The Problem with Advice

Everyone wants to give you advice.  No matter what you're doing, someone else will have an input that they MUST share.  There is a problem with advice givers, though.  Most people give advice the same way they give presents.  They think about themselves.

I was once told to give a person a gift you would like to receive.  Although this works sometimes, it can really backfire on you.  Same with advice.  I'm sure you can imagine someone saying to themselves, "I'd love a gift card to this place! I bet they would too!"  Then, in the excitement of your birthday or Hanukkah or graduation or something, you open up the envelope to find yet another gift card to a place you never shop at if you can avoid it.  All I want is for someone to ask me what gift I want. I'll tell them this, "NOTHING.  I don't NEED anything.  If you have to ask, it won't be right. Your gift is nice, but is it thoughtful? Is it something I want? Or is it something you would want?  I like Michaels, Barnes and Noble, music, H&M, American Apparel, Target.  What about you? I don't like people to stare at me, or to touch me when I don't want to be touched. I'm not the same person as you."  I don't want, or need the same presents, and I don't want, or need, the same advice.

I've gotten a lot of advice in just 18 years of existence.  Some of it I've blown off, and others I have really taken to heart.  A lot of the time, I wish I had taken some advice and not blown off others.  How many times have you done something without asking for advice and regretted it?  And how many times have you taken someones advice and wished you had never asked? For me, I feel like the amount of times are almost equal.  So what am I supposed to do?  Take shitty advice that gets me nowhere and makes me feel like no one, or not take anyones advice and end up the same way.  Either way, I end up sitting in a semi-lit dorm room complaining to no one on a blog that four people read about absolutely nothing.  Reading this is like watching a re-run of Seinfeld.  I've figured it out, though; the advice was meant to be given to a younger, more vulnerable and foolish version of the person who gave me the advice in the first place.  It wasn't meant for me.  So then why do I take it? Is it human nature to need someone to tell you that what you are doing is right?  Why should it matter so much?  If I'm happy doing what I'm doing, why should I have to change just because someone told me some advice about it that I just had to take? What if I'm unhappy?  Do I have to stick to what I'm doing because someone told me I should? That it would get better? I shouldn't.  Not if I don't believe it.

So then the moral of the story is this: Don't give your old, idiotic self advice you wish you would have known fifteen, or even five years ago.  Give the person who asked for the advice the advice that is just right for them.  Think about their current situation, and about who they really are, not about your past personality that needed a push in the "right" direction.  It might not be "right" for someone else. Don't give a person a present that was meant for you.  Even if that present is just a few words that you think are helping them.  They probably aren't.  They are probably just making the person mad, or upset, or confused.  Or they are reaffirming an idea that you didn't want them to, so your plan backfired anyway.  

Yes, sometimes this isn't true.  I've exaggerated quite a bit.  But did I? Honestly? You knew exactly what I was talking about.  Someone has given you advice like this before, and you just wanted to scream at the walls until someone told them how dumb they were.  You were too polite to do it yourself.  Or too scared.  Don't get me wrong.  I've followed a lot of really, really amazing advice.  But on a day like today, when you hear something that just makes you want to kick someone, you gotta share your feelings.  You have to let the entire four people who read this know the problem with advice so that maybe it won't be as much of a problem.  I really do like to hear what people have to say a lot of the time.  Just remember, the advice is for the advisee, not the advisor.  Don't always give the gift you want to get.