Advice

Today I am going to spend a bit of time talking about something we are all good at but at the same time not good at following up and that is giving and acting upon advice.

If there is one thing that we are all good at doing is giving advice to other when they need it and I will confess that if there is someone that asks for my advice I will gladly give it. The two things that I have also noticed with this is the fact that we tend to not act upon the advice that has been given to us and second that when we end up in the same situation that we have once given advice on before we tend not to use our own advice, so why is this?

Now to answer the last part of that question is very easy because I remember being told by someone that we tend not to like using the same advice that we have given to someone else due to the fact of us not knowing what the consequences are. The other part you also have to remember is that if we do decided to use our own advice we have no one else but ourselves to blame if everything goes wrong and that is something we as a species don’t like doing because we like to blame others for our mistakes (most of the time).

So why do we enjoy giving others advice on other people’s problems to begin with, the reason behind this is because we like to see how they would handle themselves in the same problem and second to see if they can see something that we can’t see or can see but don’t want to admit to ourselves.

An example of what I am mean is if we take one of my ex-girlfriend, the two of us were in an on again and off again relationship for the whole relationship. I knew from the very first break up that the relationship wasn’t for me and that was due to the fact that I wanted more from the relationship than what she was going to give me. So when I took the time to talk to my friends about it they all said the same thing that I had said, about how she wasn’t right for me and that they also believed that she was using me which could have been true.

As you can see from the example my friends got the idea that she was using me which could have been true but was something that I didn’t see right away (but when I look back at it I could see what they meant), they also said that the relationship wasn’t for me. Now when it came to giving out advice on the subject they said I should one dump her and find someone else and second was that I should confront her and tell her what I wanted from the relationship.

I will be the first to admit that both of this came to mind but at the same time I also dismissed the second option due to the fact that the two of us had spoken at the beginning of the relationship about what we wanted out of the relationship and at the beginning we both wanted the same thing but we just couldn’t get it to work which left the whole dumping part.

If I dumped her I already knew what the outcome was going to be but I didn’t want to go with that advice or my own advice to dump her because part of me was comfortable with the way the relationship was when we did get back together.

So as you can see from my example it is easy to tell another person that you trust what the problem is and for them to give you advice on what you should do in that situation but when it comes to acting on it you may not act on it because you are afraid of what the outcomes could be or you could be happy with the way things are.

At the end of the day we all act to problems differently and we also like to see how other would act in the same situation as us, when it comes to giving out and using advice it comes down to what you really want to do, if you are happy with the way things are you won’t do anything and if you want to change things you will act on the advice of other or lastly if it gets too much you could just make the decision yourself.

Until Next Time