If there’s only one idea that you leave with…

“What do you mean your wife dictates your social life?”

“Steve, when you’re married… you’ll understand.”

How often have you been told “how the world works”? Probably more than you think. Whether it’s hints that you’re missing out because you’re not using this latest cool thing, someone sharing their 5 indisputable (totally disputable) laws of happiness or simply jaded adults trying to foist their life choices upon you (also known as “so when are you having kids?”); the world is an angry marketplace of implicit guidance as to how things roll.

But once you stray beyond the realms of science, much of it will be wrong. Or, should I say, wrong for you. Whilst we might believe in experts and gurus, the reality is that they are by-and-large doing the same thing that we’re doing: Muddling along based upon best guesses. Some guesses are not as terrible as others… but they’re still just guesses. There is no perfect method, correct answer or cheat code, so never be ashamed to question what you’re told.

But it can be daunting. Once you realise that there is no single voice of authority or truth to answer questions like “how can I meet the ideal person?” or “what should I focus on?”, it opens up the chasm of a question “so what should I believe?” to which there is no straight answer. And it can be particularly isolating if conventional wisdom isn’t coming up with the results you want.

The best I believe you can hope for is a right way for you. By this, I mean that there is rarely (if ever) a “right way” that will guarantee the same results for everyone who follows it, so it’s more about adopting the ideas which work for you… not that guy, not those women, not that bastard over there (though his moustache is simply smashing).

I say this because I’ve seen a lot of life advice fall flat and do not appear to be alone in the pressure that I feel like I need to justify myself to the world from time to time. One of the more surreal elements of adulthood no one warned me about has been the untangling of this mess of conflicting advice; picking out the valuable keepers from what I’ve been told to think, feel, aspire to… or even just who I should be. And it turns out there is a lot to work through.

Women I know have been asked their plans for children. If upon stating that it’s not on their radar, they’ve either been called selfish or received the smug “oh you’ll change your mind”. Few have been asked if it’s something they actually want… Bizarre, considering they’re the ones who’d be living with the decision.

I’ve seen many individuals question the effectiveness of trying to think positively all the time, finding that it hasn’t helped them at all, only to be scolded for not believing or not thrusting enough when pulling off their power move.

Heck… Even my younger self discovered, much to his horror, that some toys were not as much fun as the advertisement suggested. What the hell!? That advert had laughing families and a happy parrot flying out of the board. My game just had plastic fragments launched across the room (granted, I was a bit of a sore loser).

And the list goes on... Foreign holidays make you interesting. Women put up ‘bitch shields’ to test a man’s confidence. Getting smashed on a Friday night is what people do. Men shouldn’t show emotions. Using [x] product will make you happier / sexier. The youth of today have no morals. Encouraging women to be independent cheats them of their divine feminine energy (I wish I was making the last one up).

What sucks is that these can feel like lose-lose situations. You follow the advice, it doesn’t work… you feel crummy. So you reject it but then face the implicit guilt-shaming, even in the “enlightened” communities, of those who decry others as “not ready” if they do not gather to latch their lips onto the pulsating teats of some schmuck with a New York bestseller. After all, if other people seem to be happy with that way of doing things, does that mean there’s something wrong with you if you don’t?

The answer, and why I’ve taken to writing, is a sonic boom of a no.

If an idea appears to fail under scrutiny, then it warrants further experimentation or trying something new... not beating yourself up because you’re not good enough.

My aim is simply to add another perspective, particularly to areas I’ve struggled to find reliable sources of advice on… or angrily wish I had found 10 years earlier. The tips I’ll be kicking around are, by no means, the only way of bashing in the problems that life kicks at us, or even the best. They’re simply little discoveries that have helped me to muddle through thus far, so might be of some use if you're wanting a few more ideas to play with.

Maybe they’ll work for you, maybe they won’t. My cartography is not canon and will not work for everyone. And that also stands true of almost any idea (except chugging butane, which tends to be universally stupid). Just because it worked for someone else, it doesn’t mean that you’re somehow flawed if it doesn’t work for you.

Heck, even the great bastion of psychology can only offer patterns at best. Oh sure, a light touch to the arm can increase the chance of getting a woman’s number from 10 to 20%1, but that’s still 80% it won’t work on. That’s not to say it’s not interesting or certainly a significant effect, but there’s no single rule that works on everyone. There’s a reason that you don’t see jumps from 0 to 100% in most fields: There is no single black/white solution for all.

So always question. And not just things you hate (that’s the easy bit) but the things you hold strongly too. Whether those beliefs are actually working for you. Is it really bringing you what you crave? Is what you crave even leading you to what you really want?

But before we run off and start lambasting what we’re told, remember that to question is not the same as to reject. It’s not about poking holes in everything (fun as it is), but entertaining the possibility that an idea could be wrong… but also could be right. Sometimes I found that I had to go against conventional wisdom and follow a niche approach to get to where I wanted. Others, I found that I was always staring down at the obvious answer, but rejected it because I arrogantly felt too unique to be bound by such mundane ideas (i.e. that my atrocious sleep pattern at uni was not responsible in any way for my mood swings).

So every time you receive a new idea, remember that there are many other ideas like it. Try them out and find the best fit. Look to your own experiences and judgements before accepting another’s view of the world.

Including mine.

It can be tricky, disheartening and even lonely at times, but that is equally no reason to stop.

_{*No cartoons were hurt in the making of this article.}