Poisonous Platitudes: 6 Common Sayings That Are Wrong on So Many Levels

You were lied to

1. “Looks don’t matter. It’s what you do that counts.”

This is a direct quote from the Penguins of Madagascar animated movie. It’s cute. It’s also wrong. I’ll show you what I mean by telling a story:

Two women apply for a job. The first candidate has a mediocre resume and bombs the interview. The second candidate has strong credentials and interviews well. Guess who gets the job?

The first candidate. Why?

“She’s easy on the eyes.”

This was what the hiring manager said. Yes, he said that aloud. Unsurprisingly, he used to be in a fraternity during his college years.

Two months later, the new hire gets bored and quits.

The point is this:

What you look like certainly matters because it affects the way others treat you. The way others treat you affects your available opportunities.

It’s the same reason why bankers dress up all the time. You can’t expect someone to give you millions of dollars to manage if you look like a slob. Optics play a role. They honestly do.

In a perfect world, you wouldn’t give a sh*t about what others think of you. However, if someone has the power to decide your fate, then you must.

2. “What goes around comes around.”

This is what we tell ourselves to cope with the world’s cruelties. Ideally, bad people are punished, and good people are rewarded. Unfortunately, that’s not the way the world works.

Sometimes, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people.

Why? I don’t know.

You can point your fingers at bad luck or supernatural forces.

I use randomness as a justification. Sometimes, things just happen. There is no reasoning behind it. The chaotic world is doing what it does best: being chaotic.

3. “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Work is unquestionably more bearable if you’re doing what you love.

However, if you want to make a living doing something, then you need to take that thing seriously. You need to treat your passion like a full-time job. This means following a schedule and working even when you don’t feel like working. You need to set deadlines for yourself and stick to them.

Eventually, you realize that trying to make money doing what you love doesn’t always feel good. Work, by default, is not supposed to be fun. There will be stressful times. You will have second thoughts.

“Did I make the right decision?”

Now, you carefully evaluate whether you want the rest of your interests to remain casual hobbies or also be turned into more serious pursuits.

4. “Get good grades in school and you’ll live happily ever after.”

School sucks.

There, I said it. This is coming from someone who did his homework every night. I still can’t believe I just sat there and willingly learned what other people told me to learn.

I believe every child should be taught how to learn. However, what they learn should be completely up to them.

I believe in self-education. Education is important. School? Debatable. Nowadays, I keep hearing about budget cuts. It seems like there are a lot of school administrators who do not care about students. Therefore, you need to take control of your education.

You also need to do stuff with the knowledge that you acquire. There is no point in learning something if you’re not going to do anything afterward. You’ll eventually start forgetting things if they do not apply to your everyday life.

Most importantly, you can get good grades in school and still can’t find a job. Your GPA is a small part of your resume. It’s a little number that hides in the corner of the page. Employers emphasize work experience a lot more than your GPA.

5. “You’ll get ahead if you simply work hard.”

You can’t just keep your head down and work crazy hours. You need to make sure that your hard work is recognized by the higher-ups. If they don’t even notice, then your efforts won’t contribute anything worthwhile to your annual performance review.

There are also a lot of factors that you can’t control. For example, people who graduated college during the Great Recession had a hard time starting their careers. Some of these folks were only able to secure their first full-time job after relentlessly submitting job applications for years.

Overall, there is a lot to getting ahead than just working hard. Do what you can, but don’t discount the effects of luck and timing.

6. “Everyone is equal.”

I want this to be true. Fundamentally, I do believe every human being is equal. Unfortunately, we’re not always treated equally.

Many of us simply live horrendous lives through no fault of our own. We’re affected by the family we were born into, our zip code, and the resources that we have access to.

During desperate times, we see firsthand how unequal human life can be. This pandemic is a prime example of that. Rich countries got first dibs on effective vaccines, while poor countries quietly suffered.

Someone always gets hurt.

Hopefully, it’s not you.

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