4 questions that will help you distinguish bad advice from good
Miscellaneous / / November 12, 2023
Even if you don’t like someone’s words, this does not mean that you should not listen to them.
We have long been looking for solutions to our problems in collective wisdom. Previously, you could send a letter to the “Question and Answer” section of any newspaper. Today we have a variety of consultants at our service, from financial experts to spiritual mentors. In any case, we tend to make better choices when our actions are guided by someone else. We all have biases, but when we combine our perspective with another good source of information, we begin to eliminate some of them.
At the same time, we need advice almost constantly. These can be mundane questions (what to cook for dinner, what TV series to watch) or more serious ones (where to invest money, what school to send their children to). We usually ask people we know, are easy to contact, like, and think are experts.
At the same time, we do not welcome all advice. If close or unfamiliar people share with us their opinions about our life, although they know nothing about it, it annoys us. In addition, in the era of social networks, no one is immune from passively consuming advice. Due to the huge number of them in the public domain, it becomes difficult for us to separate useful information from empty chatter.
But when advice is everywhere - from the doctor's office to our own phones - how do we know which ones are worth following and which ones not? Four questions will help you understand this.
1. Do you really need advice?
Most often we ask for advice when we cannot find a solution to a problem on our own. In moments when we are adrift, the idea of following directions online and offline can be very tempting. Friends and relatives tend to give us advice when in fact we just need to talk it out. A lot of advice on social networks can encourage us to make changes that we ourselves have never thought about before.
In general, we do not particularly listen to advice, even if we asked for it. But the more often we are exposed to certain messages, such as advice on TikTok to wake up early, the more likely we are to consider them.
To determine whether the advice is what you need, consider whether you've thought about this problem before, or whether it was brought to your attention by a conversation with a friend or content on social media. We usually seek advice for a specific purpose, e.g. improve relationships with a partner or earn more money. Unsolicited advice requires us to think about what we really want, and not what others think we should want.
Perhaps your goal isn't to get up at 6 a.m. every day and run around like crazy, but to establish a healthy sleep pattern and sleep longer if you need it. When you are bombarded with advice from all sides, it is important to filter it based on these criteria: whether something really bothers you and whether advice on this matter will benefit you.
2. Does the advice fit into your life?
We listen to advice when it relates to our problem, it is easy to implement and has no serious “side effects”. In response to your complaints about public transport, a friend may offer to buy you a car, but its cost makes such a decision unacceptable to you. Other advice may be too general and superficial. Platitudes things like “don’t worry” or “listen to your heart” do not offer any course of action and are not applicable in a specific situation.
When deciding whether you were given good or bad advice, think about the realities of your life and your preferences. Following advice from a parenting blog and limiting the time your little ones spend on a tablet may not be a wise decision in your circumstances. Because this way you will lose time that you could spend on household chores or help older children with lessons. If the advice is impractical and doesn't fit your lifestyle, it may be good for someone else, but not for you.
3. Who gives advice?
The source of the advice is as important as the content. A reliable advisor can be considered someone who has experience in a certain field, for example a lawyer who advises on legal issues, or a family man who gives advice on marital matters relationships. But someone who has faced difficulties can also be helpful and offer an alternative point of view. When something doesn’t work out for us, we analyze everything at a deeper level than when everything goes like clockwork.
However, no one becomes a source of wisdom just because he has a good or bad experience. We usually tend to listen to confident advisors, although their opinion is not always correct.
Diverse perspectives help us make better decisions because we get advice from people with different life experiences. They can point out blind spots we missed. The more open we are to advice from those who are different from us, the more alternative options we will be able to weigh before making a decision. In addition, we will have the opportunity to combine approaches from different councils or identify the course of action that is most often recommended.
When it comes to online advice, take the time to establish whether you really have does the person have experience in the subject area he is talking about, or is he just “some guy” from Internet. Is he impartial or is he paid to express a particular point of view? Maybe he's giving potentially dangerous advice to spark discussion and increase views? Does he follow his own advice? Anyone can create content. Therefore, always ask yourself why you trust someone and whether you have information confirming the reliability of the source from which the advice comes.
4. How does the advice make you feel?
An emotional reaction can be a great indicator of whether or not you should rely on someone else's advice. But this is not the only indicator. At first, we may not like the idea of quitting our second job, although over time we will realize that life actually gets better without additional responsibilities.
Good advice can come in terrible forms, such as life lessons that parents present in a condescending manner that only annoys us. But this does not always mean that we are being advised something bad. It is our reaction to the very fact of being told what to do. Even if it's correct.
Learn to take a break and examine your emotional reaction to the advice you heard. Think about why she is like this. Because the advice is incompatible with your current circumstances? You can follow it, but will it be difficult? Do you just hate to hear it? Or is this not at all what you expected?
Good advice shows us what they look like change. He reminds us that pleasant discoveries can await us on the other side.
These are definitely good🧐
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