It seems like we humans are like sheep, wanting to be herded by those we perceive as experts telling us the 3 simple steps to achieve what they appear to have accomplished; be it money, power, fame, health, or weight loss.
But no matter who you talk to or how much you pay for it, they are all still… just opinions.
I had a favorite pair of shoes and one day walking out of the airport, the bottoms literally fell off even though the Italian leather remained new and shiny. I ran over to a store barefoot and bought flip-flops. I flopped on over to supposedly the best shoe repair guy in town. The local TV anchor, a friend of a friend, said, “If anyone can fix a shoe, he could.”
The cobbler guru looked them over and told me, “Nope. Done for.” He was emphatic.
In vain I trekked the shoes to two more cobblers who gave the same opinions.
But this morning, I tried yet a third who wasn’t phased at all and said like he said this everyday, that he could easily put on new soles and save the shoes. Sure, it was for a price that was high, but still less than a new pair of Italian leather boots.
It’s the same with health care.
Some doctors don’t know you can improve if not get rid of autoimmune diseases by detoxifying heavy metals, healing gut barrier lining function and balancing digestive enzymes and hormones. Some do. Some never heard of it. Some deny it. Some who deny it now will be practicing these protocols in a decade or two down the road.
It’s each their opinions.
For now.
Till they learn more stuff and develop new opinions.
Opinions are based on what they learned and their experiences, and at the same time, limited by exactly all the same.
The worst is if you see a highly regarded specialist and pay a fortune for that opinion. Then, even if it turns out to be wrong, and that might take a lot of nasty twists and unfortunate outcomes for you to figure this out, you tend to go with what you had to pay a lot of money to hear. But still it may have been wrong because that is only a human being in front of you with only his or her own biased and individual opinion.
I don’t care if they are a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic or a lawyer who represents Dell or a doctor that wrote a book on hormones or a holy man that has a spiritual best seller or a cobbler that came recommended as the best shoe guy in Oklahoma.
They are all opinions.
So how to know who to listen to?
How to know who to guide you?
How not to feel in free fall alone in this universe making mistakes that perhaps others can help you avoid?
It ‘s not easy. But you must always, always, always be open to the possibility that what you are being told, guided and recommended, or even paying for with top dollar is not the best and only answer.
Get a number of answers from individuals with diverse experiential backgrounds.
Go to folks whose opinions are open. And they are folks with their finger on the pulse of the moving data. They keep up. And they sound grounded.
Tune in to your gut.
If your gut feels off, up tight, pushed against the wall, then it is. Something is off even if you can’t yet discern the details that are snagging your comfort zone back.
There are many, many bennies of being a crusty ole fart. One of them is having heard thousands of opinions and by this time realizing that we are all humans. All prone to bias. All limited and expanded by what we don’t know and know. And that opinions are a dime a dozen even if they cost $350 bucks an hour.
If someone has something truly helpful for you to hear and learn, you will probably feel a bit better and in sync once you hear it.
But not always.
There are no set and fast rules in life and love and even taxes (boy are those morphable, it seems) are certainly opinions.
But if you really want something done right and understood with a 360 degree perspective, you must do a lot of rolling up your own shirt sleeves and crunching out the due diligence and figuring out the final answer for yourself.
Darn. Darn. Darn.
No one will ever care about your outcome, or have to live with it, like you will.
And of course, all of this is, naturally… my very own opinion.