The 3 Most Life-Changing Lessons I Learned in 2023
Every Sunday, I write down two lessons from my week.
One is a takeaway from therapy. The second is something I have learned from personal growth or failure. The list now consists of many unique lessons — all of which have changed my approach to different facets of life.
Here are the three most impactful ones.
1: Do not give unsolicited advice
A therapist of mine once said: “Advice is the lowest form of empathy.”
Empathy is about listening and understanding something about someone in the here and now. Advice is about taking that something and seeking to change it — about posing a logical solution to an emotional conundrum.
Unsolicited advice is the worst form of this. It redirects the focus from the vulnerable speaker to the listener’s advice. It undermines the validity of the emotions and experiences being shared, by instead putting emphasis on what needs to be done to correct these emotions.
Giving advice is well-intentioned but harmful. Even when you are trying to help, you are actually just communicating this: “What you are experiencing is flawed, and you need to fix that.” Instead of seeking to understand the other, you are seeking to be understood yourself.
In the end, the only way to show empathy is by truly and fully listening.
2: Anxiety is not intuition
Intuition and anxiety are two different things.
Both use cues in the environment to come to a specific conclusion about something or someone. But whereas intuition seeks to generate understanding, anxiety seeks to generate fear and stress.
You cannot trust your anxiety. In therapy, we paint it as an unreliable alarm bell that overanalyzes environmental cues and overreacts to protect the self from potential harm. However, there is a big difference between an anxious thought and an intuitive one:
- Your anxiety is an unstable inner voice that tells you to cower and hide
- Your intuition is a friendly observer that nudges you toward an answer
Anxiety misleads, and intuition guides. The certainty of your intuition is not flawless, but it is much better than the uncertainty of anxiety. After all, sometimes you just know.
And my intuition tells me that my anxiety is unreliable.
3: Just be good — don’t try to prove it
Greatness needs no proving.
When you simply are good, that is proof enough. Your greatness is shown through your consistent effort and high performance — and then, there is no need to attempt to convince people of that greatness.
It does not matter how many people know about this greatness. People notice eventually. In my experience, when I just focus on being consistent and producing work every day, people acknowledge me more than they do when I just tell them how consistent and productive I am. The only way to communicate your greatness is by being great.
When you focus on proving how good you are instead of actually being good, you have forgotten the point of performance. You are focusing more on acknowledgement than achievement. You are more vain than you are capable.
As Taylor Jenkins Reid’s competitive tennis champion Carrie Soto is told: “Just be good — don’t try to prove it.”
Talk less and walk more.
