A habit that you perceive as “negative” may not necessarily be perceived as such for another individual.

As a male human being in my early 20s, I find myself going on tangents where I’d either rant or lecture to friends of mine about life advice.

Recently, I was watching a video by Eliot Hulse…

At one point, he briefly mentions how he has met people in the past that smoke marijuana every single day, yet continue to be extremely sharp and focused in reaching their life goals. Putting that into perspective, he goes on to say that if he himself would do that, it wouldn’t work for him AT ALL and would only be a powerful source of negativity. Relating that back to myself, if I were to watch a string of T.V episodes, I would perceive it as a complete waste of time that detracts from my life goals.

A few weeks ago, I’ve found myself caught up on the day-to-day operations of life that I’ve forgotten to give myself some “leisure time”. At the time, I hadn’t watched any of my favourite shows for at least a few months, so I decided to watch an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. The idea of sitting there doing nothing, yet receiving this constant flow of stimulation was so appealing that I wanted nothing more than to binge watch the rest of the season. Taking into account that my future self would completely regret this decision I decided to stop after an episode, but it did make me question…

How many people don’t stop themselves from binge watching their favorite shows?

Obviously, this is more of an issue of self-control. Yet as someone who used to do this on a daily basis during his teen years, it’s quite clear now that continuing this activity could detract and take you away from the stronger version of yourself. If you’re really focused on going somewhere, anything that gets in the way of that will be perceived as an evil. For me, binge watching shows on Netflix was exactly that: evil.

Going back to what Eliot was saying, this is not the case for everyone. “Productive Joe” might kill an entire Saturday on watching all seasons of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”, but would wake up the next morning at 5am and be just as productive as ever. That doesn’t mean that going through season after season on a daily basis would be feasible if one would want to maintain their productivity, but watching a few episodes a day would not be perceived as an “evil” and instead as much needed leisure time.

Now, I find myself questioning my own advice. Does this mean that I should stop lecturing people? Probably not. However, do take into account that your own advice does not necessarily equate to the “ideal solution” for every individual, but more so goes under the “alternative solution” category.

I have to say though, if I were to end every piece of advice that I would give with something along the lines of: “This is what worked for me. It might not necessarily work for you.”

That definitely makes me sound more humble.

Follow me @Marwanalshafei where I spark rainbows within people’s subconscious and make the world go round n’ round.