Why No Advice Has Ever Helped Me — And Forging The Path Of Self-Discovery

Despite my search to be guided by the light, my situation never improved. Perhaps these tips and tricks weren’t as they seemed.

Drawing Blanks

Well… “never” is a strong word. There are a few pieces of “advice” that have marginally benefited me. However, for every insight I’ve read that has, thousands haven’t, let alone transformed my life.

With the explosion of the internet’s role in my life, I was exposed to an ocean of sure-fire solutions to my problems.

But despite following them to a T, I ended up further from what I wanted, feeling more lost and confused than ever.

That isn’t even to say that information was wrong. There are, of course, obviously bad pieces of advice. Don’t stick a fork in the outlet, for instance. Not the best guidance toward success in a music career.

But I’ve realized the essence of tips and tricks themselves are inherently flawed. At least in how I’ve come to perceive them. Because the outcome that perception intends to create just isn’t fathomable.

And so with all that said, I’ve come to believe that, at least to me, this statement holds true.

No advice is good advice.

False Attribution

About three years ago, I was going through mental issues in my life. Well, I still am, but I was then too. In particular, I was constantly bothered by the past to the point of dysfunction.

Recollections of those events resurged in a frenzy, fueling all sorts of emotions. Anger, guilt, and frustration, amongst much more. I could not focus on anything else but feeling sickly.

These weren’t all significant happenings I was ruminating on. Most were minor social conflicts, awkwardness, or discomfort. But it seems I’m sensitive to slights and self-perception.

So in desperation, I sought answers to lock down memory lane.

There was no shortage of advice on the topic. “Realize that it’s not a big deal. Just don’t worry about it.” Well, by wanting these emotions to stop bothering me, I was already aware they shouldn’t matter. But they affected me regardless, hence why I was trying to resolve the problem.

Other issues I had went just as well. How to deal with social anxiety? “Just remember people don’t care as much as you think.” How do I stop being afraid of this? “It’s not as scary as it seems.”

I hammered these mantras into my head, but hardly anything changed over weeks and months. Why did my brain have to function like this? What was wrong with me?

But fast forward to the present.

For some problems, it’s been a few years. For other afflictions, they’ve lasted an accumulated lifetime. But I can say with certainty, I’m doing better with them than I past was.

I’m less afraid to go out or write publicly online. I don’t take 4 hours to send a message asking a question (well, most of the time).

I don’t ruminate as much and can get over inconveniences faster now. Not everything’s the apocalypse anymore. I don’t worry as much, I’ve seen people don’t care as much as I think. I believe the ideas I couldn’t before.

But at the same time, I don’t repeat those affirmations or whatever to do it.
I just feel how I feel.

And so with this, I’ve realized the first flaw of many insights typically accessible on a broad scale.

They’re not advice at all. They’re outcomes recollected as the process.

I’m looking at some pointers on the anxiety problem detailed online. Here’s one — “Question your thoughts, and think of how likely a situation is to happen in reality.”

So I’m going to think of a distressing issue I’ve faced. Let’s go with, the fear of screwing up an extremely important system.

Making a typo on a vital command, accidentally running the wrong script, and erasing millions of data points collected over years of wide operations throughout the state.

And scariest of all, having to turn myself in, to be berated and ridiculed for my screw up.

Thinking about it, the odds of that are slim. There are backups of the database that can be rolled back in the case of catastrophic loss. The people around me aren’t out to get me either—it’s the opposite in fact.

I realize I’m not a complete idiot either, and can see if a typo exists, or if I’m running the right file. My tendency to fixate on my flaws makes it almost impossible to miss. Plus, a wrong character would more likely just cause a syntax error, and do nothing.

The odds of screwing up are minimal, let alone being viciously torn apart for an honest mistake, especially after a full year of contributions. I questioned my thoughts, realized the scenario was improbable, and no longer worry about it for the most part.

But that’s a false correlation.

My anxiety hasn’t lessened because I questioned my thoughts and came to that realization.

It’s because my anxiety has lessened that I was able to realize my truth.

Flashback to a year ago, when I was less knowledgable of the system. Not only that, but I hadn’t learned everything I had up until now. I was lost without meaning, wanting life to end, and convinced I was a worthless, incompetent being.

I read affirmations and reassurances. I questioned my thoughts. “You know more than you think. You are not worthless, and that won’t happen. You’ll find your place.” But it was a bunch of crap to me.

It was surprising when I was onboarded for my volunteer role. It was preceded by a year of automatic rejections, ghostings, and feeling treated like scum. Nonstop doomscrolling, bombarded with notions that I was useless and had nothing to offer the world.

So even if I was working without the expectation of compensation, I was baffled that I was wanted.

Why would they want me a loser like me?

I even double-checked if they were aware of my lack of knowledge of the framework. They were sure it was fine, that I could learn like many others had.

Back then, I didn’t hold the knowledge I have now. I had other issues as well, so asking questions was terrifying. I was afraid of what I was going to screw up. I had just met everyone as well.

Then came the day I completed my first feature, and I was told I could go ahead and deploy the change to the production site. You know, the real thing. That people actually used. Holding all the real data.

Those horror stories I read online about bringing down systems came up again. I double, triple, quattourdecuple-checked the command was right, and finally made the plunge.

And that’s where it began.

With experiencing more, I realized more. These things I was made to feel I’d never be capable of doing, I did. Those horrors that I always felt would happen, never did.

I implemented more complex features. I improved my communication. I dove into new concepts and got stuff working. The catastrophe never came, nor did the vicious berating. Quite the opposite.

A feeling of appreciation in both directions. Confidence in my ideas — my ability to do and learn quickly. The notions I was fed for years, that my experiences weren’t real, and my entire academic life was worthless —I realized it was all a bunch of bull.

It was such an absurd revelation, that I wrote nearly 60 minutes of reading time’s worth of words on how egregiously I felt decepted. How simple concepts were when one could explore them, rather than being locked away behind gates.

And at a point, I realized I believed everything I once couldn’t.

Those words were right. I knew more than I thought. I was led to my place, where I could feel appreciated and included.

But again, it wasn’t advice. It was the outcome.

The meditation and deep breathing, the visual exercises, and everything else claimed would solve my anxiety and other problems, had no effect for ages. But over the course of months and years, things felt different.

They didn’t work, until they did.
But did they, really?

I’m more inclined to believe the journey I underwent caused my outcomes, not following advice. I ruminate less not because I willed it into existence through mindset, but because of what I experienced.

I gained what I call, “evidence of nothing.” When I messaged for help and wasn’t yelled at in ALL CAPS, that was evidence. When I proposed an idea and it wasn’t called stupid, that was evidence.

Over time, this evidence accumulated, until I could eventually make a case for believing in those notions. But to attribute it to the advice I read feels like to say, “I became less anxious by becoming less anxious.”

I believe that’s crux 2 and 3 of what I’ve come to perceive as “advice.” This guidance often was conveyed as a singularity when in reality, what I went through was a process.

But if it’s called a process, strangely, it still sounds like one entity. Whether a deficiency or an inherent impossibility due to the nature of words, the influence of dozens, or even hundreds of varying events isn’t represented in those words regarding my outcomes.

Instead, it’s portrayed as cause and effect.

Function in, function out.

Even if that were true, and the outcome was certain given an action, without understanding, it might as well mean nothing. In fact, due to my deeply rooted mistrust combined with the superficiality of the attention economy, it does.

Crafted Words

Advice without understanding was an urban myth at best. At worst, it was like listening to a snake oil salesman. I heard of these outcomes and paths that would manifest if I did this, but they were empty words.

It’s akin to my experiences with learning new topics. All these methodologies and practices. The triple-pentagram rule. Following the A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. technique.

If it wasn’t obvious, I made those up.

There’s often this period after I’m introduced to a new concept when I’m clueless as to what I’m doing. Because of my lack of knowledge, I’m largely just acting blindly, often through a guideline.

But after some trialing, I begin to piece more together. This is the effect, this is the improvement caused. This is where I can apply it, this is how this can help me.

With time, I emerge with a better understanding. However, that also means I think less, and the process becomes more automatic. I’m no longer “adhering to the zigzag backflip trickshot rule,” but acting on my newly molded intuition.

And so perhaps predictably, my ironic quarrel with word associations arises again. Words — creating explanations for that which often has no explanation. Lasting complexities compacted into mere sentences that can hardly hope to reveal the whole truth.

Kinda like these ones I’m writing now. Lies by ommission.

And that’s with purely technical areas. In my most harrowing times, my doomscrolling led me to such words in my subjective life problems. But each only left me with that same, lasting question.

Breaking out of loneliness. “Overcome your fear. Meet new people.” How?
Utilizing technical knowledge. “Make an app.” How?
Finding meaning in life. “Solve a problem.”

“HOW??? WHAT DOES IT MEAN???”

That’s how I scream in my mind as I feel completely lost. There are only more questions. What is “meeting people?” What exactly does the act consist of?

What does “making an app” mean? Is a calculator “app” enough? Is this language worthy enough? And what the hell is a “problem” anyway?

I’m the type that needs to know every single detail in advance to quell my anxiety. Just so I can rehearse everything countless times.

“I go to the store, turn this direction, and meet this person, who asks these exact questions that I can respond to with these exact words in the same order.”

I can’t think of where to start with such an open statement, especially when “you know what you don’t know.” The sheer number of possibilities melds into a blob of nothingness in my mind. There’s no visualization nor direction, because there’s nothing to reference in my memories.

My meaning is derived again from hindsight — again, an outcome, not a tangible path. It’s after the fact that the possibilities collapse into the thread that was traveled, which subsequently defines my personal sentiment behind those words.

However, that same sentiment is not necessarily visible nor traversable to others, just as those paths aren’t visible to me.

I reference this example from my past again. In high school, there was a computer science problem where we needed to calculate the Fibonacci sequence.

To keep it short, there are redundant calculations because subsequent answers are built from the smaller problems. And so a more optimal solution is to save the results of each subproblem, and reference it again since fib(4) is calculated multiple times for fib(6).

This was what, 4 years later, I learned was called “dynamic programming.”

While I was utilizing the concept then, I never knew it was called that. I just wrote the code in what I felt was the intuitively optimal way. I never thought I “used dynamic programming.”

In my mind, the practice was given a name and association after it’s establishment.

The same can be said for my years-long attempts in narrative games. I remember discovering the genre, sparking interest in the medium. And perhaps naively, thinking I could make one myself.

I remember the brainstorming, the terrible ideas, until I settled on one. It was still cringy, but I managed to cull out even worse ones, and I had to start somewhere.

The struggle to learn how to write, and frustrations with music production. My ego and pompousness. The flow and ebb of hope, and in the ruts, thinking about what was fundamentally wrong with me. Eventually, I made concessions and progress when the circumstances were right.

All of this culminated in a finished first game, and continuing to work on improving. At least until I went on an indefinite hiatus due to my sheer unhappiness with everything involved.

As for the rest, the outcome is still pending.

That is what the phrase “make a game” means to me. I can talk all I want about what I know of the process, my assumptions of what led to what, and how things are. “Yeah, try making a game.”

But it would mean nothing. At least, nothing one doesn’t already know.

It doesn’t include the nuances of those realizations, the emotions, the true perception of the moment that comprise them. The technicalities, and thousands of factors that even I have yet to understand.

They intersect with all other aspects of my life. My environment, my circumstances, and other endeavors in parallel.

Never did I think I was “moving to learn new concepts” or “pushing myself out my of comfort zone” then. I did what I did, and experienced what I did, for reasons that I had, which led to my outcome and subsequent associations with these words.

The concepts of “learning,” “self-realization,” and “development.” “Making a video game,” “trying new things.” To me, these words refer to my experiences, because I’ve made connections with them. Outside my domain, they’re vacuous and without meaning. And within another’s, the context is never the same.

Once again, words attempt tell a story.
One crafted from the experiences of me.

But it’s not my true story. And it never will be.

Even if my tale were told to the greatest level of truth words can convey, with pages upon pages of details from feelings to minuscule actions — this seems to bring another problem.

Assuming it even works for one’s circumstances, there’s this pressure to align exactly with this predefined journey, while forgoing the personal aspect. That any deviation is an indication of one’s deficiency.

Given the dress rehearsal, every single detail, one has to question if following it constitutes living for oneself anymore. When one is disallowed from questioning their trajectory, and instead follows a prescribed path out of pressure.

This is where I feel my present notion of “advice” begins to show its darkness.

Credit Where Credit’s Due

Advice always feels inherently imbalanced as a dynamic. There’s a sender and a recipient. And when one decides to bestow such wisdom, it often reveals an implication of their thoughts.

For example, when I’m told out of the blue how “life is never perfect,” I get the feeling that maybe — just maybe, the second party views me as an idiot.

Disregarding the genericity of the statement, if it was believed I already knew this, I highly doubt it would be told to me. After all, there’s no point in providing an answer if there’s not a problem to solve.

And so it feels like I’m thought of as the opposite — either stupidly unaware of the setbacks of life, or that I’m delusional, in that I’m expecting everything to go right.

Or say, for instance, the tip to “stay humble” and “not have an ego.” This one in particular, I was quite vulnerable to. I was afraid of being self-centered and in over my head.

And so I groveled and conceded mentally.
“Yes, I’m dumb, yes, I know nothing.”

But again, why would this advice be conveyed, if it weren’t assumed the recipient needs it? So once more, I get the feeling I’m viewed as too pompous, and needing to be taken down a notch.

Or at the very least, having the potential to become so.

“Know your place, peasant.”

I could never believe in myself because of this fear. Every accomplishment was worthless. I knew nothing and was foolish to believe otherwise. And my hardships, however harrowing, weren’t real.

I’ve begun to break out of that state of mind, that drove me to the edge of sanity. Violent thoughts of suicide, with no meaning left in life. That was the outcome I came to, in part from this advice.

With a supportive environment and further experiences, I’ve discovered what I’m capable of. I think to myself that I’ve done great work. And most importantly, I realized that isn’t an excess of ego.

It’s simply trust. Feeling happy with oneself, and one’s ability to progress further.

Now, in fairness, my thoughts exist with a bias. These are only how I’ve personally come to perceive what these words and concepts mean. I also get that most of what I’ve internalized isn’t addressed to me, but just broadly distributed texts that I viewed throughout the interwebs.

Unfortunately, knowing that does little to deter my reaction to them. The provocations win over.

While I’ve wished to “not take everything so personally,” the fact of the matter is, I do. Apart from the individualized, “in your face” feeling inherent with social media, whenever certain notions are presented, I feel dread or anger arise involuntarily.

It’s because subconsciously, I’m making connections with past experiences —both micro and macro. In combination with my own natural proclivities, these bring rise to those emotions, even if I don’t want them.

I’m not aware of every cause, because I’m yet to discover many. But I’ve realized there are indeed reasons beyond feeling bad for the sake of doing so. Once again, the factors to the problem are made to not exist — and the solution turned into a binary on/off switch.

To overcome this impediment to my mental well-being, I’ve attempted to explore my past and come to understand those influences, as I have with many of my problems.

These are processes that have each taken years, some that I’m still navigating a decade later.

If I haven’t beaten the idea to death already — that is my intended outcome, not something conciously workable.

What’s most egregious is how “advice” feels to manipulate credit and responsibility. When I’m faced with it, I have two options — take it, or don’t. But already, there’s pressure. Because I highly doubt advice is ever given without the expectation the recipient takes it.

If I failed and didn’t take the advice, it’s my fault. If I’d listened, then things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. If I failed but did take the advice, it’s my fault. Because clearly, I must’ve done something wrong.

And if I succeeded and happened to listen to the advice, well, “I told you so.” It’s because I followed the guidance I was able to achieve the outcome. “See what happens when you listen?”

The advice can never fail nor be criticized. But when it comes to success, it always claims the attribution.

However, as aforementioned, following these tips and tricks hardly benefitted me for ages. Mindset, visualization, and trying one thing after another. I still felt the weight of my problems — lost, stressed, confused.

It didn’t work… until it did.

But again, did it?

Perhaps I began to feel less affected by my emotions over time, not because of a delayed effectiveness from advice, but because of natural acclimation causing those feelings to wane over those months.

Or, I’ve sparked new ideas not from habits or hacks, but because I’ve been exposed to more possibilities throughout those years.

Maybe it’s not that the advice worked, but that it stopped failing.
After all, it can’t fail against a problem that no longer exists to apply it to.

By assuming the advice would work, when the problem finally disappeared, the most apparent cause was just that. Perhaps there’s even a sunk cost fallacy going on, in that it’s a necessity to have faith that the effort put into believing the idea culminated in the result.

But when I truly think about how that advice helped me, I conjure blanks. It’s unexplainable because, in my reality, there’s no single notion to explain. It’s scattered and spread across infinite points in my web of experiences.

I think consuming advice was really just a method of coping with my struggles. In times when I was at an utter loss, these placebos and placeholders allowed me to believe there was a destination to crawl towards, until I finally found my true paths to replace them with.

Not universal answers. But my own.

That’s ultimately why I don’t want to give advice here. Maybe when I was younger and in over my head, it was a noble pursuit — an obligation. I don’t believe so anymore.

Nothing I’ve written I consider advice either. I don’t convey this as meta advice about advice, but rather a recollection of the factors and experiences in my life, to discover aspects of myself.

Quite frankly, it would be quite discomforting if I were told my words changed or helped someone. That’s not something I can ever do. It’s a false attribution of a journey I deserve no ownership of.

That credit is for one’s self.

I mentioned I considered a few pieces of advice helpful. In particular, it was in my second college English course. My professor made me aware of concepts like using “sic,” to denote an “intetional [sic] misspelling.”

Or perhaps the most significant piece of advice I got, is that contrary to what we were taught in high school, in college, we should own our words by using “I.”

I think what made this exchange effective is first, the imbalanced dynamic is minimal. Sure, there was superiority between professor and student, but the expectation of lecturing was established already.

When my professor provided feedback, it felt more akin to us working on my paper. I felt I was talked with rather than talked to, and there was hardly any pressure. And so really, it wasn’t even advice at all.

It was less about telling me what I must do, and more about introducing me to a new possibility. One that was immediately actionable, and where I could instantly judge the results for myself.

I believe that’s what helped me progress with my writing. It was hardly a lecture, but a discussion and joint effort. Nor was it a singularity, as this concept of “I” versus “we” has shown its resourcefulness in these very writings I’ve done.

A single point in my journey, which among others, influenced my paths down the line.

Anything that exceeds that threshold only seeks to define my entirety. My journey, my processes, my understanding, and my emotions, all in a single swoop.

Akin to this, most advice I’ve encountered wasn’t actually advice. What is so can’t help anyway, but it can certainly harm. My learning and progress will be dictated not by words, but by experiences and discoveries made along the way.

I’d like to find someone I can confide in again someday. Perhaps we would exchange our ideas. Not to bestow wisdom, but to share and find common ground in our past, present, and future timelines.

Two webs of experiences both similar and unique, melding together, and forging paths anew. A role that’s one in many an influence, but by no means insignificant.

It sounds nice. Without coercion nor judgment, just following where our journeys take us, and helping each other discover it along the way. Creating all sorts of points together, each holding a remarkable potential, through doing the best we can in the present.

Most above all, remaining confident in our abilities to reach our paths, despite setbacks. And perhaps through so, going further than we ever could before.

No words can dictate such an experience, as it’s one defined by its own merit within me.