Shitty Life Advice
“Have you ever considered that maybe God hates you?”
“You should try degenerate gambling, or fucking strangers!”
“What you need to do is gather all the pubic hair you can find and cover every surface of the bathroom with it.”
Is this a collection of quotes from famous drunk uncles, or random bits of wisdom spewed forth by a defunct AI text generator? No friends. These are all actual words spoken by writer, artist and How To Human podcast founder, Sam Lamott…and, if I’m being honest, I think he might be on to something.
Ok, now, for some context.
Sam Lamott, as himself, probably doesn’t think God hates you, and he likely doesn’t condone the random strewing of pubic hair in shared spaces (though I can’t be sure here). He is, however, a huge fan of giving Shitty Life Advice. So much so, that he’s created an entire show about it.
A few years ago Sam took to Instagram (a sacred space for social connection and the dispensing of sound wellness advice) urging his followers to submit question about their life’s greatest issues, which he would then attempt to solve in 15 seconds. The catch? He’d would be taking on an entirely new persona and providing people with the worst. advice. imaginable.
For many people, this venture might have ended in chaos, but, somehow (miraculously) Sam had struck a chord.
In his everyday life, Sam is a kind, generous and intelligent human, well-versed in the nuances and complexities of life. As described in his bio, Sam is “a single dad, college drop-out, ex-meth head who came out of a ten-year bender at the age of 22 with severe clinical depression, a two-year-old, and zero life skills. Simply put, there is no one more genuinely curious about how to be a human being.”
Over the last decade, Sam has managed to get the hang of it. Not only is he still human-ing, but some may argue that he’s done so to great success. On his podcasts, Sam has sat down with some of the greatest thought leaders of our time (everyone from Brene Brown to Byron Katie, Gay Hendricks to Gloria Allred, Reggie Watts to Marianne Williamson) in an attempt to glean some understanding of how to human. More recently, Sam has shifted towards bringing on “ordinary" people who inspire him; people who enrich their communities, find joy and meaning in the everyday, and share their creativity with the world.
Regardless of who he’s talking to, Sam has always managed to access people at a very human level.
“For whatever reason, people just want to tell me their secrets,” he once told me. The reason of course, is that people feel safe in his presence, like nothing they can say or do will render them “bad,” or damaged, or unworthy of love. (And, at our core, isn’t that really the basis for all of our insecurities?) When giving Shitty Life Advice, Sam manages to create this same secure container, giving viewers the sense that, even behind the glasses of his smug alter-ego (who I just realized should have some sort of devious name) there is a person there who gets it, and really does want them to succeed.
Last week, I was able to sit with Sam in his Marin County studio as he launched Shitty Life Advice (2.0). Here, 15 second instagram stories would move aside to make room for an hour-long live-streamed show, complete with live callers, exceedingly shitty advice, and a panel of highly-trained therapists to make sure Sam didn’t ruin anyone’s life. Imagine if Dr. Drew’s Loveline and Glennon Doyle’s “We Can Do Hard Things” Podcast had a baby. (And then someone dropped that baby.)
Opening with an “undergrounding” meditation, viewers were welcomed to the show and instructed to move systematically through their bodies, cursing every inch of it, all the way from their stupid hearts, (“which would probably be the thing that kills you”) to their stupid brains (“the same one responsible for every mistake you’ve ever made”).
Words cannot describe how hilarious and comforting this meditation was for me. I’ve been struggling to pinpoint it ever since, and the only thing I can land on is that while I, like many, have subjected my body to a fair amount of criticism and berating, it had never felt ridiculous or funny until this moment. Somehow, this exercise had taken the charge out of the worst of what I say to myself. Like hating yourself in this way surely must be a joke.
For me, this same perplexed feeling surrounds the whole concept of Shitty Life Advice. After all, aren’t we already good at being shitty to ourselves? Do we really need a show to give us more ideas about how to be shitty to ourselves?? If I wanted bad advice couldn’t I just ask my most unhinged friend or some guy at the gas station (like I normally do)?
While Shitty Life Advice appears to be the antithesis of the wellness movement, if we look closer, I think we’ll see that it may actually be the exact complement that the movement needs. In a world saturated with wellness resources (books / podcasts / planners) there is something incredibly refreshing that comes with receiving absolutely horrific advice, and, I’d argue, that it may help us to find clarity even more quickly, and profoundly, than if we’d been given “good” advice in the first place.
Because the truth is, at this point, most of us “know” what to do. Right?
Like, we have the basics down:
Have the hard conversations.
Feel the feelings.
Uphold the boundaries.
Extend grace (but, like, not too much)
Practice gratitude.
Go outside.
Breathe deeply.
Something to this effect?
It isn’t that these tips and tricks are new. It’s just that they’re not always easy to execute. Because just as strong as our knowledge of ourselves and what is in our best interest, is our absolutely incredible ability to fuck it all up. We postpone discomfort, ignore intuition, give in to our egos, all in an attempt to keep our lives (momentarily) harmonious, to harvest every bit of serotonin we can conjure, not realizing that in doing so, we are just delaying the inevitable, and sabotaging ourselves in the process.
That’s because knowing how to human and actively humaning are not one and the same. And while one of the secrets to life is probably in understanding and accepting this fact, this understanding does not necessarily lead to action.
Shitty Life Advice is genius to me because in it, Sam is essentially saying the worst of what we’re all thinking. And something about exposing the truth of our deepest fears, desires, tendencies, frees us from that weight, gives it all some levity, and allows us to see our issues through a whole new lens.
When given advice, it’s difficult not be defensive, because there is some perception that maybe we are clueless or helpless or inept. With Shitty Life Advice, we’re immediately off the defensive because we know the advice we’ll be getting is so outlandish that anything we do/think/believe, short of that, actually seems pretty acceptable. It’s also strangely comforting to hear what someone else’s brain can whip up as a worst-case-scenario response to a difficult problem. Getting Shitty Life Advice allows us to come to the “correct” conclusions on our own (a luxury we don’t often afford ourselves).
And the truth is, even that “good advice” can go bad.
Practice gratitude? Oh you mean list all the wonderful things in my life that will almost definitely fall away from me at some point because I probably never deserved them in the first place. Great.
Go outside? To the place where the bears and murderers live? Yeah. No thank you.
Feel the feelings? Fine. I will do nothing else for 8 months. *Dies*
Because here is the thing: we can’t just make blanket statements and TELL people what to do. Every scenario we are faced with is too complex. There are hardly ever “right” answers (though after hearing Sam’s responses it is clear there are many wrong answers) just endless opportunities to shift our lives and shape ourselves more fully into the people we want to be.
And, really, maybe what we need is a little less of an emphasis on what we “should” be doing in these scenarios, and a little of an emphasis on humility and humor. Life is, after all, laughably disastrous at times. And who knows, maybe dabbling in gambling and fucking strangers is exactly the shake-up we need! (Disclaimer: probably not.)
If you’re interested in getting some Shitty Life Advice, you can submit your questions for this weeks episode in Sam’s Instagram bio. And if you’d just like to revel in the misfortune of others and take part in a series of unsettling exercises, you can catch Shitty Life Advice live on YouTube every Tuesday at noon!
