BEWARE ONLINE LIFE ADVICE (INCLUDING FROM ME)

Beware online life advice (including from me).

I once heard a very famous personal development influencer answer a student's question about whether they should specialise in one thing during their time at university, or whether they should do lots of diverse things.

The influncer said, with great certainty, that the student should focus on one thing, because that's what's likely to make the most money in the long term.

Can you spot the problem with that advice?

The person giving the advice didn't ask what the student was hoping to achieve as a result of their choice, so gave an answer based on what their own main life goal is - which is to make as much money as possible.

So, if the student's desire was to live a full and happy life, the advice was probably flawed.

That story, and many other examples like it, are what prompted this post.

It's that time of year when the personal development and self-help accounts online will be stepping up their content-output because we all know this is traditionally the time many people decide to make big changes to their lives.

Which is why it's a good opportunity to share a lesson I've learnt multiple times over the past 20 years of consuming (and, in recent years, sharing) personal development advice.

Always remember that people can only share from their own experiences of life and their own perspective.

And that experience and perspective might not be a good fit for you.

What I realised over the years, even before going down the path of sharing things I'd learnt, is that most people who change their lives for the better attribute the change to one key thing.

Maybe it's ice baths and breathwork, or daily meditation, or going deep into their own darkness with a therapist, or healing themselves with magic mushrooms in a Peruvian jungle.

And once they've found what they believe to be the magic pill to cure all ills, they understandably become evangelical about it and want to get everyone else on board their life-changing train.

The problem I've seen, though, is that just because something works for one person doesn't mean it works for everyone.

Even when life-changing work is backed by scientific studies, it’s often the case that a hugely successful approach might work for something like 70% of people involved in the study.

That’s great but, to state the obvious, that still means that it didn’t work for 3 out of 10 people, which could quite easily be you or me.

On top of that, each person is sharing what helped them to get to where they wanted to be, which might not be the same place you want to get to.

One of the biggest things I've done over the years to make changes that had the biggest impact, is to make sure I'm listening to people who have the same desired outcome as me, who achieved it in a way I can relate to and in a way I think will work for me.

When I'm observing someone online, I ask myself what goal are they pursuing or have they achieved which forms the basis of their advice.

Because if their goal is to make as much money as they possibly can, the advice they give is going to reflect that desire.

But that's not my goal, so their advice is unlikely to be helpful to me and, in most cases, is likely to be the opposite of what I need to listen to.

Likewise, if someone tells me that they reached peace, contentment and fulfilment in their life by getting up at 4am and jumping into an ice bath, I know that won't work for me because even though we have the same goal, I fucking hate getting up early and being cold, so starting my day forcing myself to do things I hate is not going to go well in the long term.

Crucially, I also look at what their life looks like as a result of the way they live.

Recently I’m seeing more and more people in the personal development space who share how they think we should live our lives with absolute certainty, while the way they’ve lived their lives for decades has started to drive them into serious chronic health conditions that they can’t figure out.

My journey has been the opposite to those stories.

I lived a life based on all the traditional self-help advice that drove me to a deep depression, fantasies of ending my life and serious chronic health issues, and now I share what I’ve been doing for nearly a decade to undo that damage and move more and more towards a life of peace, contentment, balance, happiness and fulfilment.

Which is all to say, if you are considering making changes to your life heading into 2026, the best thing to start with is to really think about what you want to achieve before deciding who you’re best listening to that’s most likely to help you get to where you want to be.

The whole point of the work I do with clients is to share what I’ve learnt and encourage people to take what parts work for them and, in the words of Simon Cowell on X-Factor, make it their own so that it’s the most impactful it can be in their life.

It’s not about me, it’s about them.

Which means if your main aim is accumulating as much money as possible, growing a huge social media following or learning how to force yourself to do things you don’t want to do by calling yourself a little bitch every morning, I’m not the person to listen to.

But if you’re looking for more peace, fulfilment, balance and happiness in your life, and if you like the way I approach going about that goal, maybe you could start to take some of the ideas on board and trying them out in your life to see how they fit.

At the end of the day I’m not preaching from some ivory tower pretending my life is perfect and I’ve got this complicated game all figured out.

I’m down in the dirt with everyone else doing the work every day and figuring it out as I go along.

So as we embark on the adventure of a new year, be careful who you’re listening to along the way, including me.

(If you're looking for more general help, click here, or for details of my Indestructible Man Programme, click here).