Everyone at some point finds themselves, simply not where they wanted or worse, expected to be. “Just a little guidance would be nice” commonly wished upon. From all angles, that seems like a perfectly logical request. If I dont like where I am, and I know someone who was once here, and is now not, I should have them tell me how they did it. So, you begin your quest for the answer(s).
It's at this point, you have begun to fail. That's harsh, I know. I'll explain. Advice, while well intended by the provider, most often falls on deaf ears. It's not the giving of advice that is dangerous though, it's the seeking it. At the moment you displace your ability to solve your own problem, and instead believe that someone else has the code to your solution. What you actually do is abdicate the responsibility. The belief that someone else can help you by just giving you the answers, does two things.
One, it creates an identity of failure in oneself. It chooses to cease personal momentum, creativity, critical thinking, and development, and instead deems yourself incapable, and that someone else can save you.
Two, it places the responsibility outside yourself, and onto the advice-giver. They will help me. Is the belief. But that statement is powerful in many ways, it places the power in the helper, and as such the responsibility. Now your solution is their problem, not yours.
This is a slippery slope and one you are uniquely familiar with. In many cases, perhaps even unaware you have experienced this. There are countless cases of well-intentioned people who have mustered the courage to walk into your gym and ask you “for help”. To which you are gladly willing. Then almost immediately everything you begin telling them to do, they damn near ignore. This goes on for a while, and out of nowhere you receive the email. “This isn't working for me, I need to try something else ''exasperated you have to hold back your frustration. ‘Work for you?’ you think to yourself, she hasn't done anything she was supposed to do. ‘Try something different’ you goff, it's worked hundreds of times, what isn't working is her, you defensively claim.
The problem with advice is it assumes the receiver of said advice is incapable of solving their own problem.
That's impossible. If you created a problem, and we all do, you are capable of solving the problem. More importantly, you are responsible for solving the problem. Not in the “it's your mess clean it up” sense, but in the personal development sense.
In another blog recently I wrote of high performers and their internal forces. These forces are holding themselves to a high standard of excellence, and their ability to be obsessed.
Part of this identity of excellence that high performers have, is their determination to improve. They don't see it as novelty or nicety, it's a necessity, a responsibility for them. One key part of this responsibility is identifying problems, and limitations, and leaning into them. Appreciating them, and looking for them, as these problems are opportunities for advancement. Not nuisances they simply want to go away. The differentiator is as I discussed in that post, their frequency of checking in with themself.
I've never met someone who is doling out advice, maniacally, trying to ruin the world. 99.99% of all advice givers I truly believe mean well. Not only do they mean well, they are uniquely proud to be able to help. It feels incredible to have not only been successful in something, but to have been so successful as to be recognized and asked to help is a massive compliment. This is where the advice begins to go wrong.
Taming the advice monster is hard. In almost every conceivable way it's easier to say here just do it like I did, than it is to say, “happy to help, what is the struggle for you?” In the former example you can just stick and move, the later however, you are committing to helping.
My good friend moved into a new home, proudly up in the hills. A beautiful new home, and as most new homeowners do, they had a housewarming. Such an awkward concept, let's gather all our friends around and give tours of the new house all day. I digress. This home was newly built, and as you would assume, everything works perfectly. That is, till it didn’t.
The network went down. Not really a problem for me, I was here for the snacks, not the sportsball game. However, my cousin, also a good friend, is an IT guy. You can imagine where this is going. It was his time to shine. As you would assume, IT can be a thankless field. Do your job well, no one needs you, do it poorly and you'll be enslaved to its nuisance. Well, this was his time to show the party his skillset.
I knew two things at that moment. There was going to be inevitable frustration on both sides shortly. The homeowner whose clock is ticking, has accepted the help, but now it's IT’s problem. My cousin has now entered into the advice trap, and now he's responsible for the solution. However, neither of them are capable of solving this problem in this fashion, and if it does get solved, no one will learn anything.
One left frustrated, and no one watched anymore sportsball.
We live in the information age. Not only is more information and advice available to you than ever. There is an entire advice industry that has popped up. There is a course, a guru, a promise for pretty much anything you can ever want to do, and there is someone to sell it to you.
So now we have two problems that are new. Advice is more common than ever. Before you had to search for someone, find someone, call someone, beg someone. Now you just gotta google it. At the end of that google, is likely a funnel of someone to sell you advice.
So now everyone is weary of advice, and they should be. But what this has done is granted even more ability to abdicate responsibility to the giver. If I pay you for advice, and I do so skeptically, I am vindicated when I am found right, and you were wrong all along. It's not that the advice industry is or was wrong, it's just that the mechanism of the whole transfer is flawed.
The first thing we have to understand is behavior. Advice in nature is training, its teaching, its telling. This if done well requires an organic response, in that they must learn what you are teaching. But in today's day and age, lack of information is not likely the problem. The problem is why, with all the information at your fingertips, are you still in this situation? This conversation is coaching, its understanding. Because that question is behavioral. We have identified the problem, and have been found incapable of solving it. To solve this problem is not to give more information, it will require why you aren't processing the information, and taking action.
When coaching, taming the advice monster is a skill. As stated before, one of the easiest solutions is to carpet bomb advice and keep it moving. At that point, it's not my fault if you dont fix it, I told you what to do, you didn't listen. This is the nature of the advice industry as a whole. The courses, gurus, and teachers out here to sell you information, are not interested in the result of the information, just the dissemination. When it doesn't work for you, they have dozens of examples they will reply with that worked for them.
It's easy money to write a course, and mass distribute it. It scales easily, and the resource load is very small. You experience this in your gym daily. There is no shortage of people who won't come to the gym because they bought the booty blast 5000 program from some influencer who will never be culpable to their success. Whereas when they come to you, you will be with them from beginning to end, understanding barriers and removing them. This doesn't scale easy, it's hard work, its relationships, its solutions.
At this point, you are probably intrigued at best, because why would someone, like us, FitFilliate be telling you that the advice industry is bad, Isn't that what we do? No. And it's not what you do either.
We, like you, are coaches. What we provide is coaching. We don’t give advice, we do understanding. We don't care what you want to do. We arent here for standardized solutions and models. Want to bake cakes in your gym? Cool. Want to run your gym as a nightclub? Cool. Thats irrelevant, whats relevant is why you havent done it yet. We care why you want to do it, and why you are struggling with it. Then, like you with your clients, we work to remove those barriers, guiding you to your goal of disco fever if thats your thing. Not giving you advice and having you end up at someone else's solution.
Advice, when understood, is not about information and answers; it's about ideas. When the root behavior has been identified and addressed, information can be used to create ideas. Ideas to solve your own problems. This is an important distinction. The behavior, the root, the limitation must be understood first, before ideas can be introduced.
So while I know you are struggling and you need advice. What I need you to do is step back from the distraction of answers, and look to the root of the behavior. Ask not what you need to do to get out of this, but ask why you got yourself into this. By starting with why you are limited, we can then work to solve it. This is how you advance yourself and skillset, retain your values, and identity, learn new skills, and prepare yourself for the next level.
Advice is like winning the lottery. You will receive a lump sum of cash. And just like every winner before you, you are 100% likely to lose it all. Why? You didn't acquire the skills to have that kind of money. You will be working with 100million dollars with a 30k skill set. This is why you need to advance yourself alongside your problems. Not simply seek the answers.
Business is an infinite game; the goal is to keep playing. Answers are manipulations, short-term improvements with long-term implications. Coaching is long-term improvement.
Seek a coach, not answers.
We're the only ones here, it's bad business, but we are committed to it.
Decided you’re in need of a coach?