Pessimistic curiosity saves the day — and the relationship.
Irina Rokosz
I realize that advising a group of people who notoriously hate being told what to do is like screaming into the void. But bear with me; I'm one of those people too 😁 That's why I'd like to share my approach with you.
It seems to me that, when it comes to receiving advice, people fall into one of the two extremes: They either love not having to think, and they'll sit and wait for others to tell them what to do about everything, OR they hate it, and they'll do exactly the opposite just to show the advisor that they can do what they want, full stop. The first approach makes you lazy, devoid of initiative, ambition, and free will; the second approach turns you into an arrogant know-it-all, and exposes you to mistakes that could've been easily avoided. But there's also a middle way, which is the one I naturally gravitate towards:
If your advice immediately clicks with me, I accept it, and I'm grateful for it. But when it doesn't click, I fall into what I call pessimistic curiosity: I'm pessimistic that it’ll work for me, since I haven't thought about it myself, but I'm curious enough to keep it in the back of my mind and look for evidence to see who's right and who's wrong.
Pessimism allows me to internally validate my opposing opinion, but curiosity is where the magic happens. It's an extremely beneficial personality trait. I see it always when I disagree with someone: Instead of discarding their opinion straight away, I'm curious to understand where they're coming from. It's a massive game-changer in communication and relationship dynamics.
Curiosity is what helps me make the best of well-meaning advice, even when I initially disagreed with it. I might even run some small experiments to see if the advice holds up. After all, no one will know the results but me — i.e., there won't be any public shaming if it turns out I was wrong.
I know that, among other things, you're natively curious too — that's one of the reasons you ended up being a founder. So when you read my blog, maybe try staying curious (and even run some small experiments just for yourself). You don't have to let me know afterwards how it all went, but if you choose to do so, I promise I won't tell 👂🏻🤐