January 27, 2016, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…Aargh

“You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.” –John Steinbeck

If you’re like me, you can see it in your kids, but not so much in yourself.

I call it the “aargh of advice”. We may need it, we may have even requested it (not the teenagers, of course), and then there’s what we do with it.

If it fits what we already had in mind, it’s easy and affirmative to incorporate. When it doesn’t fit, however, the aargh begins.

“Change up what I think or, excuse me, what I KNOW is the best way to proceed?”

“Hmmm, let me think about that!” [Said more honestly, “Let me silently find all the justifications possible that the advice is bad.”]

There’s no easy answer on answers — coming from within or without — and no cookie-cutter way to give or get.

Yet, thank God there’s something to at least juggle along with our own best thinking.

Sometimes the biggest aarghs create profound aaahs.

Got aargh?

“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.” –Elon Musk