10 things everyone knows better than you

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-13 00:26

Do not feed some people with bread - let me teach others. It is especially difficult if they are your relatives.

This article is part of the Auto-da-fe project. In it, we declare war on everything that prevents people from living and becoming better: breaking laws, believing in nonsense, deceit and fraud. If you've come across a similar experience, share your stories in the comments.

1. Personal life

If you do not live on a desert island, then you probably often come across people who strive to arrange your personal life. They are happy to suggest with whom to meet, when to marry, what to give to a partner and when to give birth to children. And if you don't have a relationship with anyone, they look at you like you're not okay.

It’s easy to give advice when it’s not about your life or your feelings. But all people are different. What seems like a very healthy idea to one person may not necessarily work for another.

In addition, not all counselors genuinely care about you - some just want to look like experienced connoisseurs of the heart. Research on Advice Giving: A Subtle Pathway to Power shows that such people tend to be in control of others and take pleasure in things that affect someone's life.

I have been with my wife for over 15 years. We live together for more than ten. Everything is just fine with us, but there is one problem: we are not scheduled. More precisely, this is not a problem for us at all. We have repeatedly discussed the issue and came to the conclusion that this is not very necessary.

But everyone around us is one hundred percent sure that all these years we have had a frivolous and fake relationship. Parents, a boss at a former job, and even unfamiliar colleagues have always maintained that as long as there is no stamp in the passport, this is all nonsense and we will soon run away. Even the hairdresser did not hesitate to say that we "live in sin." Although I could not understand in any way how the sin was connected with the signature in the document, let alone the fact that we are both atheists.

The parents gradually calmed down. Perhaps because during our "frivolous" relationship, the brother and sister managed to divorce twice. Apparently, the stamp did not save. And with us everything is still the same.

Try to convey to advisors that not all of their recommendations may be useful to you. If they stubbornly refuse to understand this, just ignore it. In the end, you know better how to live.

2. Raising children

Scientists at the University of Michigan have calculated Mom shaming or constructive criticism? Perspectives of mothers that an average of 6 out of 10 young mothers faced unsolicited advice from relatives on how to raise children. 42% of women admitted that criticism of others caused them depression and suggested that they could not cope with the parental burden and it would be better for them not to have offspring.

Not very optimistic, right? Even if your friends and family sincerely want to help with raising a child, most likely, by caring, they will only make you sad and insecure. In the West, they even invented a special term mom-shaming (mom - "mom", shame - "to shame") for uninvited advice of this kind.

Each child has its own characteristics. And even if your friends have perfect children, this does not mean that they know how to raise yours.

Therefore, if the advisor is not a professional pediatrician like Benjamin Spock, then his recommendations can be ignored.

3. Hobbies

There are really many different things to do in the world. Someone glues aircraft models or makes figures from polymer clay. Someone jumps with a parachute or goes on canoeing. Others run, airsoft, or crochet. But there will always be people who divide hobbies into normal and abnormal, male and female, worthy and unworthy.

What is interesting, exciting and even sacred for one person may easily seem like a waste of energy and money to another. Don't listen to what they say about your hobby. Better find those who will share it with you.

4. Education

Sometimes parents are too involved in their children's career choices. As a result, yesterday's schoolboy, who did not go where he wanted to, unlearns another course and quits. And in the worst case, he gets a diploma, gets a job in his specialty and then hunches on an unloved job just because five years ago he listened to too assertive relatives.

Having become adults and independent, some think about changing their profession, but doubts immediately arise: "Isn't it too late to retrain?" Of course, it's never too late, but the time and money spent on the first education cannot be returned.

So don't listen to others when deciding who to be, what to be able to do, and how to learn. This is the choice that will affect your life in the first place.

5. Finance

Some people love to count money. Especially strangers. They are haunted by the thought that you live in a rented apartment and at the same time dared to buy a motorcycle - your childhood dream. They are ready to endlessly torture you with conversations that you do not know how to keep a budget, save for something really important or save for old age.

They may even be right, and your money could be put to better use. But it's not up to them to decide.

You can limit yourself in everything, open a retirement account in a bank and hope that someday you will become a gray-haired and wise person and no one will dare to criticize your spending out of respect for age (or, at worst, everything will be blamed on senile insanity). True, there is a chance that money will no longer bring you such joy. What kind of tour in Europe is there, I would buy a Corvalola.

Of course, squandering everything to the last penny and getting into debt is not worth it. But there is nothing wrong with spending on something that brings pleasure right now.

Linda Wastes money on intangibles.

I really love to study. Once I made myself a generous gift - courses on the history of cinema. The amount spent on them was not that big, and in general I am very glad that I improved so much in this area. This knowledge was very useful to me later.

But my relatives still do not know that I went somewhere. The very fact that I gave money for something intangible would have caused a flurry of condemnation and misunderstanding. In the end, I just didn't tell anyone about it, and everyone is happy.

6. Nutrition

If you are at least occasionally present at dinners with relatives, then you have probably come across such situations. They try to feed you what you do not eat, and they are sincerely offended when you refuse.

Such people can only say one thing: there are no comrades for taste and color. If you hate the "right" dumplings that your grandmother prepares, and only digest your own, "wrong" ones, then eat them. And delicately suppress unwelcome attempts to feed you.

A separate conversation is when they try to control food "for the sake of your own health." They are advised to go on a diet or, conversely, eat more, hoping that after all these conversations you will begin to correspond to other people's ideas about the norm.

Remember: only a professional nutritionist can recommend what, how much and when to eat. If your advisors are not one of those, this is a good reason not to listen to them.

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7. Health

People's faith in healing with traditional medicine, homeopathy and other dubious methods is ineradicable. Apparently, in modern man, the mythological consciousness that we inherited from our distant ancestors still speaks. They also believed that plantain, urine and tambourine would remove any ailment.

In our time, illness is no longer cured by faith, omen and ritual, but science. But not everyone rely on it. Many are sure: “These doctors do not understand anything! We know better!"

Evgeniy Doesn't obey his mother in matters of dentistry.

They removed my tooth the other day. I come home and tell my parents about the successful operation. Mom immediately began to advise: “Look, the main thing is not to chill the gums. And you need to rinse immediately, and generally rinse more often with chamomile and peppermint. These are folk remedies! Proven for centuries”.

Everything would be great, but the dentist instructed me before that: “Apply ice for 20 minutes six times a day. Do not rinse your mouth after removing. I love my mother, of course, but there is still more confidence in the doctor.

If unsolicited advice about appearance or hobbies is relatively harmless, then following such recommendations can cost you your health, and in especially difficult cases, life. And not only you.

Julia Wants to save her son's eyesight, even if they call him a nerd.

My six-year-old son was prescribed glasses for vision correction. The doctor said that if we deal with problem vision now, then in the future it will be possible to do without glasses.

When our "professor" was seen by my grandmother, a catastrophe happened. “You spoil your child's eyes since childhood! What are your doctors thinking. Take off your glasses, honey, do not spoil your eyes. Children will tease him now!"

Now the son does not want to wear glasses and takes them off when we are not looking. Shine.

The only health advice to which you should heed: "Go to the doctor at last!"

8. Appearance

Appearance is the first and most important topic for discussion by others. No wonder: they are greeted by their clothes. And in most cases they are escorted along it too.

However, it is indecent and even cruel to criticize the appearance of another. If a person has problems with self-esteem, then such statements can simply finish him off.

If you find yourself in such a situation, remember: beauty is a subjective concept. Someone considers fair-haired people attractive, someone - brunettes or redheads. Someone likes athletes, someone likes funny and charming fat women. What appears to be ideal for one person does not suit another. Not to please everyone.

Linda Destroyed all the most beautiful in herself.

Once I found myself in a bleak situation: I had a very unfortunate haircut in a hairdressing salon. For a while I tried to come to terms with this situation and silently grew it, but I am impatient as a person, so I decided to have my hair cut as short as never before (I think this hairstyle is called a "bob").

Everyone liked my new image, except for my mother, who every single day said that I “destroyed the most beautiful in myself”. Now my hair is long again, and she seems to be happy again.

Body shapes, clothing, hairstyle, tattoos are everyone's personal business. Don't discuss other people's appearance. And listen if they discuss you.

9. Sports

Talking to people who are absolutely confident in their own righteousness is not easy. And if you have an athlete and a healthy lifestyle fan in front of you, even more so.

Alexander I almost hated sports thanks to his fellow athlete.

One guy studied with me at the university - a real sports fan. Somehow he saw me in the smoking room and began: “You are young. Why are you doing this? You poison yourself, you ruin yourself. Better go in for sports. For all the time that we talked, he tired me so much with his reasoning that I began to hate this whole sport. Then we somehow stopped seeing each other.

Four years have passed. I started going to the gym and enjoy it. And I came to this myself. Nobody agitated me.

Sport is great. But there is no better way to arouse aversion to any occupation than to convince a person that he should love him. People are more willing to do what they don't have to do.

10. Art

You adore rock, and your relatives consider your idols to be the messengers of the devil. You read fantasy, and friends laugh at these "children's fairy tales." You can periodically cry while watching some touching drama, and those around you consider such leisure unworthy of a "real man" and defiantly doubt your mental stability.

Everyone has a different opinion about what to consider and not to consider as art. For some, for example, this is a regular urinal from Marcel Duchamp. At Sotheby's, one of its copies was estimated at $ 1.7 million. If the toilet bowl can be considered a work of art, then the books of your favorite writer or the album of your favorite group can also fit into this category.