Don’t be too Clever to Take Obvious Advice

An insidious pattern among smart people is feeling that because something is familiar and obvious, you are impervious to ignoring or forgetting it. In challenging times, I have often heard these clichés and reflexively shrugged them off. “Oh, I should dust myself off and pick myself up? What a lazy aphorism. What a patronising throwaway line. They must think I’m some kind of idiot. No, it must be something else…” There is a filter in many people’s heads that functions to ignore clichés on the basis that they are mere clichés.