If you’re going to give someone advice, it should follow three rules:
It should be easy to remember.
It should make sense.
It should solve their problem.
One excellent piece of advice lives in three prefect words: Do it Now.
I’ve been in some important conversations this week. Conversations with people I love and care about. They know this about me, so they confide in me and tell me what they usually don’t tell others. When they give me a ticket to enter these conversations, I try to uncover three clues: facts, feelings, and intentions.
Some might call it confession, others might call it therapy, I just call it listening and being brave enough to them what they often don’t want to hear, but probably should. Seems simple and it is. It’s just not always easy. And it doesn’t always work.
Each of us has a conscious – an intuition – a little voice inside that tells us the path. We all have it; we just may not always listen to it. I’m reminded of this when I’m called on for advice because almost every time I give advice, I’m just telling someone something they already know. People who resist accurate advice are often in the middle of a fight between intellect and intuition. In mind theory this is called “cognitive dissonance”. When we get far enough beyond the consequences, our intellect reminds us that if we would have just done what needed to be done when our intuition knew it needed to be done, things would have turned out much better. The wisdom of “Do it Now” isn’t just in doing what’s needed to be done, it’s also when to it.
Those who refuse to accept the wisdom of Do it Now often find themselves stuck in a pattern. Say it’s a relationship problem. When someone’s bitching about their relationship, they never bitch about their own behavior (ever), it’s always about the other person (always). I’ve been in that conversation a bazillion times (and I’ve been the object of that conversation more times than I probably want to admit), but as the pattern continues, eventually I get to a point where I say, “look friend, we’ve been through this enough times. You really need to do this, and you need to do it now, or you need to just stop bitching.” Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t.
Remember: there are two ends to the Do it Now stick: “what”, and “when”, and not doing it now is the same as not doing it at all.
Good luck and have a good week.
Joe Still
2023.10.22
Cite
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
– Jack London