Why you need theoretical, non-actionable advice.
When’s the last time a craving really took you down the right path?
A fat body craves sugar.
A junkie craves another hit.
A narcissist craves another compliment.
The gurus that want to sell you something usually want to sell you “actionable advice.” Since that’s what we crave – not more of this ‘worthless’ theory stuff!
Consider 3 elements laid out by Tony Robbins laid out in 2015 in Australia. In an example of losing weight:
Strategy – This is ‘actionable’ non-theoretical stuff – Ex. Eating less calories than we need and exercising (this information is easily accessible / obvious)
Story – Often a wrong belief that you tell yourself on why you don’t have something, backed up with truths uncorrelated to the result, and people will intentionally fail in their strategy to prove their belief accurate – Ex. “I’ve tried everything”, “I don’t have the time.”, “I went to the gym 7 days a week (but didn’t do anything in the gym).”
State – A state of mind, how you think/feel, which dictates the story you can tell.
Changing stories / beliefs is hard, because people don’t like changing their beliefs. People will even sabotage their strategy to make a story remain true by half-assing strategies because their story is bad. Ex “I knew it wouldn’t work to begin with!”
To change quickly:
Change your state, which helps you change your story, which helps you utilize your strategy.
When you’re in a good state, you come up with a good story, and then have a good strategy.
Decisions (not conditions) control your focus, focus controls your state, state controls your story, and story controls your strategy.
Now all this advice above totally feels like fluffy non-actionable advice. But the point is, even if someone did get the advice that’s craved, they wouldn’t do anything with it.
They don’t need to have the step-by-step process laid out for them, because they’ll half-ass it, or say they’ll “get started first thing next week,” and never start. I worked with a successful multi-millionaire stock trader at a hedge fund and he told me that people always beg him for his “secrets” and he said that he had no problem telling people because even if he told them, “they’d never do it themselves anyway.”
In all likelihood, we need more “mumbo jumbo” theoretical, non-actionable advice.
