The smell of bad information

With a trained nose, you can tell a lot of bad information from how its composed. Even if you're not an expert in the field.

These are by no means the only bad smells. But they are some of the worst, and the clearest to detect once you know what to sniff for.

Checklist:

- is accompanied by yelling
- requires immediate action NOW!!!!1!
- is unclear or short in specifics - especially relevant dates, numbers, people or sources of money
- promises to solve everything
- promises to solve everything, but does not *guarantee* refund (special red flag)
- will not be repeated in writing or in front of a 3rd-party witness
- makes you feel terrible if you believe it
- makes you feel fantastic if you believe it
- comes from someone who has something to gain from you

Consider each of these a bad smell in the room. One means something under the coffee table should be thrown out, or it could give you food poisoning. Two means there's a dead cat in the room, so don't sleep on the couch. Three means there might be a body - perhaps of the previous sucker.

In other words, more than one of the above smells means it's very likely that the source of this information is trying to fool you.

This may be a bit beyond the scope of Mind Fu, as it extends to your personal choices. But I would also suggest that, just like you might stay away from a "friend" who likes to hit you in the face, so you might want to reevaluate your relationship with someone who is constantly bringing more than one of these smells into your information environment.

Some people are excitable, and no one is perfect. Sometimes people are just idealistic, ADD, haven't thought things through, etc. But if someone is constantly presenting information to you with more than 3 of these indicators of bad information, they may be trying to fool you. That isn't necessarily someone you want to have in your life. If they're doing that, not only are they not healthy for you, they aren't healthy period. And they will affect your life badly until they heal.

And even if they are your friends, family, or lovers, it is not your responsibility or even **capability** to heal them. You can balance them and support them while they heal themselves - that is the most it is possible for you to do in this universe. And your degree of commitment to helping them throughout that process, is **your** choice as well.

That doesn't mean just abandoning friends and family if things become difficult. It does mean: know what someone is doing, and evaluate your relationship with them in terms of what they **do**, and how it lines up with what they say.

And no matter who the source is - expert, novice, family, friend or lover - even if you don't detect any of the above smells specifically, you should always consider any important action from all angles. There's always time to do this.