The meteorologist told you it was going to rain, so you wore your rain boots and your jacket, but it was sunny. The expert sports analyst told you which teams were going to win, so you placed bets on those exact teams, but he was wrong. The online financial guru told you to buy certain stocks, but all those companies plummeted.
We have an obsession with listening to people who sound confident enough to be right but are statistically wrong more often than they're right. Speculators. Pontificators. Dreamers with polished opinions. I'll skip to my hypothesis as to why.
It's because most people have low confidence in their own talents and abilities, and frankly, are a bit lazy. Rather than do their own research, rather than go out on a limb and take a risk on their own, we'd much rather turn to someone who has taken the risks themselves and now makes their money selling advice they may or may not even take themselves.
Our obsession with experts, gurus, mentors, and coaches can often lead us astray. I'm not going to tell you not to listen to them. I'm going to tell you to stop blindly following them.
It's okay to get advice. It's okay to get insights. It's okay to hear opinions. But at the end of the day, you still have to be responsible for making a decision rooted in what is best for you and only you.
In the long run, most people can't understand your vision. They can't tell you not to work in that industry, or invest consistently over five years in a particular company, or start that business you've been dreaming about starting. They don't have the full picture. Only you do.
Today's meteorologist is pretty decent at telling you today's weather — 85 to 90% accuracy. But ask them the 10-day forecast or what's happening next month, and their accuracy starts to wane. It becomes a coin flip. So what do you do? You prepare for all options. You pack the rain boots and the jacket. And you use common sense based on your own history and knowledge.
Taking advice is like receiving a series of GPS coordinates. If two are in the general proximity and the third is off the beaten path, mixed with the fact that your intuition says the location is between the first two — you should head there. Stop blindly following the third coordinate. Trust yourself. Only you know your goals deep down, and only you know what you ultimately want to achieve. Let the experts help guide you, but you own the final call.