Success Advice Is Everywhere. So Why Doesn’t It Work?

Success Advice Is Everywhere. So Why Doesn’t It Work?

I was thinking that nowadays there’s no more secrets to success and fulfilment. They are widely shared by those who succeeded. This treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom is easily accessible via books, blogs, interviews, talks, documentaries, online courses and so on... So how come all this advice doesn’t seem to work?

Have you ever met someone who could genuinely say that they read a book and it changed their life? Who really changed or succeeded because of what they read? To me it seems that the only ones who use other peoples’ wisdom are the ones who are super successful. You can hear them talking in interviews that book A, or advice from B changed their trajectory or inspired their action.

But this is only the successful few. What about the rest? All of us who consume this self-help and non-fiction books filled with good, useful advice?

There’s clearly some kind of self-selection process going on. You read a great book and then what? My guess is that the ones who succeed are the ones who actually take this advice, implement it in their life and experiment. If it doesn’t work they’ll ditch it as not applicable to their situation and test the next one that they come across. The rest however, the “normal folks” read the advice and not take it. They may agree with it, they may think about it, sometimes ponder it for quite a while. But they never really implement it in their life.

Why’s that? Because it’s hard. Because it costs energy and it means risk. It means confronting the fears. It requires willingness to get up, get your hands dirty and, yes, fall. In the end all it requires is a decision.

unsplash-logoTobias Fischer

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