DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO

“The people with the best advice are usually the people who have been through the most.” - Unknown

Do you have someone that provides you with advice?

Someone that shows you “the way” or has it all figured out?

Now does that person actually embody their advice or are they a fraud?

We live in a world where everyone seems to know what is best for you. The funny part about that is how most of the motherfuckers providing advice and insight do the same stupid shit that you do. And they know it. Yet they don’t allow you to see that.

Think about it for a minute. Who was the last person that gave you advice? Now that you have that name and face in mind… What was the advice they gave you? Did you ask them for it or was it unsolicited?

Ok, let’s stop here for a second. I want you to take that information (having identified the advice-giver in your life) and decide whether that person should be giving it to you in the first place… Are they the type of person you want to become? Are they living a life that you respect or admire? Are they a fraud that thinks they know what’s best for you so they can feel superior to you? Or are they someone trying to keep you from making the same mistakes that they have made? That is for you to decide.

Now, as many fraudulent fucks as there are walking amongst us at the moment, there are also those who do have good intentions even though their actions don’t always back up their words. Let me give you an example:

Anyone that knows me well also knows that I was very close with my uncle. He passed away back in 2018 from liver failure. He was not an alcoholic. He simply couldn’t control what he ate and after 60 years of eating shitty food, his liver deteriorated and he passed away. Why is that important? Let me explain.

My uncle was one of the smartest motherfuckers I knew. He was a history wiz, had great ideas, and an awesome sense of humor. He had many qualities that made him a very capable human being. What he did not have were confidence, self-esteem, and initiative. Being the only son of my grandparents’ four children, he grew up smothered, babied and worried over. My grandparents’ first born child was a boy that was delivered prematurely and only lived for one day. So I can understand why my grandparents’ (especially my Nana) were so overprotective of my uncle, their (now) only son. Unfortunately, this parenting style royally fucked him up. Fucked him up so bad that he never thought he would ever amount to anything. He spent most of his adult life acting like a rebellious teenager; running late to work, being broke, eating whatever he wanted and spending all of his free time locked in his apartment. It was sad.

Though his life was interesting in a lot of ways, he definitely didn’t have his shit together. As hard as I tried to get him to eat better, exercise and get out of his stupid cave, it fell on deaf ears. He knew what I was saying, but had spent so much of his life being nagged at and babied (weird, I know) that he would just shut down when someone tried to tell him what to do. In order to take the steps towards getting his life together, he needed to take that initiative on his own. But with no follow-through, that proved to be virtually impossible.

Now here’s the kicker… This dude with all of these issues in life was one of the few people whose advice I trusted. The reason being was that he was trying to fucking save me! And he, in fact, did. He knew how easy it would have been for me to end up in the same place as him. He saw my potential and some of the similar struggles that I faced growing up and knew that if he didn’t do something, that I would also get sucked into the small town vacuum that he was living in. My uncle saw what no one else did and he acted on it.

From the outside, those who knew my uncle more than likely would not have taken advice from him. He wasn’t exactly living by the code that he preached but he knew that. At the end of the day he wasn’t a fraud because he owned up to the fact that his life could and should have been much better than it was. There were so many missed opportunities in his life that went right by. He understood that and made it his mission to not let it happen to anyone else…especially me.

Sometimes writing these blog posts I feel like a fraud. I feel that I am not living up to my expectations and operating to the best of my abilities. And here I am, providing advice and inspiration based on my experiences. But if this blog has done anything for me, it has held me accountable for everything that I say and do. Yes, I do some things well. Yes, there’s a lot of things I need to do better. But I embrace that shit and don’t pretend to be something I’m not. Because I want to be a hero. My own hero. My family’s hero. Just like my uncle wanted to be and never was able to figure out. But he gave me the push to do better. And I am forever grateful for that.