What is the most unhelpful advice you have received?
I’ll go first: “You have to have children when you’re young,” told to me when I was in my late 20s, with no desire to ever have kids, and no means to support them, by someone divorced multiple times with at least one adult child who does not speak to them.
Also: Responding to “How do I deal with this problem?” questions with “Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s enough that you’re even thinking about it!”
Someone told me that if I wanted to be a history teacher I should get a degree in special Ed to “make myself more marketable.” It took 14 years to get out of special education and land a job teaching history
Teaching as a profession sucks ass in general right now… but at least a lot of the special educator-specific bullshit is not my problem anymore. But thank you.
Coincidentally, I know someone who recently applied for a regular teacher’s assistant role and when they got to the interview the hiring director didn’t even ask questions about that position; instead they interviewed for a special ed job and then only offered that. It was a total bait & switch to try and fill a role nobody was applying for.
I got the same thing said to me but to go into math instead. I never listened to them. Now I’m looking for jobs and there’s a ton of openings for history jobs and I tend to feel a little smug about it.
Get an advanced education, work harder, never be the one to say, “That is not my job” was the worst advice I could ever receive. I got into debt and was abused and exploited by my employers.
The problem is that when the people giving that advice were working, it was great advice. Companies took care of their employees. Tenure mattered. Companies today are mindless corporate blobs that only care about spreadsheet numbers and the next quarter’s results.
Maybe in some situations in the past owners were better to their workers, but in many cases there is an unbroken line of exploitation going back in the past. The idea that exploitation is an extremely new phenomenon benefits the owning class by concealing the long and bloody history of proletarian struggles.
Some of that advice is true … work hard, work at something all the time and do your best … but always for yourself and your well being and for your own self and your family.
I’m Indigenous Canadian and this is what all my family did including me. I worked for myself all my life … building, construction, renos, fixing stuff, building stuff all the time … I did some work for companies and businesses but always with the idea that I wouldn’t work more than I had to and only to gain a bit more money to move on as soon as possible.
Twenty five years later … I own three properties, multiple old vehicles that I maintain myself and I own everything I have without debt … I’m not the wealthiest but I am debt free and have a healthy savings and I still work for myself gaining a bit more every time .
Your experience is the exception rather than the rule. It’s been shown that rags to riches is a myth perpetrated by capitalism. At one time I had your level of success. It was all taken from me when I became disabled. As a Canadian, you have the distinct advantage of at least some social welfare assistance whereas your neighbor to the south has virtually none.
I agree that the whole rags to riches idea is a complete sham that doesn’t exist … unless you are already born wealthy … and then that doesn’t make any sense because you never had rags to begin with.
My story is more rags or bare clothing … I’m not wealthy … I just have enough to be comfortable … I’m not in debt and I drive old beater cars and trucks and never owned a new vehicle in my life … I bought small properties away from big city centers where land is cheap but living is hard
And yes … I know most people are probably not capable of doing what I did … I grew up with lots of people in my situation and I was fortunate enough to figure a way out, mostly through the luck of finding the right partner who worked just as hard as me, parents who were great guides and teachers and a small network of family and friends I could count on.
I have a less impressive, but similar story to yours. I’d say it’s fine to work hard and do work that’s not your job, but the key is to follow through by demanding the proper acknowledgement and gratification for it. Like, doing it for free a couple of times to be nice is fine, but after that, the value you bring with this has to be properly acknowledged and compensated.
If you’ve been working hard and helping out, and an employer doesn’t gratify you to that value, the proper response is not to give up and pin it on hard work being the problem. That employer is being the problem. Try to change that if you can at all.
The problem is that a version of this advice can be very helpful. As someone who has suffered from ongoing mental health issues and also work in an industry where I regularly support people with mental health issues, one piece of advice I often give is to identify what traumas are you unnecessarily holding on to, which are contributing to your depression/anxiety etc.
When you can let go of some of the more mundane stresses in your life, you have more energy to tackle the real issues you’re facing. Of course this is much easier said than done and has to be used as part of a more wholeistic approach, but sometimes the advice to just learn to let it go is very good advice.
Unfortunately, many people don’t understand that intricacy and so just repeat the surface level comment which is far from helpful. And this in turn also leads to a push back in the other direction where people who could genuinely benefit from letting go of some of their stress refuse to do so because they have spent so long being told that’s all there is to it.
There’s heaps of psychology research into therapeutic approaches and all that stuff out there if you’re willing to essentially do a degree on the topic, but personally I like to keep things as simple as possible so anyone can start applying it straight away.
I usually start with the picture story book The Huge Bag of Worries by Virginia Ironside (there’s a read along of it on youtube) to frame the conversation. It helps to set up the idea that the “worries” are real and are having an effect on the individual. Also that many people struggle to know how to deal with them and end up giving bad advice, often because they are carrying their own bag of worries. I also at this point remind them that we are unlikely to get rid off all the problems, eg I can’t cure your depression or rebuild your brain to make it neuro-typical, but we can make it so they are the only things in your bag making it a lot easier to carry.
Then I’ll talk about a Catastrophe Scale. This is where we take a worry and rank it on a scale out of 10 of how bad is it really. 1 is a minor problem that will go away on it’s own, and 10 is an extreme issue that will have a permanent impact on your life. Like in the book, many problems stop being an issue once you realize they are only a 1 or 2 on the scale. This is the “just get over it” point. Other’s need some attention but can easily be solved or passed on to someone else in your support network to handle, but once you’ve spent that small amount of energy, it’s gone. This is the where we see the value of another piece of despised advice, “stop worrying and just do it” or “have you tried going for a walk outside today”. Once again, often spouted advice by people who think of it as the only thing needed without understanding how it fits into a complete treatment plan.
Finally that just leaves the real problems, the ones that are less easy to deal with. But without having to carry the weight of the whole bag of worries, we now have a capacity to take those worries to therapy or a doctor to medicate etc, and just generally do the more difficult and complex work that’s needed.
Find a trade. If you’re good at what you do, it really doesn’t matter how wierd or fucked up you are. You can even get in full-on arguments with your boss that get forgotten about once everyone calms down.
Lost out on a good job opportunity with this one. I was going to do some interview prep and someone just told me to, “be yourself, they just want to get to know you.” Yeah bullshit… didn’t get that gig and did interview prep for a different opportunity. It went incredibly well the second time around.
As long-term career advice, I think this is helpful In finding something that doesn’t drag you down. If you can’t be yourself at work it’s going to be far more taxing.
But I absolutely understand this is a luxury to be able to be in that position of being choosy about your employer.
You’ll be far happier in an environment that enjoys you for being you, but you’ll find a job quicker by saying what they want to hear
That since I was pregnant it was time to let my career go.
My career is critical to my family’s ability to live a middle class life (and it’s critical to my sanity and happiness, but the person who gave me this “advice“ wasn’t really one for acknowledging or valuing mental health).
“Don’t be a quitter” is something that makes sense if you’re in the middle of a board game or the likes. It definitely shouldn’t be applied to big things like jobs or relationships.
as everything this has contexts in which is valuable and contests in which it’s not
don’t quit because you’re demoralised. don’t quit because you’re tired. don’t quit because it’s hard.
if your first natural response to adversities is flying instead of fighting, it’s telling you to fight, because you are likely the only person losing when flying.
it’s not about never change your mind. never critically think what’s the situation and if it’s still worth it.
or check up with yourself and see if that’s still what you want.
after all leaving a situation you don’t want anymore, it’s not quitting, it’s moving on
it seems just semantics, it’s about knowing yourself and being honest with yourself.
You dont have to keep going if you are tired and demoralized either. You dont owe pain and suffering and missed opportunities to your past self. You can quit any time you want for any reason or no reason at all, just be prepared to accept the consequences.
Back as a young fella, striking out in the dating market a bunch ...
"Just be yourself!"
No, honestly, that was the problem last time - I was looking for something a little more granular and actionable.
This is one of those helpful and encouraging things that people say without necessarily really thinking it through. Deep down in intent, they're right - you can't fake your way to healthy relationships, being insincere or putting on a performance of being someone you're not isn't going anywhere genuine down the road. Absolutely correct, absolutely great advice - but it's never given in sufficient complexity and depth to be useful.
None of those grown-ups were like "Ah yes, definitely be sincere about who you are - but also don't spend a whole date monologuing about the book you just read or your favourite video game."
That you can be genuine and sincere about who you are, while still using your social skills and putting your best foot forward socially just ... didn't occur. At the time, my understanding was that it was a hard binary - either I was 100% me at 100% volume and whatever came out of my mouth was definitely the best thing I could say, or I was stifling myself and being 'fake' in order to build an equally-fake relationship.
It took a friend's brother taking me aside to make it 'click' - he was holding a can or a bottle and was like "So the whole object is all 'real you' yeah? But any time you're talking to someone is like right now - you can only see the side that's facing you. It's all you, it's all honest, but you still want to show them the best side, the best angle, of the whole thing. Don't sprint straight to showing them all of your worst angle just because that's what's on your mind that day."
Yeah, the simplistic “Just be yourself” advice doesn’t take into account the “If you don’t love me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best” type of attitude.
It also bypasses the fact that “yourself” is such a fuzzy concept anyway. So because I’m bad at public speaking, that shouldn’t mean I should “be myself” and avoid it. I should merely be aware of my current limitations. That was an accurate way to describe myself in the past, but instead of accepting it, I worked on it, forced myself into a job that requires it, and now I’m pretty good at it.
I think almost everyone can look back 10 years ago and think of some way they ended up changing. So with that being the case, who knows who we’ll be 10 years into the future? No need to anchor too hard on who we think we are right now, it’s valuable to also give consideration to the kind of person we want to be in the future and take action towards becoming that person.
You make a good point about common advice often being too simplistic and generalized to be useful. And yeah, dating is rough. Glad you got better advice in the end.
The problem is that “yourself” still comes out eventually. And sometimes it takes a long while to find “the one” because you kind of hid certain aspects from your partners for too long. This is generally why most of my longer-term relationships have failed. Too many “best faces forward” for too long, until one breaks that
I was mid 30s when I found the one that is “the one”. We had our first date in our work clothes, and had a conversation that would sound insane to any observers. For the last 5 years, I’ve never felt the need to hold anything back or change the way I talk about things, and I dont think she does either. Because we still have insane conversations
The first one is the worst. My dad says this to me all the time, well, why is it that I have to do all the work, they never try to maintain a relationship with me. Also, fuck them, they are terrible people, maybe I don’t want to maintain a relationship with toxic shitty people even if they are family.
Idk man, I’ve never gotten married and it’s been fine for me. My girlfriend and I have been together for 14 years, have 2 kids, and our family is all that has kept me going through this shitty world. Never married though, so many there is some truth to the advice.
Gee. Thanks “doctor” for your advice. Obviously I’m going to listen to you after you watched a three minute YouTube video and not the doctor with six years of medical training and education!
Sold it 5 years ago for somewhere in the 700s. So ultimately it turned out okay. But there was an extremely awkward period where I had to move out and would have sold if it wasn’t underwater. I wound up becoming a landlord for several years which I wouldn’t have chosen and felt pretty scummy but it did save me in the long run.
Simple suggestions like this are shit advice at the surface, but they often are the answer in the end. You have to dig and find that internal will to realize them.
Easier said than done, though, so maybe take some drugs to just stop worrying.
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