We're all making this up

I'm a massive fan of personal development. I've read a ton of books, been on seminars, drunk the Kool-Aid. I've often found it to be uplifting stuff. Admittedly, that can be in the form of a short, cheap dopamine hit. But enjoyable nonetheless.

But there's one thing I've come to realize.  It's all nonsense. Not in the sense of it having no value. No, I think there's plenty of value. It can help guide, it can bring you peace, it can help make your dreams come true. The thing is, personal development and its ilk is full of subjective truths, as opposed to objective truths. One guru will tell you that X is the answer, contradicting the other guru saying that Y is, only to be challenged by the scientist that says it's Z. Meanwhile, the mystic tells you it's A all along...

Something that has increasingly seeped into my thinking is that we're all making everything up. Or are, at least, blinded by our little slither of knowledge into thinking we know more. We all think we have a better understanding of the world than we do have, have more control over the world than we actually have, and can navigate the complexities of life better than we actually can.

Sure, you can say the advice is backed by peer-reviewed science. But it's amazing how well scientific input gets cherry-picked to suit a narrative. And it's all narrative. It's not the "truth" because we don't have the capacity to know the full picture. We know so little in the bigger scheme of things. 

Where am I going with this? There's plenty of advice packaged as true. But what works for Peter may not work for Paul. We've all got to get to know what works best for ourselves. Experiment. Take notes. Don't take everything at face value. Iterate. Learn. And start again.

It's about learning to trust yourself a bit more. Ask questions. Question answers. Don't take advice at face value. Adapt accordingly. (That's my view - don't take it as gospel).