3 MINUTE MONDAYHi friend, My North America live tour starts next month! New York City, Austin, Boston, Denver, Salt Lake City & Chicago have limited tickets left. There’s a problem with how we all take advice when pursuing personal development. Guidance doesn’t sculpt us into something new, it exaggerates who we already are. The pattern is almost cruel: the ones who least need the medicine are the ones most likely to overdose on it, while the ones who need it desperately are immune. Advice doesn’t land evenly, it finds the path of least resistance and tends to be absorbed by people who already lean in its direction. The post-#MeToo instruction “don’t be pushy with women” makes conscientious, anxious men even more timid, while the guys steamrolling boundaries still don't take heed. The prescription to “just work harder” is devoured by the insecure overachiever who’s already bleeding effort into every crack of their day, while the genuinely lazy person coasts past it unchanged. The “men should open up more” lesson is swallowed whole by the sensitive, expressive guys, while the stoic boomer who equates vulnerability with weakness ignores it completely. And the call to “take more responsibility” encourages the ones who always think it’s their fault end to carry even more of the load, while the ones who constantly point the finger elsewhere never change. TLDR: People who really need to hear advice often don’t notice, while those who could do with the opposite message will take it as gospel. Let’s call these people Advice Hyperresponders. History and myth are full of them. Icarus was already reckless, intoxicated by freedom and glory. His father Daedalus told him to keep to the middle path; don’t fly too high or too low. But Icarus exaggerated the part that matched his impulse, soaring higher until the wax melted and he fell into the sea. Don Quixote was already romantic, imaginative, and desperate for purpose. When he read too many tales of knights, he didn’t just enjoy them as fiction, he treated them as instruction. The lesson to be noble and brave was amplified into absurdity, until he was charging at windmills and humiliating himself. Even the Buddha before enlightenment was already austere and obsessed with self-mastery. As a young ascetic, he followed the prescription of self-denial so literally that he nearly starved himself to death, only later realising the guidance had become poison and creating the “Middle Way” to correct course. Why does this happen? Well… People filter advice through their existing traits, so it amplifies predisposition rather than correcting imbalance. We all want to be “good,” so we over-index the guidance that flatters our self-conception as conscientious, virtuous and hardworking. But perhaps most influential is the fact that instructions which bite deepest are the ones that match our inner fears. The anxious man doesn’t just hear “don’t be pushy,” he feels it confirm the fear that any move he makes is already too much. The sensitive man doesn’t just hear “open up more,” he feels it confirm the worry that he’s emotionally inadequate, even when he’s already oversharing. The insecure overachiever doesn’t just hear “work harder,” he feels it confirm the suspicion that he’s never enough. The self-blamer doesn’t just hear “take more responsibility,” he feels it confirm the fear that he’s guilty even when he isn’t. The trouble is that good counsel, when misapplied, can be worse than bad counsel or none at all. The resistant ignore it while the receptive overdo it. And the net effect is that imbalance gets amplified, not corrected. Self-improvement doesn’t distribute like medicine, it distributes like alcohol. The ones who should abstain are drunk on it while the ones who could do with loosening up don’t even sip. The problem isn’t a lack of advice. It’s the inability to tell when guidance is seductive because it confirms your existing tendencies like your biases, your fears and your flaws. Much advice doesn’t balance us, it exaggerates us. It makes the disciplined more rigid, the sensitive more fragile, the responsible more burdened. The trick is not discovery but discernment. Not hearing more, but knowing when to stop listening. MODERN WISDOMI do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. This week’s upcoming episodes: Monday. Thursday. Saturday. THINGS I'VE LEARNED1. Boys in fatherless homes are 2x as likely to be depressed compared with boys in intact families. Girls in fatherless homes are 10x more likely to be depressed. — Rob Henderson 2. Just 42% of Democrats now view capitalism favourably, while 66% say they have a positive view of socialism. The shift marks the first time in the Gallup survey's 15-year history that more Democrats favour socialism over capitalism. Among Democrats under 50, only 31% express a favourable opinion of capitalism, down from 54% in 2010. Gallup found that attitudes among older Democrats have remained relatively stable, while younger voters have driven much of the recent change. The same poll showed little movement among Republicans, 74% of whom still view capitalism positively. — h/t Gallup & GroundNews 3. According to the American Urological Association, 25% of patients on TRT never had their testosterone checked. One-third weren’t even deficient. LIFE HACKSunlight before screenlight. Honestly the best rule to ensure you don’t ruin your morning. Look outside for at least 5 minutes before you check your phone. It’s crazy how much worse my day goes when I don’t do this. Big love, Try my productivity drink Neutonic. PS |