Everyone wants to feel needed. It is one of the most human things there is. And giving advice is one of the easiest ways to get that feeling. To be the person someone comes to. The one who knows.
What is interesting is how rarely anyone admits that. Because advice is supposed to be about the other person. And mostly people believe it is. But somewhere in the giving of it, without anyone really noticing, a small hierarchy tends to form. The one who knows and the one who needs to know. It is subtle. But it is usually there.
I always find myself wondering why someone is giving advice in the first place.
There are people who cling to feeling needed in that advice giver role so much that they need to feel like others are below them. They question your credibility, your experience, your judgment. If you figure things out without them their position dissolves. So they make sure you keep needing them. And because they are just trying to help you, they never have to be accountable for keeping you down. Somehow they also tend to have a very clear idea of what kind of wins would be realistic for you.
That said, a football coach does not have to be the best footballer. They just have to see patterns and understand how the game works. So the uncomfortable question is not always whether someone has done what they are advising. It is whether they actually understand your game. And whether they genuinely want you to win it.
Who does the world listen to?
Advice sells best when it comes with something visible. The house. The cars. The lifestyle that reads as success before anyone says a word. People assume the packaging means the knowledge is real.
The people who are genuinely happy with themselves rarely feel the need to be seen as the one who helped you. They usually just let things be.
About twelve years ago I was cycling to a friend and got called by someone I had spoken to briefly. They told me they could help me make ten thousand dollars a month in a matter of months. I felt seen. Finally helped. This person had access to supercars and was introduced by someone who showed off a life of luxury. It turned out to be a complete waste of time. A valuable lesson though.
The fake guru economy runs on manufactured reality. A world built to make you believe something is attainable through them specifically. Courses, programs, communities, all pointing back to one person who understood one thing early. That selling belief is more scalable than doing the thing you are selling belief in.
Realistic advice
Nobody truly has all the answers. We are all just figuring it out.
The best advice I ever received never felt like advice. It felt like someone who genuinely cared about where I was going and shared something true from their own experience. Something that made me think for myself rather than just take over their way of thinking. Not because my thinking was wrong. Just incomplete.
The worst piece of advice
The worst piece of advice I ever received was two words.
Be realistic.
It sounds reasonable. Grounded even. But it is purely condescending. It implies the person saying it knows your reality better than you do and has already decided where your limits are. You may have spent years thinking about the possibilities. They spent a moment thinking about the risks. And somehow they think their brief assessment is the realistic one.
Be realistic means nothing. Realistic according to whose reality. By what measure. It is the most vague discouragement available because it sounds like concern while only communicating doubt.
I secretly love it when people doubt me. It energizes me to want to prove something to myself. But I also know I have to stay alert. Because if I am not careful I will actually let my life be shaped by people who are not in my shoes.
Every time someone tells you to be realistic they are telling you that you cannot do it. Just with enough distance to claim they were only trying to help. That is not advice. That is someone else trying to define your limits.
What panics me about it is the assumption underneath. That someone who is not in your shoes, who does not live your life, who does not know what you are actually made of, somehow gets to decide what your reality is. That their version of what is possible for you is more accurate than your own.
It always sticks with me when people say that. And even though it is the worst advice I have received it is also my favourite, because of how energizing it is.
What to do with the energy
Getting pissed off is just information. What pisses you off? That someone could actually define your limits? Use that energy to make sure they cannot. Not by directing it at the people trying to define your reality, because if you give them your energy you let them define it. But by building a life where they cannot.
That said, there are real limits. The point is not to ignore them. The point is to go find out where they actually are for yourself. Not to accept someone else’s version of them before you have even tried.
Anger at discouragement is fuel. Use it to prove the limits wrong. For yourself, not others. Because you are the one living in the reality you build.
So let me just tell you something very important. Whatever you are doing right now, it is time to just start getting realistic about it.
Yes, you read that right.
BE REALISTIC!
BE REALISTIC!
BE REALISTIC!
BE REALISTIC!
BE REALISTIC!
BE REALISTIC!
Now use that energy.