Advice. I get it and I give it, but I’ve yet to find a perfect way to evaluate it.
Some say go with your intuition. Others say that’s a mistake, because your intuition can be terribly wrong.
An Educated Gut
My guess is that your best bet is to go with something you might call educated intuition, a gut check backed up with some solid research, but I have to admit I’m partial to my gut.
The reason I’m so partial to it is because I have to live with it. If I go against it, I can feel it.
Much Ado About Twitter
For example, the truly wise and generous Charlie Gilkey suggested I change my Twitter username from MildlyCreative to my own name.
I disagreed, we debated a little, and then I gave it a try. I didn’t like it.
It’s not because I’m ashamed of my name. I just think mildlycreative is nice summation of what I’m all about, and I think most people “get it”.
Charlie thought otherwise. He may be right, but I quickly realized the name change was going to bug me each and every day. I don’t need the irritation, and I just don’t think it’s a deal breaker or maker.
Besides, Twitter has very few rules beyond the 140 character limit and even that has its workarounds. I’ve almost reached the point of completely ignoring Twitter advice because it’s so varied, which leads me to suspect that beyond reporting on their own experience, no one really knows what they’re talking about. So, why would my own experience be any less valid?
This Way and That
I think that’s where we often go astray. We discount our own experience. We’re doing something that’s working for us and having a merry old time at it when someone comes along and tells us how they’re doing it or how the experts say it should be done.
Suddenly, we’re twisted and conflicted and we don’t know which way is up. Before the advice, we were simply engaged in what we were doing. After the advice, we’re struck by the notion that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
Then we assume that either we or our advisors have got it all wrong, and we fail to consider a third alternative, that each of us has simply found another way of going about our business.
Right, Wrong, or Simply Different?
We seem to have this uncontrollable urge to label everything that we and others do as either right or wrong or good or bad. It would be much more beneficial, I believe, to simply take notice of all the different ways things can be done.
If we could suspend our judgement, we’d see that each way has its positives and negatives. Then we’d be free to experiment, honor our own experience, and decide what works best for us without feeling the need to pit our ways against theirs.
This also happens to be a much more interesting, engaging, and creative way to look at things. It opens the door to new possibilities, discoveries, and solutions, the very things that get neglected in an arbitrary battle between right and wrong.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m with you!! Labeling and judging things good or bad, right or wrong, etc., highly overrated. There’s room for lots of ways of doing something “right”!!
We experiment; we risk failure and sometimes we “fail. If, tho’, we’re paying attention, rather than beating ourselves over our perceived failure, we learn something that we can take with us into the next venture.
Helen´s last blog ..I’ve not shown up for many days
I’m finding that giving up labels [labels others have placed upon me or those I've given to myself] is proving to be one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It’s amazing how tied to labels our egos are.
I’m completely with you on trusting your gut, by the way. Your gut pretty much never gets it wrong.
Well, supposedly my gut and my brain are the same age, but for some reason I tend to follow the the “logical” brain instead of listening to my gut. Later on, I often find that my gut was dead on in its perception of the situation. Why, then, is it so hard to listen to the gut, when your experience tells you that your brain may not have it all figured out?
I think there’s a need to use both. Our intuition really can mislead us because some truths are counterintuitive. That’s one of the reasons the scientific method is such a powerful tool.
But I think there are times when we’re trying to determine right from wrong when they simply don’t exist. Ice cream flavors, creative processes, and Twitter usernames come to mind.
Hi Ken,
Once again your words strike a chord with me. I think about this subject a lot as well. I love learning. I want to be enriched by other people’s wisdom and great ideas. Sometimes I get stuck and I want advice or feedback from people I trust.
And yet…I have to filter all of it. Not in a spirit of what’s right and what’s wrong, but with a sensitivity to what’s right for me right now.
I still seek input, but I’ve gotten better at remembering that advice really only reflects the experience of the person giving it, and that I need to feel out whether its right for me, or run a little experiment to see.
It’s funny you post this now, because I just had a similar experience to the one you had with your twitter handle. I sign all my blog posts “Love, Tara.”
Writing those words is quite honestly one of my favorite moments of writing…when I feel the piece come to a close and I connect to the spirit of love with which I’m writing, the caring I feel for everyone who is reading. It’s my signature, in the deepest sense. It’s part of who I want to be to my readers.
This week a widely read blogger who I respect advised me to stop signing my posts “Love, Tara” because, she said, that read like an email and not a blog post. I really appreciate the advice, and the intention, and know for sure that changing this is not right for me, right now.
Big picture, I think what comes out of human beings, when they are being authentic and walking on their own creative path, is far more powerful and interesting and stunning than what general advice and “the rules” could guide them toward.
Love,
Tara
Tara Mohr´s last blog ..Reclaiming Lost Loves