However, that being said, I think the most profound thing I’ve come to understand [in bits] along the way, is that self development is an on going training operation conducted by one’s self that doesn’t end. You can read all the best words of advice that have ever been written, and believe them to be sound or even profound, but until you start applying consistent, self-righting effort toward your own goals, whatever they may be, you will have little say in what you get from your efforts in the long run.

I’m not just saying that if you put in your best effort (whatever that may happen to mean) you’ll at least get to whine about not getting what you wanted, that’s not the kind of “say” I’m talking about. Because if you really do work your ass off your whole life and you’re still left without a fraction of what you wanted, it’s either because you never became the master of your own actions, or because you never decided what you wanted in the first place.

The kind of “say” I’m talking about is that modicum of control that we all need to cultivate, and develop in order to gain the sort of life we’ve said we would like to attain for ourselves.

The self-help industry will never dry up. We all have room for improvement, and we all know good advice when we hear it, and because most of us never actually head good advice for very long, the market is basically perpetual.

The world we live in is replete with advisors, philosophers, yogis, religious leaders, and self-help gurus, both dead, and living (or even channeled from the dead for that matter), all of them selling and serving up hectares of potable advice from firehoses throughout the world, each solution mixed with his or her own philosophical sweeteners but most of us are either not interested, or just like splashing around in the stuff once in a while, but rarely drink it. Refreshing now and then surely, but not much to live on.

Part of the problem is that good advice, like so much we should be doing in our lives, is easier said then done. So our sages, and gurus grow out of brilliantly leveraging the axiom that if you can’t do—teach. There is nothing wrong with this, especially since teaching, is a kind of doing. So, to mix yet another metaphor, and call on yet another cliché, many of these self-made advisors and teachers are, in a way, physicians healing themselves, and as such not all should be condemned for what they’ve chosen to do with their lives.

If you’re going to spend a significant portion of your life dissatisfied with the results you’re getting, to the point of seeking advice, and trying everything within your own power and understanding to learn from your mistakes for the sake of self improvement, it’s only a natural that you would eventually have a few words you’d like to say on the subject (crazy right? I’m excusing myself for this entire blog entry here). If you hear something that makes sense, or if you figure something out on your own, it’s standard human practice to share that information with others. Only a handful of us ever actually figure out how to turn imparting their own understanding as a viable career path, so the rest of us either remain students, or become practitioners of our own evolving wisdom. It is the second of these two possibilities that I think is the ideal we all should seek to become.

Just like some people can become career students, and eventually professors of a given academic pursuit. The study of self-improvement, or attainment, can either be an intentional and admirable pursuit of greater understanding with the eventual goal to teach it to others, or it can be simply a trap caused by a fear of having to join reality. We all need professors, teachers, and advisors in our lives, but not everyone that studies should teach, not everyone that teaches should be teaching. Many of us continue to study, simply because we would rather not start learning the hard way.

We’ve all taken some advice, and gotten hurt in the process. In fact almost all great advice for getting more out of life is about getting your skin in the game, as it were. The majority of self-help being printed, and spoken these days address that reality, and much can be summed up as, “go get hurt!” Sure it’s masked in phases like “learn how to fail, and fail often” or “just do it.” This is actually great advice, but it often fails due to our own lack of continued execution. The advice isn’t faulty, or fraudulent. It just doesn’t do any of the work for us. No advice does, and that’s the problem with advice. Advice doesn’t do a goddamn thing for you! No matter what you want to do with your life, YOU HAVE TO DO IT. Nothing anyone ever tells you is ever going to make any of what you need to do, any more done.

Getting good at anything, even just getting good at being our best selves kinda sucks; at least for a little while; just like anything else we learn how to do.

So, my advice is to stop taking advice (for the most part), and start training yourself to be you. Face it, in order to succeed at being you, you’re going to get hurt from time to time. Whether it’s falling on your ass literally or figuratively, getting good at your own life, is just like any sports metaphor you want to apply. You are your own coach and player, you can bench yourself, and you can put yourself in the game, it all depends on the lessons you want to teach yourself, from your own bruises, and sore muscles, and the level of performance you want to achieve for yourself. You can grab a seat, or run another lap. That’s your call, and your action.

Enough! I’m going to go force myself to go running, just like I forced myself to write this metaphorical hodgepodge.

Godspeed coaches!

Perhaps the most impressive source of such wisdom and brilliance that I’ve found in the meanwhile, is a podcast that showed up on my radar recently which has turned out, quite unexpectedly, to be a truly kickass source of awesome. The Nerdist Podcast hosted by Web Soup host Chris Hardwick, with Web Soup writer Jonah Ray is an open-discussion-style audio podcast that is completely worth checking out.

Yes, I did just use the word ‘podcast’ a number of times. So, if you’re one of those people that doesn’t listen to podcasts, because you haven’t bothered to take the three minutes out of your exciting life to learn how, you will probably try to use that as an excuse not to listen to it, or any of the other commute-improving programs that are available for download, and it’s a teary-eyed shame. However, because I love you anyway, and I would never judge and exclude someone from learning solely on their technological ineptitude, even if you are one of “those people,” I am fully recommending that you find out how to listen to the show anyway. In fact I will even offer free, over-the-phone, consultation to anyone who wishes to learn how to subscribe to one of these “podcasts,” that I’m referring to, just so you will listen to The Nerdist Podcast. It’s that good. Mom, Dad, I’m not speaking to either of you specifically here, so don’t take the above as a personal insult. This is a blog, I’m talking to the entire world here.

Anyway, having recently reached 19 Episodes, The Nerdist Podcast has had some legendary guests on, for its refreshingly casual and open-chat format, including (but not limited to) Drew Carey, Andy Richter, Jim Gaffigan, Stan Lee, Rob Zombie, and “Weird” Al Yankovic. What I think was originally just supposed to be another comedic platform for Hardwick, and a way to get the word out about tour dates and the like, The Nerdist quickly outgrew itself [within the length of the very first episode] to became a truly compelling and insightful look into some of the most successful, creative minds in entertainment, while still proving to be both very entertaining, and funny as hell.

While the production value of the show is certainly not comparable to your more highly-polished shows (such as Mysterious Universe, the hosts of which I recently interviewed for von Creedy), The Nerdist Podcast has some of the best guests in the most open and interesting discussions I have ever heard. Interviews with interesting people are hard to mess up. I know because I’ve tried. Interesting people can’t help but say interesting things, interestingly. But even proven masters at the Qs of Q&A such as Charlie Rose, Opra Winfrey and James Lipton (Go ahead laugh, Lipton’s great) could stand to learn a little from Chris and Jonah’s relaxed, “nerdist” style. Hardwick is a hilarious, quick witted, self-depricating, crude-humored and disarming host, and what the show lacks in polish is more than compensated for by Chris and Jona’s exceptional skills at shooting the shit with some awesome guests.

Check it out! (And like I said, call me if you’re thinking of using the pathetic, “I don’t know how,” excuse)