**(STA: something to think about)
The greatest thing about reading and hearing differing viewpoints is taking a little of everything and coming up with your own ideas.
After all, building your life is all about learning how to develop your own plans based on the advice and results of thousands of others. The only real way you will define your own path is by learning all you can, and still taking everything with a grain of salt.
How boring would it be if you could have everything laid out for you so simply? Experimenting is exciting. It shapes your character, provides you with valuable experience, and forces you to think outside the box. Nobody has a cookie cutter life plan that they can offer to everyone. Suggestions are all that can be given. You should never take someone else’s words as blueprints for your own life.
Consider everything. Try everything at LEAST once. Don’t be afraid to fail or do something that you don’t enjoy. Finding what doesn’t work for you is the best way of narrowing down what DOES work for you!
It’s something else for you to check off the “Don’t Fucking Do This Shit” list. There might be ten thousand other combinations you’ll have to try to find what works. But that’s not something to be stressed over. Consider yourself lucky to have the option of being able to experiment.
If everyone based their ideas off of what someone else said was right, the world would never know anything it does now because we would have taken everything at face value. Some guy started the rumor that the world was flat. But Pythagoras and Columbus had to challenge that idea before they found out it was round.
So just because one person might say something works or doesn’t work, doesn’t mean it will or will not work for you. You’ll have to try it out and see. Since everyone has varying success rates with different methods, you need to play around with a lot of things for enough time to make decisions on what is and is not practical.
You can never only follow the advice of one person, because you are not that person. What works for them may not work for you. And if it does, so much the better. But don’t stop there. Keep learning. Keep growing. We’re often too afraid to toy with new ideas, and that holds us back from accomplishing more and getting further.
Think big. Your brain often “expands” with intelligent thought. 😉
(Or at least that’s what I like to tell myself…)
I Lift So I Can Eat. 
I was thinking about this the other day while I was using the Cybex tricep extension machine. In my newbie lifter days I internalized all those dumb ‘don’t use machines, only ever do the big compound lifts!’ articles and thought machines were for wusses. Yeah… wusses who want extra ROM for their triceps. I’ve let preconceptions and biases limit my training in the past. Trying to be more open-minded now, especially since I’m still getting over an injury and have to be innovative. Good reminder. What were you thinking of particularly when you wrote the post?