Learn to listen to yourself

With as much good information as there is out there, with the advent of the internet, there is just as much bad advice available. You can easily find recommendations to overwork yourself, to never stop for a break, to not listen to feedback, or calls to dive into another person’s business idea or trend to follow. This is ever present in the “hustle culture” corners of the internet, on crypto Twitter, and all over entrepreneurship YouTube. While it is a good thing to get advice from others, or to learn from another point of view, this can turn into a problem when someone is telling you exactly what to do (without even having met you or knowing your situation), or demanding that you spend money on something that seems too good to be true.

In actuality, when it comes to business or passion projects, you know best what to do for yourself. All you have to do is listen to yourself. If you don’t yet know how to listen to yourself, that’s completely fine, as it is a skill that takes fine tuning.

For every hustling entrepreneur online who is telling you the exact strategy of ‘how to make it,’ or demanding you pay up at the end of a video for special information that will bring you to the next level, there’s generally reason to be wary. Usually these are people that have never met the people they are giving advice to, and are generally giving trend-based advice that is absolutely not one-size-fits-all.

For every crypto enthusiast who is telling you that you need to go all in on bitcoin, or else you’ll end up broke, please do me a favor and run. While of course, taking the advice with a grain of salt is perfectly fine (go ahead and buy bitcoin if you can afford to lose whatever money you purchase the cryptocurrency with), what is generally not fine is one-size-fits-all advice. This is especially the case when it comes to trends, as they tend to be cyclical.

For every seemingly successful business coach on YouTube that is telling you to start a startup, so that you too can become otherworldly wealthy and have forever success, first ask yourself if the Lamborghini behind them is leased (or worse, rented).

Learn to listen to yourself. Take advice, learn from others, observe trends as they come and go, but ultimately, learn to listen to yourself. Listening to yourself is that moment when the voice in your head says, “is this a good idea?,” or “Is this for me?.” If you’re having that moment, that is a moment to pause and really consider what you’re doing and what you want in life. Do you have the stamina to build a startup on your own? If you do, congratulations. If not, that’s perfectly fine too. No matter how much someone says that you’re lazy or a failure will absolutely not change your inherent ability.

Listening to yourself is what will bring you to where you want to go. If you sense that you need to take a break, you likely need to take a break. If you’re feeling that what you’re working on isn’t what you truly want to do, then you may need to look within to figure out what your passions are. Ask yourself where you want to be in 5 years, 10 years, or however you see yourself when you’ll consider yourself to have “made it.” Once you have that answer for yourself, and not told to you by someone who is ultimately trying to sell you something, you will be able to make better decisions about your own future.