I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of suggestions. If I want a suggestion I will search for it myself.

Reading about Mindfulness has enabled me to analyze the thoughts and feelings that I would normally just broadly categorize as “anxiety causing” and move on. Unfortunately, there is no moving on. Unless you figure out the root cause of why you feel the way you feel, it’ll linger with you for years.

If you spent a day in my shoes, you would think that I am surrounded by thoughtful, caring people. So why then do I feel anxious when I talk to them? Each time that I speak with friends, I get this feeling that I overshared. Why? Because I normally tell myself, “alright, so I’m not going to be discussing that topic with them anymore.”

However, it didn’t matter which topic I seemed to bring up, if I mentioned myself in it, it went downhill from there. I wondered if I was bragging about myself, but after analyzing a few months worth of interactions I concluded that I wasn’t.

The conversations would leave me feeling anxious so often that I decided not to talk about myself whatsoever anymore. Richard Carlson was the one that said that you should listen to people without relating to their stories and not talk about yourself if you want to have a stress-free life. And that worked with some people that love to talk about themselves. However, how do you talk about your life when people ask you questions about yourself without bringing yourself up? That was the difficult part.

Once again, I could cater the conversation with certain people without bringing up anything related to me. I would act like a psychologist and just listen and ask questions that forced the person to only talk about themselves and their experiences. It does get exhausting though. You have to mind every word that comes out of your mouth so that the opportunity doesn’t come up for them to ask a counter-question.

Eventually, you stop communicating with the people that you still can’t figure out why they cause you anxiety, and you limit your conversations to the people that you do continue to visit.

The Realization

A couple of years ago I was talking to my brother-in-law. I don’t mind sharing with him since I know that he would half-listen anyways. In a normal 2 minute conversation, he would say “what’s up” about 3–4 times since he completely missed what you were saying.

This day was different. He was telling me how he is so tired of the job that he’s doing and would like to do something creative like video or music production. I told him that he should go for it. He replied, “I looked it up and it seems way too difficult to just get into it.” I, wanting to encourage him, said “if you’re trying to do something crazy, then probably, but for fun, it’s not that difficult. I actually ‘produced’ a couple of songs myself.” He lit up and said, “you produced a couple of songs? I gotta hear this.”

Reluctantly I opened up my SoundCloud account and showed him. He was excited about it and after a few minutes of listening, he said “man, this is really good. I heard some terrible stuff out there, but this is actually really good.”

I won’t lie, I was pretty happy about it. I told a couple of people before, but received the same kind of response, “nice. You should create *insert their favorite genre of music here* next.” So, even though I was excited about creating music, I stopped showing people. My brother-in-law was the first person that I showed my account to since I decided to stop.

The next time I saw him he said, “I heard your new songs.” I replied “lol, nice.” My wife, who just happened to be standing next to us, asked, “so what do you think? He’s pretty good right?” My brother-in-law replied “Yeah. A couple of them could use some help, but overall pretty good.” I was not looking to talk about it, but my wife was. She asked “what do you mean? What kind of help are you talking about?” He said “well, I wouldn’t do that type of beat. I would do something else. It seems like the latest trend is going towards 80s type of music. All of his songs are techno-ish.” Before my wife could answer, I said “that’s right. I’ll keep that in mind.” My wife has known me for long enough to know when to drop a conversation. She said “yeah,” turned around, and walked out.

My brother-in-law then said, “I’m going to send you some songs that I’ve been listening to. I think they’ll give you some inspiration.” I started feeling that same tense-feeling that I had with others. I said, “cool man” and I changed the subject.

But what was going on? I figured it out later that night.

My wife was telling me about one of her cousin’s wives a couple of days ago and how the woman could sing. She brought it up again that night and I felt stress just creeping up. What was going on? I decided that I was just going to talk about it with my wife until I figured it out.

It started off by me saying that “I was not interested.” I ended with the realization of a lifetime:

Enough with the Suggestions

My entire life has been consumed with people giving me suggestions on what I should do and how I should live my life. I think that I’ve made some pretty good life choices, so why is it that I can’t escape it?

I started producing music for fun. It’s a type of meditation for me. I don’t care if you don’t like the genre. I’m creating the type of music that I like and that’s it. There are millions of songs out there and I’m pretty sure that a few thousand fit your taste perfectly. If you want a different song, create it yourself.

This was just the straw the broke the camels back.

I started a YouTube channel related to car reviews and modifications. I enjoyed creating content for that channel because it was spontaneous and relative to what I found enjoyable. A couple of months later, my YouTube channel starts gaining some traction and I actually started making some money off of it. Awesome! …and not awesome at the same time.

It was awesome because I was creating content that I enjoyed creating and actually getting paid for it. It was not awesome because my friends started getting involved.

“I was watching your videos. It seems like you have some good content but if you created this type of content, you could make a lot more money and reach a lot more people.”

Trying to explain to them that I’m doing this just for fun was impossible. I even had one person say, “I’d like to see the analytics of your channel so I can help you come up with your next content.”

I would get video after video of what they think my videos should look like. “I like the way that this guy tells a story.” That’s fine, but do you not see that he worked on the car for an entire year before uploading that video? You get to the point where you have to defend each of your choices in life, even if you’re doing stuff just for fun.

These types of conversations would last for weeks, even months, and what happens in the end? I stop doing it completely. I get so tired of listening to people’s suggestions that I just end up shutting that down. Finally, I abandon those hobbies completely.

If you think that it should be done differently, then go ahead and do it. Open up a YouTube channel if you’re so passionate about it and you go ahead and create content.

Those were a couple of small examples. Each time I make a choice, someone would suggest something different.

I know that you just bought this car, but why don’t you sell it and buy this one instead?

Why don’t you sell your house, make some profit, and move to this location?

I know your business is making this much money, but why not do it this way?

Why not change your career path to this?

You should continue your education and get your PhD.

You should quit your school and focus on work.

Nobody asks you why you’re making the choices that you’re making with the intention of truly figuring you out. They’ll sometimes mask those questions but ultimately they’re going towards giving you suggestions.

I don’t know if it’s just me that feels this way, but I’m sharing it with the world.

Ask yourself, how many times have you truly heard a good suggestion? Out of thousands that I’ve heard, I can name a couple, and they’re usually pretty small, not life-changing ones.

The Constant Pursuit of Money

In this time and age, it’s hard for people to grasp that not everything that you’re good at has to be capitalized on. Sometimes you just want to do something for the pure fun of it. If it spontaneously happens that you start profiting off of it, then great, but you don’t have to always press for profit.

I think that’s what people I’m surrounded with don’t understand.

The people that do understand it, don’t understand it fully. For example, if I mention to my parents that I’ve picked up a new hobby, they look at me with the following thought written all over their faces:

So you’re doing this and it’s not benefit your pocket or your health? Why are you doing it then?

People don’t seem to understand the benefits of mental health. Happiness is great for your mental health, and if something makes you happy, as long as it’s within legal limits, why not do it?

Even When You Believe You’re Helping, You’re Probably Not

Think about smokers, drug-addicts, alcoholics, criminals, etc. When you say “smoking is bad for you” to a smoker nowadays, do you honestly believe that that’s some huge epiphany that that person has never thought about before?

You may actually be giving that person more anxiety and stress forcing them to continue their bad habit.

I’m not saying that you should not provide suggestions to people like this, but you should really take the time to evaluate the situation before you utter anything that could potentially be more harmful than helpful. If there was ever a time that you should think about what you’re about to say, or suggest, it’s with a situation like this.

Most times, unfortunately, it takes a tragedy of some sort for the person to wake up…

In conclusion, sometimes just listen to people talk about themselves and try not to give them advice on what they should do instead. In most situations, it just might be time to stop giving suggestions.