"Let me give you a piece of advice about this. If you are smart, you will follow it and be glad you did", they sometimes say.
And probably they mean well by doing so.
There's just a little problem with that: More often than not, people give advice based on their story, their belief system, and their perspective, not on the story and perspective of the people they are sharing their advice with.
[It could become a fun game:
Creating a top five of the worst advice you've ever got]
So they are talking about what would be relevant for them and what they would do if they were someone else. And yet, you guess it already, they aren't and therefore their advice is quite often biased, short-sighted, or pretty useless.
For every piece of advice out there that is true gold, there are at least five pieces of advice that are... well, fool's gold at best.
And we should be aware that a gold rush is almost never a good idea.
The quality of our lives depends not only on the quality of our choices and the advice we follow but also on our ability to recognize fast (ASAP, ça va sans dire) which advice we could and should ignore.
Coaching question of the day:
"What's the advice you're glad you ignored?"
Tags: Coaching question, Self-coaching, Self-awareness, Self-reflection, Bad advice, Dealing with advice, Growth mindset, Communication, Biased advice, Change of perspective
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