I had this CSM once. Great dude, great leader and mentor, just a great example. He was leading an NCODP and he asked us,

“How many of you have heard the phrase, practice makes perfect?”

Of course we had, probably the most common American motivational trope. Hands went up, etc.

So then he asks,

“How many of you believe that?”

We’re all a bunch of high speeds, hands went up, heads went north and south and he goes,

“Well, you’re all wrong.”

Now we’re all confused, right. We’ve all heard this phrase our whole life so wtf? He goes on to say

“Perfect practice makes perfect. If you don’t learn to do it right, all you’re practicing to do is fuck it up perfectly.”

The whole point of the lesson being, learn to do things right, practice doing it right, and over time you’ll perfect the process, but the foundation has to

be set.

I’ve carried that lesson with me since. Whenever I start a new project or try to learn a new task, I spend an incredible amount of time on forums and YouTube just looking things up. I want to learn to do something right before I invest in it; free time isnt a loss.

I like to learn from those who’ve committed the trial and error so that I don’t make the same mistakes and learn from their success.

“Get to the point Punk, we know this is leading to something.”

Right. There’s a lot of people in this world offering up free advice on every

range of topics, personal and professional.

“Run honey, that’s a red flag!”

“Run king!”

How to be a man, how to be a woman.

How to be successful by waking up and making your bed.

How to do this, how to do that, how to be blah, blah blah, blah blah.

So much advice.

So little success.

See, I’ll tell you all day long that my advice based on my experiences is what worked for me at that time and may not work for you and that’s if you ask for it in the first place. I rarely give unsolicited advice, like most I mean well, and like most I just

ain’t thinking when I do, but there’s loads out there offering up that free advice. The question you have to ask yourself, though, is where is it coming from? Is that advice from a place of success or a place of unfullied expectations?

By the time you hit a certain age,

we all have these internalized expectations of societal norms regarding our personal professional success, the blocks we’ve been taught need to be checked, and when we don’t check those blocks at the appropriate time, we have to ask why. Part of asking why is

“Where did I go wrong?”

Introspection, self awareness. Lacking both means you’re not fully addressing the problem. Obviously, there are certain circumstances that are completely out of our control and there is no shortage of people to comment on the “what about a...”,

but, those specific circumstances aside, we are always part of our own problems. You can’t control people, but you can control your reaction and, oftentimes, that’s where we fuck up.

If I can give you younger people a bit of unsolicited advice, ask yourself who’s giving it.

There’s no shortage of people my age and up telling you how to live and be and date and raise kids and dress and succeed and this and that, etc., but are they coming from a place of success themselves? Have they achieved what they’re telling you how to achieve or are they trying

to validate their own failure(s) by giving you the bitterness of their experiences? What are they/we really passing on to you? Failure, when used correctly, can be a great tool to teach success. In the hands of the well intentioned, it can also be a tool to hold you back.

Do not let the bitterness and banality of age impede the exuberance of your youth.