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Somehow this comparison just popped in to my head, and to me it speaks deeply to the idea that life by its very nature is contradictory, and that what might seem like brilliant advice in one situation can in fact be downright disastrous advice in another situation.
Which reminds me of a certain phrase that I utterly loathe:
"Everything happens for a reason!"
Feck, no it doesn't. To me, most things happen for a slew of reasons, many of them inscrutable and/or unknown. But we naked apes like order, we do, so we like to oversimplify, rationalize, and normalize whenever possible. Even to the genesis of religious belief, dare I say it.
Anyway yeah, got some contradictory advice / quotes?
'just be yourself'
as if you could be someone else.
but this advice is then always followed by 'fake it until you make it' nonsense.
it's basically a way for 'advice givers' to not give advice but feel like they have done so. and then throw up their hands and be a dick when the advice receiver asks for something more specific.
IME "just be yourself" sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn't, ditto for "faking it until... whatever."
What I've found is that mixing the two in proportion to what the needs of the situation are is in fact how people commonly handle such situations. I don't know how the fluff two such extremist pieces of advice got started, but I suppose they have their uses at times.
Good one though, and I love how you dismantle the usual advice-givers. ๐