The Hardest Advice To Follow: Your Own

What is it in us that makes us great at giving advice to friends and family and yet prevents us from believing our own words? Is it that we think we're simply saying what the other person needs to hear and not really what we believe?

Think about this; if Michael Jordan gave you advice on basketball, would you listen? If Donald Trump gave you advice on making money, would you listen? If Anthony Robbins sat down and talked to you about motivation, would you listen? Conversely, would you listen to advice on the stock market from a convenience store clerk?

There's no real secret here, the secret is in the source. In this case, it's you.

Listen, I'm not saying you're not worth listening to. I'm saying that if you are needing the advice, especially on motivation or other self help areas, chances are you are already down on yourself. Hense the desire for advice.

You put yourself down, you don't like yourself or some aspect of yourself so you need advice... why would you listen to yourself? You think low of yourself just like you would think of that store clerk trying to give stock advice.

The fact is, the advice is in you, you already help others with it. Now think about this, their source is the same as yours. You! And they believe you. Why? Because you're you.

Look, there's an expression for this sort of thing. It's called a 'pity party' and it only ever has one person in attendance.

What you need to do is look in the mirror, slap yourself in the face and admit to yourself that even if there is only one single person in the whole wide world that actually takes your advice... then the source can't be all that bad. If the advice sounds like it could be good advice if it came from Michael Jordan, or Donald Trump, or Anthony Robbins... then maybe it's just good advice and you should stop caring who said it.

You're reading motivational articles, you don't feel like you're the greatest human that ever lived. I get that. But there's no reason to think that you can't give someone, even yourself, advice. Good advice is good advice, ignore the source. No matter what it is in you that says you shouldn't.