Lack of Guidance and Information

Does anyone else feel like they've gone down the wrong path in life but all of it could have been avoided if someone.....just one person......could have said '' Hey buddy, don't do A. Do B. ''.

Just one piece of advice could have led you down a different path and the sequential events that follow that path.

I mean that is the goal of humanity in a way. It's how progress is achieved. One scientist makes a few errors and a discovery, and then records that in written form. Then future scientists read that and know what to do and what not to do. The knowledge gets passed down and people make less errors in the future, and get more guidance.

I feel like this is what should happen to everyone regarding life and careers but for some reason it didn't happen to me. I had no guidance. And worse, I feel like I should have seeked out that guidance because we live in an age where information is present at your fingertips. But it never occurred to me that I had to seek it out because I didn't even know what to seek out. I needed the guidance to seek out the guidance.

Example: I never studied that hard in school. Was pretty average and never cared. But in university, I finally did the thing that I had a passion for and I worked really hard. I worked REALLY hard. But even after that, my scores were nothing great. Towards the end of it, I realized that its not about how hard you work.....it's about following the proper guidelines. But I feel like I realized it too late. If I could re-do it again with this new knowledge and perspective, I think I would have scored better.

I wish I just had someone tell me what to do at every stage in life. Like a wise friend or mentor. It feels like everything I do is the wrong thing. I know mistakes are important because you learn from them, but.....it feels like everything is a mistake

not really A instead of B advice... parenting in general would have been nice. being treated like a human being.

No I'm afraid it wouldn't work with me. I've always done what I wanted and wouldn't listen to advice. Even at school one of the teachers said he wanted to talk to me before I left - but my mind was made up. My father even offered me money to not do various things and I still did them. I think I've always just thought I knew best - even though it's pretty obvious I don't.

Things could have been a lot worse though - and luckily I'm still here, so it's not too bad. I do know what you mean though.

You were offered money to NOT do things? If you don't mind me asking, what on earth were they? lol

Well it was something I was going to be paid for at the time, more than what my father offered me obviously - and more fun, but illegal. So I did it anyway. I've done some pretty crazy stuff mate - probably better not to talk about all that if you don't mind.

Telling me to do something is a good way to make me not want to do it. And telling me not to do something is a good way to make me want to do it. Advice/guidance has never really worked for me. I do wish I'd been better informed about certain things.

I've had a much bigger problem with people trying to prevent me from doing what I want to do. To the point where I have been scared to act because I'm afraid I'll become a target of harassment and violence. My life would have been much better, and I would have been much more successful, if people hadn't always been telling me what I should or shouldn't do.

don't be successful and happy then, i forbid it

All children need support and guidance. Lessons, rules, information about how life works, feedback abt who they are and what they're good at. Pple who don't have this feedback from a compassionate, caring source are at a distinct disadvantage because they have to waste time and energy figuring out how the world works before they can figure out what they want to do and be in it.

Yes, general parenting would've been nice lol.

Heh. Now if only that worked.

Would have been nice if someone had encouraged me with school and to pursue extracurricular activities (like art, musical instruments, etc.). No one ever taught me how to cook or to drive. I wouldn't have wanted a parent that nags me or tries to control me but a little encouragement, caring, and support might have helped. Hard to say how much it would have helped.

Oh ok. No problem lol

Well, certain things would have been different but ultimately, I think I'd have still been screwed. But it is upsetting that the same kind of BS that happened to me is happening to countless others all over the world and mostly, those kids will have the blame foisted on them the same way I have. Which is BS because the person who sets the ball rolling should always take responsibility for wherever it ends up. Because the world does not want to change the way it thinks about parents and their responsibilities and so forth.

As it turns out, I think my physical health was always doomed and I just didn't know it until fairly recently. I'm not doing well in that respect and the outcome is probably not gonna be good. So all of that is kind of irrelevant. Even my sister's physical health is not so good and I attribute that to probably less than awesome genes. She got better mental health than I did (luck of the draw) but we both kind of inherited crappy physical health.

I wouldn't feel too bad about not studying as hard in high school, unless you were aiming to go to a top tier or ivy university. Much of public education & high school these days is a joke and underserved with too many teachers who are there because they have no place else to work. That said, good you got serious in college and imo, that's where education really counts anyways at the post high school level. I think serious kids should even skip out after second year in hs with a ged and go to community college and start taking the serious classes. Yes, there probably should be better career guidance with fed or state mandated training and helper programs from industry, but no, for too long corporatism was helping offshore stem labor and training foreign nationals. Very true, there is plenty of resources via the internet than ever before. I think kids today seeking career guidance with no guidance from parents or even worthless hs counselors/staff can look up subreddits these days where there are plenty of professionals giving advice and opinions on many career fields. Kind of like before the internet when they used to have those after hs "career info open house" , except folks are much more truthful on the serious subreddit discussions today.

Well in the end it boils down to choice. But I think its important that people have all the information they need when they reach that decision making stage.

Advice/guidance works best when you seek it out first. But the problem is sometimes you don't even know that you're supposed to seek it out because there's nothing that tells you that you need to. Sometimes you realise it later on.

I don't think people should tell other people what to do or what not to do. But they can provide insight so that people know what they're up against.

IKR? The feedback is really important. A lot of people now think that children need to be commended for everything they do and just let them figure it out themselves. I think this is good and bad at the same time. The world doesn't work the way each person wants it to. People need to be given insight about potential failures and mistakes so they can at least prepare. And then they should be given the choice of what path to go down on.

Well, I agree. No one thought it worthwhile to explain things like taxes, insurance, mortgages, legal rights, etc., when I was young. By the time I was 18 my parents had already kicked me out and I was completely clueless about how the adult world worked. (And still am, for the most part.)

The only way I could have learned about any of those things is if I'd taken an interest in them myself and instructed myself. And this was back before the Internet. How many 14-year-olds decide they need to understand health insurance or property taxes? I was too busy trying to wrap my head around algebra. And I had much bigger things to worry about, like whether or not I was a freak and constant bullying.

As you say, I didn't even know that I needed to learn a lot of things because they'd never been a factor in my life up to that point and nobody else had ever mentioned them to me as something I needed to worry about. So I agree that there was (and is) a serious lack of guidance and information in that sense. All of that stuff should be taught in public schools. But being told I'm the wrong kind of person, and that I need to be X, Y, and Z instead of the person I am -- which is also a form of guidance and information -- has played a much larger and had a more destructive role in my life. But I understand that I'm an exception.

I think it's all very well looking back in hindsight - but it's what's happening at the time that really matters. I know with my son - he became quite private in his teen years and still is to some extent, although he's a bit better now. Just how much advice and guidance you give becomes almost irrelevant if the person isn't willing to listen anyway.

I don't blame him at all mind you. I was exactly the same, if not worse. I couldn't care less what my parents thought once I got to about 17 or so - and I basically disappeared from around 19. I was rarely home. Asking anyone for guidance would have been the last thing I would have thought about, and unfortunately like I said before, if anyone had tried to tell me I probably wouldn't have done it. Many of us feel indestructable and that we know everything when we're young.

Scientist receive guidance from a machine source, but outside of citizen mind. So they always lack guidance and information, because someone is doing trials and errors with their brain mental capacity in a working environment. Just as how the education system force concepts that are fake into compatible alike mind to contribute to the management program. Instead of allowing the students to guide themselves with creating information.


I'm in college. But I have a psychology course professor talking about sewing female vagina in another country. I'm pretty sure that I've learned a lot about females private part being obedient from one session of class.

That's really not at all what I was talking about. To me that isn't even guidance, it's unsolicited opinions. Nobody should try to change another person and make personal remarks or attacks.

But telling a person about how the world works can go a long way.

Yeah they need to add some useful life lessons in the schooling system.