This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 310, how to give advice without being a condescending soul by Mark Manson of markmansand.net, and I'm Justin Molick. Welcome back to OLD, where I read to you from some of the best personal development blogs I can find without the permission of course. And this episode hasn't been officially sponsored, but I did find out recently that there's amazing course on simplicity being offered by some of the best bloggers out there. They've all teamed up to bring you a year-long course.
I'll tell you more about that at the end of the episode. So for now, let's hear today's post and start optimizing your life. How to give advice without being a condescending soul by Mark Manson of markmansand.net. In the internet age, everyone and their dog is an expert on something.
The beauty and the curse of the internet is that everyone has an opinion and is going to share it. And not only are we all going to share it, but we're more convinced than ever of how right we are. So I've come up with six basic principles to follow when giving others advice, because I'm so convinced of how fucking right I always am. I think these principles are widely applicable as well, whether you're helping your nephew deal with bullies at school or critiquing some guy's star craft theory on a nerd forum or giving life advice to your brother.
If you genuinely want to help someone, I recommend the following. Number one, make sure the person actually wants advice. No type of advice is worse than unsolicited advice. No one is more likely to be ignored than a nosy note all.
Make sure the person you're trying to help is actually looking for help. Unless you come across as a condescending soul. Bad advice example. In response to someone excited about getting accepted to graduate school.
Quote, hey, that's cool you got accepted, but honestly, graduate school is a waste of money. The debt you incur is hardly worth a slight bump you may get on your resume. My cousin spent all this money on grad school, had no social life for years, and now he's stuck in a job he doesn't like only because it pays well and can pay off his debt, unquote. The only thing you're helping here is the perception that you're at number two, make sure you actually know what you're talking about.
The second biggest sin of advice giving is giving someone advice when you don't have the proper experience yourself. The person you're trying to help may not notice, but by guarantee you people who do have the experience will notice and whether they say anything or not, you will lose credibility. As the old adage goes, he who thinks he knows everything learns nothing. If you don't have experience, but you do feel like you have an important or useful observation to make, then you should always qualify it by saying, I've never had this problem before, but it seems to me, or something similar before speaking or posting.
Classic bad advice example, getting advice on how to from a virgin. Number three, meet them where they are, not where you are. It's difficult for many of us to step outside of ourselves and to imagine the place others may be stuck in. Many of us have the tendency to project our own issues and successes onto others, even when it's not warranted.
Giving advice based on your life situation and not theirs is ineffective at best and embarrassing at worst. Bad advice example, in response to someone talking about a petty argument with their sister, quote, I hear you on having to deal with family members. One thing that you have to understand is that regardless of what they say, your family usually doesn't actually care about you and will do just whatever they want. There was one time my brother borrowed my car and et cetera, unquote.
Number four, psychoanalysis is not advice, it's condescending. This seems to be the most common error on self-development in dating forums. The worst part about this is that you may even be right, but you're still not helping anybody. The quickest way to someone often shut you out is to try and tell them who they are, why they're having the thoughts they're having, why they're making the mistakes they're making and so on.
Things only get worse if you start making assumptions about their character or their life or their past. This relates to meeting people where they are, but just because you notice something doesn't mean you have to fix it. If someone has an overly negative attitude and thinks the world's against them, then telling them that they have a negative attitude is not likely to help them. They're going to perceive you to be condescending and just another part of that world that is aligned against them.
The best way is to meet them where they are and answer their question in the simplest way possible for them to understand. Bad advice example, in response to someone complaining about how hard it is to make friends in their new town, quote, look, you obviously come from a screwed up background and now you're viewing every opportunity in front of you as something you're going to fail at before you even try. This is because you have low self-esteem and your attitude and beliefs are only going to perpetuate it, unquote. This is a pitfall that I fall into the most often when giving advice and you can easily push the person away from taking me seriously.
It is useful to note that sometimes people are looking for specific observations on their mindsets and worldviews and in those situations, advice like this is useful. But again, if they're not looking for it, then giving it to them is not going to go well. Number five, criticize their actions, not their character. More as is more commonly known, love the sinner, eat the sin.
It's important to differentiate the actions of a person from their intentions. You'd be amazed how often people do stupid things with really noble intentions. Anyone who's grown up with overly critical parents knows the sting of someone judging your character based on some mistake you made. Bad advice example, in response to a guy saying something creepy to a woman.
Quote, my God, do you have no respect for women? Just stop trying to meet them all together if that's the way you're going to go about it. That's disgusting, unquote. Number six, people do not owe you anything.
Just because you take the time to give someone advice does not mean they're obligated to use it and it does not mean that they owe you any gratitude or anything in return. Too many times, particularly on forums, do I see someone who has given advice get upset that someone didn't use it. They have no responsibility to use it. It's their life, it's their path.
If what you say resonates with them, they will identify with it and try it out. If not, then they owe you nothing. Advice is a gift. And as a gift, it is given unconditionally with nothing expected in return.
And with that, you can take the advice of this article and use it or you may disregard it, whichever you choose. You just listen to the post titled How to Give Advice Without Being a Condescending Full by Mark Manson and Mark Manson.net. I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health, what supplements to take, hours of sleep, what my diet should focus on. Superpower finally takes the guessing out of it.
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And by the way, Mark has a new book out titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F. I've read some of it to you in previous episodes and it really is valuable. You can check it out over at Mark Manson.net. And like I was mentioning at the top of the show, I just found out recently that some of my favorite authors that I read right here on this podcast, five of them actually, are teaming up with five more for a year-long course on simplicity.
It's gonna be awesome. Those five that I read right here are the Minimalists, Mark and Angel, Courtney Carver, Colin Wright, and Kate Flanders. You've heard all of them right here and are teaming up with five other experts for an awesome program. I'm really excited because they're gonna be doing monthly webinars, which will be recorded if you can't make it live.
A private optional Facebook group to ask questions and to meet other like-minded people, optional homework assignments and more is a great idea and I couldn't be happier with the people that shows and tells this. And they've just opened up the doors and are doing early registrations. The price goes up after the early bird period. So if you're at all interested in this, now's the time to jump in.
If you go through me, you will be contributing to this podcast too, so that's an amazing part of it. So not only are you helping these authors who put out the content for free and learning a ton of the process and meeting like many people, but also supporting this show. Just visit oldpodcast.com slash learn and you can register there and learn more about it. And I think that does it for today.
Have a great rest of your day and I will catch you tomorrow, most likely from Minimalists Monday, where your optimal life awaits. Hey, this is Dan from the Optimal Finance Daily Podcast, which is a lot like this show, except more focused on personal finance. Justin handpicks the best posts he can find from blogs and authors like Rameet Sadie, Mr. Money Moustache and more, and I read them to you five days a week.
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