What is the overall purpose of this information/document? 

  • I am trying to point out the types of through processes that are present in individuals who are capable of helping
  • One of the biggest pains is when you need help now, but you can’t find anyone to help you
  • This guide is a collection of knowledge that I’ve learned throughout my time searching for help when couldn’t find any

Purpose #2: There are certain types of people that you need to look for and certain types of people that you need to avoid

  • The reason why this is important is because there are certain people that will give you unhelpful or even harmful advice
  • Even if their advice doesn’t intend to harm, you may end up getting harmed due to how much time you commit to following their advice

Getting help from othersHow to get help from others? 

What to look for? 

  1. Emotional stability 
    • Generally, the best types of advice is given from people who are stable themselves
    • Try to look for people who are kind, supportive, and don’t focus on berating others – This is critical because often times people spend time getting angry at others instead of coming up with new ways to help them
  1. Ability to explain their thought processes in a step-by-step manner 
    • If someone is capable of explaining how they changed their mindset to deal with an issue, it’s a great indicator that this is a person you need to be around
    • Ex: The guides that you’re reading right now are a perfect example of what I’m talking about
    • I am explaining how I think about things and why I am making each of my suggestions – I’ll use video games as an example
    • When you’re optimizing something is a video game, you have to know what the tools you have to work with are
    • In addition, you have to have a general idea of the problem that you’re trying to solve – What I described in my long term planning guide is how I approach problems big problems
  1. How much time do they have?
    • Any type of instrumental support will likely be difficult for that person to provide
    • Ex: if someone only has 20 minutes to talk to you, you have to make the most out of that 20 min
  • It’s still possible for them to help and it’s best for you not to expect them to solve your problems if they’re super busy
  • A lot of problems are complex and take time to adequately solve
  •  If someone is constantly busy with their lives, it’s an indicator that they’re not someone you’ll get much help from in most instances
  • The best they’ll likely be able to do is offer some emotional support and that’s still valuable
  1. Ability to get to know you
    • For someone to provide you with support, they need to have time to listen to your story
    • How long you need to explain yourself is based on your individual circumstances; however, in order to explain yourself, they need to be interested in talking to you
    • If someone is good at giving advice, they’ll start to modify their advice based on what they know about you
    • In addition, you can tell them how you want advice given to you as well

What types of people should be avoided/flagged in your mind? 

  1. Emotional instability/condescending attitude towards you or others around them
    • This is the most harmful trait that I’ve noticed
    • Generally, if someone is unstable emotionally, it’s near impossible that they’ll help you with you situation
    • Usually if someone is emotionally unstable, they’re having trouble figuring out their own lives
    • Generally, these types of people might give a good piece of advice once in a while; it’s not worth dealing with the emotional pain that can be caused by dealing with these people
    • However, a lot of the advice that these people give is very generic and you can get it from elsewhere
    • Ex: ”Just do…”
    • For example, if someone tells you “you gotta work hard and find this out by yourself”, it’s likely that this advice is too broad to be helpful for your situation
    • Worst case, you’ll blame yourself for not being able to do things “by yourself” and even start to compare yourself to others

One of the most common activities that these people engage in constantly bashing things that they hate 

  • Ex: Here’s an example from gaming
  • It’s extremely common for players to sit in discord calls and blame the game balance for all their problems
    • “I’d be great at this game if …”
    • “If this character wasn’t in this game, it’d be better”
  • Even if these statements are true, it’s not doing anything to improve their skill level by increasing their understanding of the game
  • These are the types of people that stay stuck in their ranks
  • Typically, top players limit the amount of time they’re just complaining about how bad the game is when they’re learning the game
  • There are top players that complain a lot
  • What differentiates these players from the lower level one is how much time they spend on this type of complaining
  1. Generic advice/broad advice
    • There’s a lot of generic advice out there that can actually be very harmful – Ex: “just play more”
    • Ex: “Just get a good GPA”
    • Ex: “Just communicate more”
    • Ex: “You gotta do everything by yourself”
    • Ex: “No one else will help you with this”
    • Ex: “You gotta learn this by yourself”

The problem with giving broad advice is that the individual needs to operationalize that to their own life

  • This types of advice is only helpful if the person giving the advice can describe things in a step by step manner
  • For example, the concept of communication is very complicated and everyone has a different idea for what they consider to be good communication
  1. Focus on the person’s actions when their advice isn’t working for you
    • A huge issue is when the person giving the advice gets mad at individuals when the advice isn’t working
    • Instead of trying to modify their advice, they blame the other person for not doing something right
    • If the person giving advice isn’t capable of finding out why their advice isn’t working, there’s a almost 100% chance that they don’t know how to operationalize that piece of advice
    •  It shows me that they’re not capable of adapting their advice based on the needs of the individual

How do I deal with this? 

  • Keep track of their emotional state when a piece of advice they give isn’t working
  • If someone is getting deeply emotional at me, it shows me that they’re focusing on the wrong thing
  • If the advice isn’t working, the advice likely needs to be modified
  • In addition, I can tell that this person will waste a lot of my time in the future since they’re focused on getting angry instead of actually helping
  1. Rigid thinking
    • The person needs to be capable of challenging and modifying the advice they give based on who they’re helping
    • Ex: “Look for internship opportunities”
    • It’s very common to get told to look for internships without getting told what opportunities are available
    • The act of searching for an internship is a problem that needs to be operationalized – If someone isn’t helping you with the operationalizing, it’s unlikely that they’ll be much help to you
  1. Constant mocking/talking behind other people’s backs
    • This is a toxic action that people take when they don’t know what to do with another person
    • The issue is that the person is spending time talking about you to others instead of engaging in actions to help you, such as changing the advice they give
    • This type of behavior gives me an indication that the person’s priorities are in the wrong place
    • Therefore, it’s going to be unlikely that they’re going to help you solve any complex problems
  1. Inability to solve their own problems/identify their own problems
    • Look at the problems that the person is dealing with and how they approach it – For example, does someone constantly get emotional or not know what to do when faced with new situations?
    • Ex: We’ll take video games as an example
    • Observe what the person teaching you does when faced with their own challenges, such as a troublesome situation
    • If someone is only using trial and error for all their problems, it indicates an inability to operationalize the problem, identify the problem, and many more other issues

What does this show me?

  • If someone isn’t able to solve their own problems, there’s not much chance that they’ll be able to help you with complex situations
  • This is because modifying advice is a complicated action
  • In order to modify advice, the person needs to be able to explain step by step – If they’re unable of doing that themselves, you’re likely not going to learn anything from them
  • If someone reacts with lots of emotions, that’s another indicator that something is wrong – Lots of emotion shows me that the person isn’t focused on the problem anymore, they’re focused on some emotion that is being brought out in that situation
  1. Lack of ability to get help themselves/lack of support network for their problems – If you want to know who’s good at help you, you have to have an idea of where they’re getting their knowledge from
    • A simple question you can ask is “Is there anyone that helped you learn this”?
    • Often times people are getting their knowledge from suspicious places and this leads to poor outcomes
    • Ex: A lot of people get their advice from others who’ve told them similar things, such as “just work hard and you’ll make it”
  1. Inability to accept other methods of approaching a problem
    • Most of the issues I’ve listed about will eventually lead a person to this conclusion
    • You need to be careful if you suggest alternate methods and they’re immediately shut down
    • Ex: When I was in school, it was common for a lot of teachers to call anything outside of school “unproductive”
    • This would include entertainment, such as video games
    • Instead of arguing about the benefits of of video games with these people, it’s best to recognize that you can better spend that time talking with people who are more accepting
    • This is a critical reason why finding people who are respectful to others is important

What to do if you don’t want to avoid these people or if you want to do something about them? 

  • Conversations with the individual giving the advice or people around them is one of the best things that you can do
  • If nothing is working, you can try to exit the situation if possible

Tools for conversations: 

These are some of the tools that you can use

  • I look at conversational skills as tools
  • You don’t need to use all of them, but you should have an idea of how to use these tools
  1. Direct confrontation through conversation
    • If someone is a severe harm to your mental state, bringing that up in a private conversation can be helpful
    • Try to make this conversation as peaceful as possible if you can
  1. Emotional processing of your reactions
    • This is what Dr.K teaches and therapy can help in combination with this as well

What does direct confrontation accomplish? 

  1. Conflict resolution
    • If someone teaching you has treated you poorly, this is an excellent time to practice conflict resolution skills
    • You can bring up some issues you’ve had with them respectfully
    • This is an extremely useful skill since there may be times when you have to be around certain people
    • Ex: Work
    • This is a tool in your tool box
    • You don’t have to always engage with people who’ve harmed you
    • However, you should be capable of doing so if you deem necessary
  1. Ability to walk away from the individual
    • There is a point when you have to be able to walk away and save yourself the trouble
    • If you stick around someone who’s not giving you proper advice, you’ll end up wasting immense amounts of you own time
    • How much time you waste can become a real danger now since the barrier to entry in jobs/academia is much higher

Here is one question that I ask myself when thinking about who to get advice from 

  • Can this person give me advice that I can’t get from anywhere else?
    • You have to be careful as well since you won’t know what advice everyone has to give by meeting them once
    • What you can do is observe the thought processes that people consistently engage in to determine who to stick around
    • Ex: If someone is constantly angry with others, you’re not going to learn anything from that person
  1. Avoidance
    • There are times when you will want to avoid dealing with the person
    • However, avoidance on its own may not improve your situation by itself since you may still need help with your situation
    • The point of this is to give you time to process a way of dealing with the individual
    • This is critical to your mental health as well as saving time
    • You have to recognize that there are instances where you don’t need to be constantly around this person if possible
    • This will help improve your mental situation a bit since you’re not getting bombarded with bad advice
  1. Get others involved
    • This can be crucial in helping you situation since you’re not alone anymore if you get help
    • It’s best to ask others around you what they think about the situation
    • If there’s some agreement, you might be able to have others support you if you get into a confrontation with the person giving you bad advice