In an age that celebrates reason and logic, we’re all looking for the “most efficient” way to deliver “increasing levels of complexity and innovation” to “maximize productivity and yields.” This perspective is not just used in business and industry but also in dating, hobbies, and everyday activities.
We don’t want to waste time – we rely on algorithms to find us a perfect match, and we Google everything from how to have good conversations, to how to land the perfect career, get that promotion, and so on, and so on. People use this to get confidence, but it has the opposite effect: most people seem incredibly anxious, constantly worried, and feel like they don’t fit in anywhere.
I ended up choosing a different path. I rejected all external advice. That’s right, I ignored all dating advice, I stopped clicking on videos like “the top ten things to put on your CV,” “how to become rich,” “land a promotion,” and “how to talk in the most persuasive & convincing way possible.”
This was part of the inspiration for my upcoming book, the Age of Self-Realization. Sign up for my newsletter to find out more about it. For now, let’s talk about:
Why I started going against the stream.
And how did it change my life?
Why I Went Against The Stream
A lot of the advice you see online might make sense at face value, but if everyone spoke like that, acted like that, it’d be against our human interests. The world would be a worse place. Take the “get rich fast” community that argues that:
- You should buy up apartments and rent them out to earn passive income. “Get rich without having to work!”
While it might benefit you, it doesn’t benefit the world. It relies on a group of poor people (rent-seekers) that you can extract resources from. It’s going to drive up housing prices, make renting and owning more expensive, and, eventually, it’s a capital game: only the one able to monopolize and capitalize on the market is going to survive.
2. What about the dating advice online?
It teaches people to avoid genuine, honest conversations and to rely on superficial patterns in people’s behaviour and perceived red flags. It makes people work harder to present a more perfect and polished surface, contributing to “disneyfication” of love, where we develop unrealistic expectations about our crush or “true love”, while driving people away from having vulnerable and real conversations. Case in point: while there is more dating advice available than ever, people are reporting less satisfaction with dating than they used to.
Now, you might say, Erik, sure, there’s a lot of bad advice out there online, but there’s also good advice, and it’s still a good idea to learn from others. You should listen to what the outside world has to say and see what makes sense in your own life. That brings me to point number three.
3. How do you know what is good and bad advice without a strong personal compass? And how do you get a strong personal compass if you’re busy comparing yourself to what everyone else does?
The very practice of observing and trying to live like or measure up to others standards is what is keeping you from:
- Finding your true love. (You’re getting stuck on what people are telling you that you should love!)
- Having success in work. (You’re trying to compete with other people instead of working from your own personal best and finding a career and way of working that fits your own needs!)
- Living a fulfilling life. (The time you spend watching reality tv and scanning social media could have been time you spent on exploring a personal hobby or passion of yours.)
How it changed my life
It completely rewired my way of thinking, from trying to find and live by the rationally correct answer to what to do. Instead, I live life asking myself “what the most interesting question I would like to answer is?” and “Where I can find the answer to that question?”
It allowed me to live a more creative life. I could experiment more, see what worked for me, and I spent more time journaling and reflecting on what I did and how that worked out for me.
And it allowed me to develop a stronger gut instinct and more personal attunement. I felt more connected to myself & what I wanted.
I’m not going to say this way of life will make you more successful, I’m not going to argue it will get you a promotion, and I’m not going to pretend like the love of your life is going to show up outside your door tomorrow, but I’m going to say that you’re better equipped to handle that promotion, to be present and vulnerable in love, and to feel more meaning in your everyday life. And that’s what success is to me. What is success to you? What effect does listening to others’ advice have on your mood, confidence, and anxiety?
