Month: February 2021

A while ago, people who posted #LearnToCode were banned from Twitter. Some reporters had told miners to learn to code, and they were getting the same advice (in the much same way). It’s actually pretty reasonable advice. The internet holds a vast array of high quality resources (many of which are free), and coding opens up a lot of job opportunities. However in both of these cases, the advice was useless. Because it was given dismissively, disdainfully, it was a complete failure.

The Goal of Advice

For something to be a failure, requires that it has an objective. The goal of advice is to change the behavior of the person receiving it in a way that helps them improve their life. It’s not about feeling wise, or superior. Good advice shows someone how to improve their situation through their own efforts. The recipient is the one who determines what it means for their life to improve (not the giver of said advice).

When to Give Advice

Give better advice by telling people who are ready to listen. Many people (myself included) feel the urge to jump in with a solution whenever another person brings up a problem. This can be quite helpful for smaller problems, but rarely works for large ones. Gleefully telling someone how to fix a problem that they’ve been struggling with is dismissive.

Before you give advice, you need to make sure that people are ready to hear it. Unless you have a relationship with a great deal of respect, wait for someone to ask for advice before giving it. Even once someone asks for advice, they might not be ready for it. Sometimes people asking for advice  are really just wishing that their problems will go away aloud. Wait until they are willing to work them away, and are earnestly searching for the means to do so.

What to Say

Apart from giving advice to people who are ready to listen, we need to say something that helps them. Start by listening. If you don’t know that person’s problem, their situation, their goals, their resources, and all of the things that they’ve tried to do about it, you aren’t ready to give them advice. Telling someone to do something that they’ve already tried before is not helpful, and will get them to look for solutions elsewhere.

How to Say It

Advice needs to be a specific action that its recipient has not thought of or something that they considered and then dismissed. In both cases (but especially the second), you’ll also need to provide the emotional support to tackle something challenging. Acknowledge their challenges, and their efforts. Most of all, believe that they can change (even if the action that you are suggesting does not work).

Mental focus is when you direct your thoughts towards something and keep them there. It’s a very practical thing that most people do (or at least try to do) every day. Emotional focus is when you direct your feelings towards something, and pull them back whenever they stray. Few people ever do this intentionally, although it can happen naturally when someone gets very upset.

Mental focus is easy to understand, if not easy to perform. There’s no real mystery in noticing your thoughts, and letting go of stray ones. On the other hand, emotional focus is harder to grasp. How can you control your emotions? You can’t just make yourself feel happy, can you. Well, you can. Read a well written tragedy, and you’ll be sad. Watch a great action flick, and BOOM! You’re excited. This works by causing you to focus on a story. You live with the characters, and feel their ups and down. Emotions are the stories we use to explain the events in our lives, and thoughts are the sentences in this book. So it’s back to controlling your thoughts again.

Ok, then what’s the difference between mental focus and emotional focus?

For mental focus, you concentrate intensely for a relatively short period of time. With emotional focus, less intensity is required, but it’s spread out over weeks instead of hours.

Secondly, emotional focus differs from mental focus in the type of thoughts that you need to release. Mental focus is about catching any and all thoughts, but emotional focus is about noticing a few select thoughts. Wanting something is not passive. Desires are etched through ceaseless repetitions of a story that justifies your emotions. These are the thoughts that you need to catch. But, instead of releasing them, as you would with mental focus, you need to bring your awareness down on them. Did Bob really intend to demean you when he cut you off? Or was he excited? Does he do that to other people as well? Does this need to make you feel hurt or upset? How would you like to respond to that? How would you like to feel about it? Could you? As you question, you’ll notice that your airtight story crumbles at the lightest breeze. As it does, your emotions will likewise fade.

Why is emotional focus important?

Mental focus follows emotional focus. Working on something that you deem unimportant is draining. And why should you even bother? But once you see the benefits, and not just see them, but feel them. Then you’ll work on it. And not just that, you might even be excited to. The next time you struggle to change your behavior, listen to the stories that you tell about it. Are you decrying your goals while trying to work on them? Chances are you know you should do something, but feel that you shouldn’t.

Some people want effortless success. They want fast cars, fancy houses, or recognition, all without having to work for it. Sadly, that’s not possible. To be sure, some people have those things and did not labor for them. But those things are not success. Success can only be achieved through hard work.

Success is the attainment of one’s goals. Attaining something means that you did not have it previously. If work was not required to accomplish your goals, you didn’t attain them. Nothing really changed. You merely decided to collect what was already within your grasp. To get something that you could not have before requires growth.

Growth means stretching yourself. It’s fumbling your way to deftness. There is no easy way. Growth necessitates failure, confronting new challenges and difficult situations in order to gain new skills or hone your existing ones. Moments of insight are fueled by days if not weeks of research. All of these things are difficult, exhausting and painful.

When I struggle with my goals, sometimes I just want to give up. I want to get help, or find someone to do it for me. I wish my problem would go away, my situation resolved. I want someone else to swoop in and rescue me.

But I have lost sight of the bigger picture. There will always be a next problem, or another challenge. I don’t really need to solve anything. I can bear the consequences of failure. No, what I really want is to become someone who can handle those types of problems without shrinking from them. To grow into something bigger than myself. Because that is true success. And after having tasted it, nothing else compares.