Who are your Advisers? Who do you take advice from? How good, average, adhoc or top notch those people are?
The quality of the people you take advice from will determine the quality of returns in your life.
My friend Amit was put on Anti-Hypertensive medicines at a young age of 25 by some doctor. Another quality doctor (with more empathy, experience & judgement) could have just asked him to do some lifestyle changes and thence avoid medicines (which now Amit has to take right through his lifetime, causing him more stress). Amit is 40 now and has started confronting the side effects of statins & anti-hypertensive drugs which he has been galloping for years now.
Ten yrs back another friend did not choose the right financial planner (the professional ones charge you) for his investments and went ahead with a random advice from a relative while building his portfolio of Mutual Funds and Stocks. This morning he told me that by saving INR ‘x’ by not paying up for the professional advice he let go of the opportunity to let his money grow by INR ‘100x’ in 10 years.
5 years back a young girl was very depressed because she had not found admission into a Top B-school after the entrance exam results. Her advisor asked her to join a B-Grade B-School (without looking at her other skill sets, attitudes, aptitudes & personality). Today she is carrying the stamp and weight of an MBA (Marketing) of that B-Grade B-School with her and it shows up in her salary, moods, anxiety and most importantly the optimism with which she looks at life ahead. Her friend, who too failed the same exam, took her time to seek right advices, processed those advices right and then did a vanilla PG, cleared UGC NET (JRF) and is now doing her PhD (FPM) from the same IIM, where she couldn’t get through initially.
I find myself very lucky in my own career. Thanks to some of the finest people (who are good friends now) advising me at the right time for the right things. There are hazaar cartoons too who I regularly meet & who flood me with their fearful, sub standard advices. See it is simple – The process that you use and the choices you make will set the course for your career & hence Life. Therefore, choosing & working with the finest advisors (or shall I say the most appropriate) for your own situation is crucial. Critical too 🙂
Lack of exposure & fearfulness of uncertainty cause most people to either do nothing or do something very average. In other words they are paralyzed in their own minds and are ironically afraid of losing their own poverty 🙂 . So they construct their careers, health, finances and even their marriages randomly and thus chloroforming their future by doing thence. (Read more on career-building)
Get advice from as many people as you can. Networking helps. Your own exposure helps. Talking to lots of them helps. A good reading habit helps. But it is much more important to be thoughtful and strategic in which advice you finally pick for your own self. Good advisers will be an invaluable resource for you, and they’ll be in it with you (hopefully) for the long haul if they get excited about your own vision of things.
Weakness is a sin. Acting out of moods or in a hurry during crucial times in life is a bigger sin. Take some of the most important decisions using the hindsight of the finest people in those fields. See the magic in returns then.
So, Who are your Advisers? Who do you take advice from? How good, average, ad hoc or top notch those people are? Choose your advisers very carefully. Wait! Very, very carefully 🙂
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