When can other people's advice throw a wrench in your skills?

Normally, I would say never if you know how to think for yourself. But, when you have an egomaniac friend who constantly holds the fact that he has more final tables over your head, and as such, he should be much more knowledgeable than you, you occasionally hear things that make you question your own play.

If you're losing, maybe that's a good thing.

Now, I'm winning (for a small sample of about 1.5 months), and I have the most cash I've ever had in my account. At the same time, I KNOW I have significant amounts of improvement that I have to make to my game. There is so much more than I want to learn.

But, this egomaniac likes to make observations of my game that are indirect insults. He does it in such a manner that he can't be accused of insulting your game.

Today, he basically acts as if the way I think about the game is inferior to the way he thinks about the game. He says I comparmentalize the game into three parts, early, middle, and late. Which, if I did, who cares? I recount the game that way...I think of the game in terms of the players and the situations we are in. If that happens to be late in the game when we're in the money, I might mention that. I suppose I could, instead of saying early, middle, or late, only say the blinds (which I say anyhow), but when you recount things...that's all you're doing. You're trying to paint a picture. People generally respond to discriptions of time...early in the SnG, late in the SnG, and so on.

He says that he thinks of the game as a whole.

Okay!? That doesn't matter to me. I mean, that doesn't help our discussion at all. So, you think of it as a whole. Do you describe it as a whole? I suppose the only way you could desribe the game as a whole would be to only say thing like:

I got 1st, and it was against a weak table.

I busted out 4th against a table full of donks.

That seems results oriented to me, and you can't play that way. In fact, this person said to me many times that the results are all that matters. I don't know if he still feels that because some time has passed, and he might have gotten past that. The results don't matter if you are playing great poker.

I guess this all irritates me because I'm playing so well, then he comes around questioning my thinking.

At the same time, I think it's good to get tested like this. I don't want to stop learning, or ever be satisified with my current level of knowledge. So, in some ways it might be good that he's pissing me off because it forces me to validate and articulate my own thinking.