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!”
I said “you’re absolutely right” and left it at that. They were trying to get to the idea that mental illness is made up and shit like that. I don’t feed into that sort of stuff so the conversation didn’t carry on after that lol.
“You just have to work through the pain.” I’ve injured myself multiple times in the past exercising by following this idiotic advice.
It’s one thing to push through discomfort, that’s how your body gets stronger. But If you’re in actual pain, stop and listen to the alarm bells your body is giving you.
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
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.
My mother once told us to get “a male realtor; the woman realtors don’t care as much because they’re just doing it as a hobby - the men are doing it as their full time job.”
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.
Some of the churches where I live have a big banner outside that says, “Try praying”. It strikes me as comically desperate. Imagine a car dealership with a “Try driving” banner, a restaurant with “Try eating”.
Meditation is better advice. By which I mean doing the exercises to approach grounding oneself in the present, sensing and feeling things from that perspective, instead of the YESTERDAY and TOMORROW clashing storms inside our minds.
But one can't just start meditating one day - "from zero to sixty", so to speak - and expect immediate results. It's a discipline, like brushing your teeth every day.
When I was a teen I worked as a waiter at a dirty smokehouse/bbq place.
One of the kitchen staff there would make sexual comments about me. Say things like “You’re lucky you look good because you’re so stupid.” And would ask what kind of underwear I was wearing.
I told my parents about it, and the advice they gave me was “Deal with it. You need a job.”
Within a month that kitchen staff member had started to grab me and sexually assaulted me.
“Try again.” Particularly involving schoolwork. Derelict teachers then complained when the result of trying again would be identical, to the letter, for the same reasons as the first time. But teach? They did not.
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
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