Rubbish maxims

Crappy advice you find on LinkedIn™ →Go uptown An occasional paean to the empty-headed aspirational gems that gush from from LinkedIn’s wellspring of bunk. Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Rubbish maxims LinkedIn: Your best version... | Your value ... | Inspirational you... | A candle in the wind... | Every boss... | Every journey... | We rise... | We lift you up... | You are dynamite... | Your example... | Game-changers and their aspirants Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

A love letter to LinkedIn, thought for the day, life coaches and motivation gurus everywhere, this is a collection of airheaded aphorisms that sound profound but ooze vacuity. This is not just when that home insurance lawyer tags impenetrable Kierkegaard aphorisms with #quotestoliveby - I mean how does one live by “life expresses the result of our dominant thoughts?” — what does it even mean, and if it does mean something, won’t it just happen automatically? — but something in more wishful denial of how significance the world in general, and Denise in accounts in particular, attaches to your problems.

• Be the best version of yourself — assuming you are possessed of self-awareness and good judgment, which most of you are not.
• Your value does not decrease based on someone else’s inability to see your worth — except that it does, actually.
• You do not inspire people by showing them how amazing you are, but by showing them how amazing they are — but in most cases neither of you will be inspiring anyone.
• Blowing out someone else’s candle won’t make yours burn any brighter — except that’s why they turn the lights out at the cinema.
• Every boss started out as a worker — as did every deadbeat and every grifter.
• Every journey starts with one step — however pointless it may be.
• We rise ourselves by lifting others — you say rise, you mean “subjugate”.
• It takes being let down to appreciate those who lift you up. Be a lifter — or, be the one who lets people down and have an equal impact.
• Believe this: You are exquisite. You are exceptional. You are limitless. — or, better still, don’t believe it since, if you are seeking spiritual guidance from LinkedIn it almost certainly isn’t true — at least, not in a good way. Even if it might be, there’s much less scope for injury and disappointment if you proceed by assuming it isn’t.
• We will all have more leisure time in the future — this isn’t LinkedIn yogababble so much as delusional conventional wisdom from the thought leaders of the day.
• Not everybody is a game-changer, but everybody can make a game-changing impact and contribution : another one from the “by definition, false” collection.
• Keep going : if you stick at it, you will eventually get exactly where you are meant to be— Which is fine, as long as that isn't jail, penury, insolvency, ignominy, public humiliation, community service, or the life-long pursuit of the sort of tedious employment that will drive you to seek wisdom from randoms on LinkedIn.
• Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about : If only people would belt up about their personal problems every now and then, so this were occasionally true.