popular but bad life advice i’m glad i didn’t follow

so tell me what advice did they give you well i have the best advice for women in business get your [ __ ] ass up and work it seems like nobody wants to work these days so you just if you put in the work you will see results you have to have a lot of passion for what you're doing and it's totally true the ones that are successful love what they did so they could persevere part of that is that you help them grow some teeth so that they can go home and have that fight with their husband that they should have had 25 years ago work like hell i mean just have to put in you know 80 hour 800 hour weeks every day if you also happen to be human alive and living on earth chances are you and you both have been often given sometimes unsolicited shitty albeit well-meaning life advice and so today i thought it would be quite interesting to break down some of the life advice which is super popular but i'm very very glad that i stopped taking and sometimes i've been doing the exact opposite of what i've been told and it's worked out better for me so i thought it might be quite interesting to chat about these things today and let's jump straight into it number one is a bit of a controversial opinion and something i feel quite passionately about but this is the view that you should work harder so you can get what you deserve i feel like as a society we are obsessed with kind of the american dream and building something from absolutely nothing from the great gatsby to kylie jenner we are absolutely obsessed with these stories of self-made billionaires and millionaires this absolute desire and fascination for success leads us to crave a world which is quite meritocratic which means that everyone will get what they deserve they will get the results of the work that they attend and this leads to some celebrities saying that the secret to success is just to get your and work now i have a huge issue with this view that we live in in america society where people get what they deserve because even though on the surface it sounds absolutely beautiful and happy that everyone would put the work in and get amazing results but one i think that this is absolutely impossible and two i think that personally when i thought that this was the case i had a much worse experience of life and work in general for my personal view the equation of putting in the work and getting results looks very very different to this mainstream elon musk view of if you're just doing 40 hours you should be doing 100 hours because your competition is doing 100 and that's where they're succeeding the people that i've seen succeed have not succeeded because necessarily they've put in more work they've succeeded because of other reasons so when it comes to formulas for success in my opinion just five percent of it is this hard work that everyone loves to speak of this is kind of during those 100 hours when other people are doing 40. this is staying up all night this is grinding this is working multiple jobs this is being obsessive over details this is just learning as much as you can growing as much as you can waking up the earliest office in the office first at the office last this is this grind hustle culture that everyone likes to talk about i think that this is responsible for at most five percent of people's results in general just my opinion i think the next 15 are the less sexy things that we talk about and in this 15 would say things like where we come from so our ethnic background our gender our age the way that we look our potential neurodivergence the way that we think the unfair advantages that we have at home are our parents millionaires are we rich did we have to do part-time jobs while we were studying did we even have to study at all were we given work so these sort of unfair things that people may or may not have based on their current circumstances or their life circumstances i think affect a lot more than the work that people do the results of what they get the next 80 and the biggest thing that affects your results in life in my opinion is just complete random look this is things like how the person who interviewed you had lunch yet or what's their mood like that day did they get divorced last night because you don't know these things are happening all the time in the background and we just don't know what's going on but they affect our results so much for example if you think this is a true there are studies that found that judges are a lot harsher with their verdicts before lunch than they are after lunch these things affect the results of our actions and the outcomes of the things that we apply for in life if someone who was amazing dropped out of the lineup for the interview you might get a job that you got very lucky to get not because you worked so hard but because of that and also because someone else dropped out so all these random things the people that we run into potentially sometimes we're in the right place at the right time or in the wrong place at the wrong time all of this complete chaos and randomness in the universe in our and our lives i think is responsible for so much more in the result of our success than anything else and i think having this view that i will not get what i deserve but i will put in whatever work that i do and what i will get will be something completely random because only five percent of it in my opinion is dependent on my work and 95 of it is just dependent on life and things that i have little to no control over that means that i can be a lot more humble and a lot more kind of calm whenever i get something nice i think we've gotten somewhere with mentioning unfair advantages and i think we recognized this even when we were younger of saying well you know he has it so easy because his parents are so nice to him or because his parents give them so much money we recognize this but i think we ignore it a lot more as we get older and also i think there's this defense mechanism to try to see our society as not having any inbuilt issues and biases which i mean to some extent it kind of does so i think these do play a huge role in the results that we get but also very importantly why does no one just mention luck luck is just such a huge thing where you're born who you're born to what happens to you in your life what kind of neural connections you get what environment you have the emotional intellectual financial support that you get throughout the life all of these luck factors set you up for so much that we just completely neglect and we blame everything on ourselves or we attribute all our results to ourselves when this is definitely not the case so i'm jenny not trying to bash people who work very hard i'm one of those people i work over 100 hours a week consistently almost like for the last at least five six years of my life i put the work in i think as much as i can but i'm not attributing my results to that work i'm attributing my results to that randomness and i get this kind of cringe inside me sometimes when i hear people say that oh you should just work harder everyone can have a side hustle everyone can succeed everyone can do what i've done when i hear people saying this i just wish they would be able to say it honestly to someone who is an immigrant in a foreign country where they don't speak the language properly when they have three or four kids waiting for them at home when they have to work so much already i think just telling them that oh you can be as fit as i am or as healthy as i am or as successful as i am if only you worked as much i think is absolutely ridiculous and it completely completely ignores the context and the luck that is prevalent in every single situation that we are ever in so i feel super passionately against work hard because you're going to get results my attitude on this is work hard you will get something completely random because it's just dependent on your luck and whatever happens to you but i think you should just work hard anyway and the reason you work is not so that you get what you deserve the reason that i work for example is because one i have to because i have to pay rent and be a functional member of society so i work because one i have to and two i work because it's kind of fun you get used to it if you're lucky enough that situations are not too bad or if you try to help those situations along a bit you can just get to a place where some of you the work that you do is enjoyable and that's fine i know that this is a topic that i feel quite passionate about but honestly i think it's also spending so much time in hospital and seeing situations that people are in that gets me really really annoyed whenever i hear this i got here because i worked hard and you can do it too which i just don't think is the case in every single situation having said that put in the work because it's fun but not because you're going to get what other people got because you might get less you might get more but just to be mad or annoyed either way and learning to accept whatever happens to me in life i feel is a great outcome from this so yeah that's huge rant number one over and we're moving on to point number two which is the view of you need thick skin in order to succeed in life or in order to make it your way through life now i've seen thick skin and being strong praised so much and i used to genuinely strongly believe this myself i always thought that the thicker skin i was and the more i let problems bounce off me the better i would be in society and because i'm quite unemotional and i've been quite a vulnerable person i think in the past i used to really really want to get to the stage in life where i was like nothing is going to affect me one day i'm going to be so thick-skinned anyone can say anything i'm just going to be so strong and it's not going to affect me in any shape or form and i felt so bad for myself at the time going like oh why am i so vulnerable why can't i not be like these other strong people i don't think this is true i don't think having thick skin is a good thing i think it's actually really really bad because if we break it down essentially what having thick skin means is that people can say bad things to you or bad things can happen in your life and you just don't let it go through you just completely avoid it because you are so strong that you you don't need this nothing will penetrate this is i think completely impossible and not the right attitude to have because it doesn't address at all your internal world instead of having thick skin i think you should actually have quite soft skin but you should have a very strong core having a strong core means having strong self beliefs and a strong support system internally and potentially externally to help you navigate life rather than trying to avoid things or deflect things that just don't suit your worldview so for example if someone were to bully me or tell me that oh elizabeth you're so ugly or you're so nerdy or um you're so boring in the past this might have generally affected me a lot and i don't think this was because i didn't have thick skin i think this was because i just had a very bad internal world and i strongly believe those things myself so once they got through they would completely take over and i would have really bad reactions to this which would be i would be super depressed or i would cry or i would break down or it would greatly affect my life for a month or something like this but at the time i was completely not addressing these internal feelings i was trying to shut everything off and say the world sometimes says these things they're not true i just need to ignore them and move forward this is a very bad attitude to have i think the reason that these were affecting me was not because i was listening to them or letting them get through was because they were reaffirming a belief that i had myself so rather than working on my thick skin and ignoring people i should have been working at the time on my internal state and the recommendation that i would give now is to kind of sit with that pain internally and fully fully lean into it reflect on what is this triggering in me what am i believing do i actually believe that i am unworthy and unlovable and ugly and awful do i actually believe these things because if i do i need to address those i don't need to start ignoring them because those beliefs will always remain there unless they're addressed we even if we don't consciously do things we will live our life in a way that affirms these beliefs if we internally do i think the most healing and curing thing that i've done in my life is not build a thick skin which i did have at some point but then build a stronger core and surround myself with people who i love with people who genuinely care for me with people who i can see show me that i am a worthy person and that has helped me and cured me so much more than ignoring my problems because no matter how much you ignore one day something will get through and if you don't have that strong core you're not going to be able to deal with it so i would say yes we pick up maladaptive coping mechanisms throughout our life yes our skin will naturally get thicker throughout our life as we stop caring about things but one thing that doesn't naturally happen but we need to intentionally do is develop our core develop stronger core beliefs a stronger support system healthier views of yourself and this is a much better way to approach the world and approach your life than just ignoring things and nevas has something beautiful to this effect which is everyone seems to think that the only way to get peace is to solve external problems but there are unlimited external problems you can only resolve inner problems and this view of focusing mostly on your inner beliefs and your core self i think is a much healthier way to approach life and leads to much happier results in the long term at least in my experience the next advice i no longer agree with is the view that you should trust yourself because you always know best and what's right for you i don't i just don't i have often conflicting ideas i often have arguments in my mind when i can't make a decision i will have an argument with two different sides of me who do i trust i make really bad decisions i'm the only person who's been telling myself what to do what to date who to be with what to what degree to study what job to take what to say to people very often this advice has been absolutely awful so why should i trust myself blindly also i change i change so much i'm a completely different person who i used to be how can i say that i am consistently and at every point trustworthy if very often i think complete opposite things that i have thought before richard feynman very famously said the first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool even criminals always think that they are right everyone thinks that we are right this is why we have juries and law and all of these different things obviously someone sometimes has to not be right and that person sometimes is me so i think having a more broader view of questioning myself whether i am right at times or whether i'm making the right decisions or whether i should trust my instincts i lost my mind a few months ago and thought that i should leave medicine because i don't want to do this anymore i should not have trusted myself which i'm glad i didn't do so from now on i keep quite an open mind and a broader view of any instinct that i get maybe shouldn't believe this maybe need to think of the fact that elizabeth has quite a poor track record in decision making regarding herself so let's be a bit more open-minded with this and no i am not always right because no one is and i should not always trust myself of course dangerous situations some caveats here yes trust your gut instinct um in those cases but with big rational reasonable decisions trust yourself i think a lot less the next life advice i'm glad i didn't take is a tiny one but it is that you shouldn't read at night because you will damage your eyesight this is not true i was so scared of this as a child for absolutely no reason now given that i have really bad eyesight and i always have contacts in because i wouldn't be able to see my hand clearly over here without them i actually don't think that damage was caused by reading and even reading in low light or reading for very long periods of time can strain your eyes and can make them quite tired it won't actually damage them and the last view is that if you're not enjoying something or you're not overly passionate about it then it's just not the right thing for you this grinds my gears so much because it's been absolute torture for me this view elon musk says the same thing so he'd said people should pursue what they're passionate about that will make them happier than pretty much anything else great advice elon what about the fact that i'm not passionate about one specific thing what am i going to do the amount of hours that i have spent trying to go through all the alternatives every time that i've kind of googled jobs careers and gone through the whole list and thinking putting myself in that position and going would i be happy as an architect or would it be happy as a movie director would i be happy as a painter i like these things i like painting i like drawing i like medicine i like youtube i like consulting i like teaching i like all these things i'm not genuinely passionate exclusively about any single one of them it will just change all the time and it's so frustrating to feel that i'm never going to be successful because i don't have one strong passion and this is much more damaging because it kind of implies that you should be enjoying what you're doing and that means that you're passionate about this thing this is not true we do not enjoy the things that we do all the time for example michelangelo complained so much that his back hurts when he was painting he hated it it was physical torture i've read shoe dog and the guy who founded nike was obviously so obsessed about his brand and reading this book everything that i was seeing he was just complaining he was in pain he was angry he couldn't sleep he was frustrated he was having issues with his wife all of his jobs and everything he was doing was so frustrating i thought this sounds more like my work than it sounds someone who's chasing their dream chasing your dreams does not always look like fun and this false expectation that once you've found that secret thing that you like you're suddenly the skies are going to open and you're going to realize and you're going to be so happy for the rest of eternity is just not true and also if you don't have that one strong passion that's also absolutely fine you can just work on multiple things in the meantime and figure it out later it doesn't mean that you're not going to be successful quote unquote or that you even need to be successful or that if you're not enjoying something it's just not right for you so on top of that if she's been raised by strict parents like i was for example i was never allowed to do what i wanted to do when i was younger i was made to do other things and suddenly you're an adult and you can make your own choices and you have to figure out what you like because how am i going to learn to do what i like but i've never been allowed to do this before it's absolutely ridiculous like putting it on someone immediately yeah you're free now you can be whatever you want what are you passionate about come on become excellent at it let's do it that just doesn't happen this is completely crazy so i think give yourself time you're probably going to figure it out or you're never going to figure it out but if you're calm with it if you're genuinely approaching things from curiosity and from trying to get better at them and trying to enjoy the moment you're going to have a good time overall potentially just as much or even more of a good time as you would have had if you're working on one singular passion you don't need to be particularly excellent and the best in the world at one thing in order to be happy you can be average at five different things and you will be so much happier in very many ways so i would say love ignoring this advice whenever someone says pick one thing stick to it otherwise you're never going to get anywhere nah screw that that's not the case if you're in the same boat as me and you have no idea which path to taking that for what's your one main passion but you want to keep your options open for multiple things one thing that i would generally recommend is to put a name on these things save them somewhere and maybe they will become relevant at some point in your life one thing that i would very very strongly recommend that you do in the meantime is buy a website with the name of that project because you never know when you might actually need it and when this comes to version but one year after starting my podcast i only got reminded to set up a website for it from hover which i'm very kindly sponsoring this video in just a few seconds with hover you can buy the domain for any website that you think you might need to set up in the future and i really really would recommend just keeping these in the bank because for me for example it only costs 10 pounds and it's a ridiculously cheap kind of guarantee or push to make yourself do things in the future also what i would recommend for this is potentially buying one for a friend or someone that you like or someone who has had this little project that they've been considering doing they only cost five to ten pounds so they're quite affordable and it's such a good way to show support and to push someone along this success journey so yes there'll be a link for hover somewhere in the description but otherwise if you made it so far thank you so much for spending this time with me i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day be kind to yourself and others and don't believe everything you think thanks bye

Channel: Elizabeth Filips

Views: 499,005

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Id: x60S5vthpck

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022