful people don't waste their time gazing into their navels or admiring themselves in the mirror. Here's the painful truth: the world doesn't give a shit about your passion, and maybe neither should you. Fortunately, there are better questions to ask yourself than what's your passion? For example, What do you do when nobody's watching? Are you working in your garden? Reading about fertilizer and rutabagas? Roaming the aisles of plant stores and eyeing the shelves with unbridled lust? That's a clue. Another question: What torture are you willing to endure? This is the question Jerry Seinfeld asked himself when he realized that to be a great comedian, he needed to write just about every day. Even on the days he didn't feel like doing it, especially on the days he didn't feel like doing it. Here's the thing: effort leads to self-discovery, not the other way around. And finally, where can I make my biggest contribution? This question gets you out of your own narcissistic spin cycle and into the world. And remember, that contribution doesn't have to be something gigantic like ending the climate crisis, though please give that a shot if you're game. It might be being a great mom or dad or running a cafe that makes an amazing cup of coffee. So forget about following your passion. Instead, watch what you do, find the torture you can tolerate, and discover what you can contribute to the world. On to the 4th piece of bad advice. Always be positive. Again, this advice is well-intentioned. It's rooted in an important truth, but it can lead us astray if we take it too far. Because there are times in life when it's better to welcome our negative emotions And be a little less positive? Here's what the science says. Positive emotions are essential. They make life worth living. For instance, optimism is associated with better physical health. Emotions like joy, gratitude, and hope significantly boost our well-being. We want to be positive most of the time. No doubt about it. Our positive emotions should outnumber our negative emotions. No doubt about it. And yet, We shouldn't always be positive. If you're smiling through a root canal, you're not enlightened. You're on drugs. Constant positivity is often just denial in yoga pants. Because negative emotions are instructive. They clarify the world, teach important lessons. Frustration nudges us to figure out alternative paths forward. Regret helps us learn from our mistakes and do better next time. We never want too much negativity, but we always want a little bit. Because when we constantly try to be positive and sometimes can't, we think there's something wrong with us. But that's not true. It just means we're human. And when we let in a few negative emotions, we might feel worse in the short run, but we accomplish more. And here's the key. We're happier in the long run. The 5th piece of advice. It's not what you know, it's who you know. I really hate this one. It has just enough truth to be poisonous. But looking at life as one gigantic, greasy networking event isn't just bleak, it's bad strategy. Let's start with the facts. Yes, connections matter. But unless you're obsessed with getting invitations to billionaire yacht parties, they matter less than you might think. Because there isn't some hidden cabal of insiders who are in charge of all the opportunities and who dole them out like Halloween candy to the kids with the best costumes. And people who believe that, people who have drunk the it's who you know, Kool-Aid, risk sacrificing building skills, developing expertise, and making their contribution. Because the best way to forge connections over time is to become really good at what you do and establish your reputation as a reliable, honest, decent human being. What you know can expand the universe of who you know, and the best way to continue to build your network is to be generous, to take a genuine interest in other people, and to help them if you can. Think of it this way. Who you know is the byproduct, not the strategy. The real strategy is what you do. If you do excellent work, if you keep your promises, if you treat people well, the right people will usually find their way into your orbit. So don't waste time collecting contacts like Pokémon cards. Waste them getting good at something real. Because when you do, The who you know part often takes care of itself. So those are 5 shiny, seductive pieces of life advice that sound good but will actually mess you up if you take them seriously. Instead of believing you can be anything, focus on being something. Something that occupies the tiny patch of land where interest, talent, demand, and remuneration intersect. Skip the endless planning and start making decisions for fundamental, not instrumental reasons. Don't follow your passion. Instead, figure out what you do, what torture you can tolerate, and where you can make your biggest contribution. Be positive lots of the time, but not all the time. Learn from your negative emotions. Finally, focus on what you know, because that's the best way to expand who you know. Remember, bad advice sounds harmless, but believe it and it won't just waste your time, it might quietly wreck your future. Good advice, though? It can change everything. Hey, if you like this video, consider signing up for my newsletter, The Pink Report, where I share the big ideas and practical advice the world needs right now. The link is in the description and it's totally free.