This is optimal living daily, how to give advice to others by Mark Manson of markmansin.net and your narrator justimolic reading you blogs every single day of the year including holidays and we're going to get right to today's post as we optimize your life, how to give advice to others by Mark Manson of markmansin.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 advice. You know, because I'm so convinced of how right I always am. I think these principles are widely applicable whether you're helping your nephew deal with bullies at school or critiquing some guy's Starcraft theory on a nerd forum or giving life advice to your brother. If you genuinely want to help someone, I recommend following these six principles when giving advice.
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 know it all. Make sure the person you're trying to help is actually looking for help unless you come across as a condescending full bad advice example in response to someone excited about getting accepted to graduate school.
Hey, that's cool. You got accepted. But honestly, graduate school is a waste of money. The debt you incur is hardly worth the 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. The only thing you're helping here is the perception that you're a 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 I 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. 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.
I hear you on having to deal with family members, one thing you have to understand is that regardless of what they say, your family usually doesn't actually care about you and will just do whatever they want. There was one time my brother borrowed my car and etc. Number four, psychoanalysis is not advice, it's condescending. This seems to be the most common error on self-development and 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 yourself 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, 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 is against them, then telling them they have a negative attitude is not likely to help them. They're going to perceive you to be condescending in just another part of that world that is aligned against them. The best way is to meet them where they are and answer their questions 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.
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. This is a pitfall that I fall into most often when giving advice and it can easily push the person away from taking me seriously. It's useful to know 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. Or as it's more commonly known, love the sinner, hate 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. Someone 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. Do you have no respect for women?
Just stop trying to meet them altogether if that's the way you're going to go about it. That's disgusting. 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 I see someone who has given advice, gets upset that the other person 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 more you may disregard it, whichever you choose. You just listen to the post titled, How to Give Advice to Others by Mark Manson at markmanson.net and I'll be right back with my commentary. 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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Thank you to mark. I guess you could say I'm in the advice business since these articles are all basically advice. And then we had a show for a year or so called optimal living advice where Greg from optimal relationships daily answered listeners questions, at least with these examples, people wanted the advice of income unsolicited. I'm sure we could both think of examples where we did this in our personal lives.
Sometimes we're so excited to help, but when you see it from the perspective of the other person, it really could be raining on their parade, depending on what they were looking for. If they're an adult, then it's not our job to try to prevent their mistakes if that advice is not what they're looking for. Although again, it's sort of is my job, but with this podcast, hopefully I've made it clear that when I share my commentary at the end, it's just my perspective, just like all these articles are the perspectives of the various authors. I'm not here to tell anyone how to live their life.
I'm just sharing what other people wrote and then what's worked for me. So maybe that's something we can think about today before giving advice. Do they actually want it and are we the right person to be giving it? So thank you again to mark for this one.
Thank you for being here. I can only keep doing this with you continuing to listen, wishing you a great rest of your day and week and month and year, of course, and I'll see you tomorrow as usual, where you're