I will talk a lot about surrounding yourself with people that are able to help guide you to success and listening to good advice but today I want to talk a little bit about testing what other people are saying to you for the truth. I believe you need to constantly be testing what other people are telling you to see if what they are saying is going to guide you towards accomplishing your positive goals or if it will be pulling you away from accomplishing those goals. Everything flowing into you needs to run through a filter so the bad stuff can be thrown away and the good stuff can flow in and make a difference. It’s kind of like the water we drink, do you want water that is filled with harmful things but has a nice smell to it or do you want pure, clean water that smells like water? We need to filter out the advice in life that sounds nice but in the long run can lead to destruction.
How do you do it? How do you test things that are being spoken to you? Well, I am going to discuss this in the context of the goal or change that they are speaking to in your life. I am assuming you are discussing a specific goal with someone and what they are saying back to you is what you need to test.
You know your goal, you know the thing you are working towards and assuming that it is a positive goal you are working towards, then you know the steps that you are taking to get there. If that’s the case you can start there. Does what this person is saying help you get to any of those goals? Does what this person is saying align with your goal and the spirit of achieving the goal? I say this because maybe you want to better your situation somehow to help someone close to you, and this other person is giving you advice to lead you to your goal for another reason that doesn’t align with your intentions. Maybe they are all about fancy cars and big houses but you are just trying to help your parents with their hospital bills or something. You might want to be more careful with that individual’s advice because they might lead you astray into something else entirely.
Maybe the person is trying to help you but is truly not even capable of helping you. It’s important to remember that many people will give advice whether they are qualified to or not. Do they really know more than you on the topic or do they just like to hear their own voice? Some people might even be giving you advice in a way that might lead you to ruin. You never know, some people can be jealous of your success and they might want to sabotage yours by giving you faulty advice. Weigh every single piece of advice given to you, think long and hard about it and any possible consequences (both good and bad) that the advice may lead you to.
I suggest you have several people in your life that you completely trust that you can run things by to get their thoughts on the advice. If you take your time and think through any advice you get, keeping in mind who is giving it to you and what their motivations might be you should be able to find the difference between helpful truth and advice worth filtering out. The important thing is to think it through, plan it out and then make a decision. Don’t be hasty with your action, don’t get too excited to receive advice you wanted to hear and rush into things. Make sure you are careful and slow to act and really filter all the junky advice out. After all it’s easy for people to give advice when it is not affecting their life, since it will affect you make sure you test it out and ensure it’s the right path for your life and the goals you have for yourself.
Love this. Good reminders to surround ourselves with the wise.
Yes! There is always someone who has been through what we are going through now. Why not benefit from their wisdom?