I often ask people who I respect for advice. Life-advice, especially! I tell myself that I’m seeking guidance. However, that’s rarely true. I’m usually seeking instruction.
Ask yourself the following question, “do the people I respect or consider successful know what’s best for me?” More often than not, we ask those people to tell us what to do in life, careers, and relationships; avoiding full ownership over our decision making.
Fear and a lack of confidence encourage most people to seek “guidance”. When absent direction and personal goals, it’s easy to escape making meaningful life decisions ourselves. We prefer to avoid the freedom and responsibility that comes with choice.
Purposefully avoiding any situation where someone else does your thinking for you is a pretty strong purpose. Maybe even a motto worth living by.
Great goals are designed for an individual, not the goal in-of-itself. For example, goals like “I want to be a millionaire by 25”, “I want to write a book”, “I want to be famous” are completely untailored to those pursuing them. That’s not to say they are bad!
Ironically, even the most self-improvement focused people rarely ever take the time to learn about themselves. Instead, they accept superficial goals that sound impressive — rather than formulate goals that…
