Fresh Fish Sold Here
People like to pretend they see you clearly. They don’t. They see a projection walking around in your clothes.
One person says you should open up more; another says you talk too much; a third tells you to be softer; a fourth tells you to harden up. You are the same person. They are just reading you through different lenses.
It’s one of the oldest problems in human perception. You think you’re meeting a person, but most of the time you’re bumping into the old childhood furniture in their head. You walk in wearing a blank suit, and they start filling in the patterns with their own colors.
If you try to follow all the advice thrown at you, you end up like the shopkeeper with the famous fish sign. He begins with a proud sign: FRESH FISH SOLD HERE.
Passers-by tell him to remove a word. Here is obvious. Sold is redundant. Fresh sounds suspicious. And everyone can see he’s selling fish. By the end he has nothing. The sign is gone, and so is the point. Trying to please everyone erased the whole thing.
People don’t mean harm when they try to adjust you. Most of them are just trying to shape the world into something that feels familiar to them. They don’t know they’re sanding you down as they do it.
Without a center you vanish in the process.
A man needs a spine, not a pile of contradictory instructions.
Of course you can take feedback. You can listen. You can evolve. But learn to sort the voices. Most advice is autobiography, not insight. Only a rare fraction carries truth, the kind that stings first and strengthens later. That is the part you keep.
You want to grow, not be forced to climb the frame a committee builds for you. You want to be yourself, not a suit every passer-by can scribble an opinion on.
My advice: hold on to what makes you sharper. Drop what shrinks you. Let your growth be honest, not an imitation. Stand tall without bending.
Otherwise you end up like the guy selling fish.