ABOUT THE HOST | DAN CASETTA
EPISODE NOTES
This episode is about five pieces of “bad advice” that people hear, or at least ideas that people often misinterpret or apply incorrectly in their lives.
1. Everything happens for a reason.
• This is one of the most common phrases that people use to justify their own or others’ bad behavior.
• Oftentimes, the reason something bad happens is because you made a bad decision or you have a lot to learn in order to optimize your actions in certain areas of your life. Ignoring these realities will only serve to ensure that you’ll get yourself into more difficult situations in the future.
• The essence of life is growth – consistent improvement, getting better at what we do, improving our outcomes, and becoming happier and more fulfilled in the process.
• It is good to look for the silver lining in every circumstance.
2. When making decisions, just go with your gut.
• Our very nature as humans is to act in accordance with long-held beliefs, biases, and habit patterns.
• Our gut compares our past experiences with our current situation and makes decisions that are in accordance with our long-held beliefs.
• In this age of advanced information and data, there are better ways to make decisions than with your gut, including gathering evidence and living into the future (visualization).
• Read The Undoing Project and/or Thinking Fast and Slow.
3. We should all care less about what other people think.
• Not caring about what others think fosters a selfish, “me-first” way of thinking and acting. This mentality also promotes uncomfortable interactions with others and increases conflict.
• We SHOULD care about what others think because we are all part of a large system, working together as pieces of that system to create a world that works for everyone.
• Now, we should probably all care less about what people think of the superficial parts of our persona, or other factors ABOUT us in terms of our preferences and beliefs.
• Being authentic can be a sort of “filter” on our relationships, effectively eliminating from our lives those people who are overly judgmental or prejudiced about some aspect of who we are.
• But if you take this bit of advice to an extreme, you can become jaded and uncooperative with others in your life. That’s not what we want.
4. Do what you love.
• This one can be controversial, as it certainly has SOME merit, but I think it’s often misinterpreted by people and turned into an excuse for wasting time in activities that don’t add value in people’s lives.
• “Loving what you do” might be a better spin on the same advice.
• Our minds are hard-wired to value and appreciate CONTRIBUTION.
• What’s important – especially in terms of choosing a career – is finding the intersection between something you enjoy doing and something that adds significant value in the world.
5. Always obey/follow authority.
• We start hearing this in the very earliest days of school, and it certainly has its applications as we are advancing through our educational system.
• But at some point as our intellectual capacity begins to grow, it starts to become important to ponder the ideas we are hearing from others.
• “Take advice, but not orders.” “Make sure that what you do is a product of your own conclusion.” — Jim Rohn
• We should all strive to develop our critical thinking and our ability to process information.
• As an authority figure at times, keep yourself open to the possibility that you might be wrong.
• “Strong opinions, loosely held.” — Marc Andreessen
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