Advice Won’t Help You

I write a lot on the topics of personal growth, self-improvement, and advice about getting through life as a whole. Like any writer, I write about what I know. I base everything off of my own unique, personal experiences and how I’ve handled the difficult situations that have occurred in my life.

I try to encourage people through my writing because I know that sometimes, we often think that we’re going it alone — which we are — but at least we’re not the only ones.

For those of you who aren’t writers, it can sometimes be hard to open up about our past. We don’t always want to talk about the times when we were vulnerable, or scared, or depressed, or embarrassed.

We sometimes don’t want to share those things with even our closest friends or family, let alone the entire world.

However, I know that it’s important to let people know what you’ve been through. It’s important because people deserve to know that other people have experienced something similar and that you can get past it — that everything is eventually going to be okay.

Yet, at the same time, I also know that me, or anyone else for that matter, giving advice won’t necessarily directly impact you. What I write, though it can continue to permanently live on the internet, won’t necessarily force you to take any specific action.

My advice won’t help you.

What I write won’t make you quit the job that you hate, get you out of your crappy relationship, or follow your dreams. It won’t make life easier. It won’t make you dig yourself out of a hole that you’ve put yourself in.

Quite honestly, even if you get to the bottom of this page and have read the full length of this article in its entirety, you may very well forget every single word within the next five minutes (or less).

I’ve received a lot of wonderful feedback from people who have thanked me and told me how grateful they were for the articles that I have written.

I’m not saying this to fluff my own feathers.

It has made me feel extremely honored to have made even the slightest impact on someone else’s life just by reading the words I’ve written. But, my advice did not help them.

They helped themselves.

Although, writers, public speakers, therapists, counselors, etc. are here to help you, we are ultimately the ones that need to help ourselves in certain scenarios.

We can thank people, attribute our success to the ones who have supported us, and show our gratitude in many ways, but I think we also owe it to ourselves for being the ones to clean up our own mess.

I’ve given a lot of advice. Similarly, I’ve received a lot of advice. And whenever I was on the receiving end, I realized that I rarely actually took it.

Instead, I always learned things the hard way.

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve made a fool of myself. I took the long road home.

As I get older, I come to understand that the advice that people have given me in the past was only in my best interest — that they were giving me advice because they were just looking out for me, or that they have even been in a similar position and wanted to save me the trouble.

Again, I learned things the hard way.

And now, since I’ve began writing more and more, I am giving similar advice, which I know won’t always be well-received or received at all…and that’s okay.

My advice won’t help you.

You will help yourself because you will ultimately, hopefully, get to a point where you know that you have to. And if by any chance, you can attribute that help to my writing, well, then I am sincerely and truly honored.