The value of any advice is tied to the degree of its relevance to your particular situation and circumstances. Very specific advice, like legal and medical advice, is very expensive. It is very relevant to the individual’s situation and therefore quite valuable. The degree of relevance of inexpensive/free advice to your specific circumstances is usually very low. Inexpensive/free advice, as in sayings and quotes, but also in everyday personal and business communication, is very generic. The same message is usually perceived differently by different people. Especially when the entire message is very succinct and pithy. Various aspects of the message are accentuated differently as it is filtered through individual perception.
- Developing a sense of how generic advice applies to your individual situation is invaluable.
- Experience, observation and reading feeds the awareness.
- Trying and learning from mistakes is essential.
- Applying the lessons completes the circle.
One of the best career advice I ever got was from reading Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese ? The message in this book is timeless. I had been through many significant changes in my life and I think I have handled those changes quite well. After reading this book in 2001, I became consciously aware of the existence of change and my own patterns of behavior and responses to events of change. This awareness has helped me anticipate change, prepare better, make better decisions and handle change more productively.