Bad Advice

Everyone has advice to give. There are good decisions, bad decisions; ones we support and ones we don't. In the advice we all seem to offer, some offer advice with intensity and others with support. There is a distinct relationship between advice and support, which sometimes appears totally polarized, existing at opposite ends of some imaginary spectrum. The relationship between advice and supportiveness appears to stem from different places, but it mostly seems to come from centricities and limitations that we are all inevitably mired in. Most of all, advice carries power, impact, and plays a pivotal role in the relationship between the sender and receiver. Lately, I have had many realizations about advice, where it comes from, and the role it plays in relationships. 

One of the biggest realizations I have had about advice lately is that a lot of advice is based on someone's own fear of the world and consequences. But that fear is entirely relative. So are the consequences the person is trying to avert another person from. Those consequences are based on one person's experience, which is limited to that person and their experiences. Some of these consequences happen time and again, but sometimes they don't.

If you watch thirty people try to do the high-jump in gym class, 10 might hit the bar, 2 might not even try, 5 might clear it with ease, and another 10 might have to work really hard to just barely clear the bar. If everyone in the gym class watched the 2 who didn't even try and took their advice, the entire gym class wouldn't even attempt the high-jump. What good would that advice be in the real world?

The presence of uninformed advice is another major realization. Advice that comes before the person has asked or even tried to figure out the other person's plan is inherently uninformed. Even worse, when the adviser is not giving advice based upon the skillset of the recipient -- the advice comes from the vantage point of one's own experience and skillset only. This kind of advice doesn't account for the fact that someone may be considering other options out of necessity or skills that may allow one to pull something new and different off. Just because you couldn't or didn't choose a different path, does that really mean that nobody else can do it either? Some people can start companies and become very successful. Others are better taking safer routes.

The intensity of advice seems to be distinctly related to a person's fear and their belief that you should act in the way they want you to. I remember when I moved into the RV; I had those who thought I lost my mind and were vehemently against it and those who, instead of venturing their opinion on my sanity or rightness, chuckled and told me stories of people they knew who did that and their experiences with RV's. Whose advice was relevant here? Those who were vehemently against it and thought I lost my mind, or those who were supportive and recognized my agency in the decision?

Those who are supportive appear to recognize the agency, skill, and variability of one's path, whereas those who loudly offer advice appear to want to strip the person of their own decisions. The relationship between advice and support appears to be polarized in some cases, but not others. Support seems to come from a kind of advice that recognizes another person's agency, whereas advice given with intensity appears to ignore a person's own reasons for taking the actions they take and the plans they make. When I moved into the RV, those giving intense advice or unsupportive comments ended up being really wrong -- and they wronged me. Those who were supportive were emotionally right and left me without distrust of their judgment.

When I make decisions, I do it because I have good reason to do so. When someone blindly comes at me swinging with advice that is both unsolicited and intense, I now just wonder why that person decided that I should fit their mold for how to live and what actions to take?

I am really skeptical of giving advice anymore. I have met enough people and had enough experiences to know that everyone has a different path, even if only slightly. Some like to sit at home. Others like to go running. Some like to drink at bars and others like to not drink at all. Some like to live in houses -- others in teepees -- and yet others in RV's. Some even like to live in different places at different times of years. Some like to go camping and others hate it. Can any of these people ever offer relevant advice to the other? Do people who drink in bars also always live in teepees or live in the same place the entire year? No, because we all make slightly different choices.

Anymore, instead of giving advice or beginning any conversation with the belief that I am right, I just offer my experiences and expertise to help someone with a decision they've made. Telling someone the wrongness of their decision or the consequences they will uncertainly encounter or inserting my own fear into their life choices just... hurts my relationship with that person. If someone wants to go skydiving, I personally don't care to make that choice, but if the person has made the decision to do so, I can only say, "That sounds intense! What made you interested in skydiving? Are you going to take a helmet cam? If so, send me the video link when you're done. Oh, and be sure to skydive with an experienced teacher, okay?"

The distance between advice and supportiveness can  be lightyears apart. Advice appears to come from a place of limited personal experience, the rules we have made for the world based on our own limited experiences, and perhaps fear. Supportiveness appears to come from a place of understanding someone's agency over their own life and the intrigue that comes with seeing how other people might choose to live. I do not operate on fear anymore, so when someone tries to instill fear into me about one of my coming decisions, I now only wonder if the person believes fear is anything but a mechanism for control?

The things I have been taught to fear aren't scary. Risk isn't that scary. Living differently from others isn't that scary. And making my own choices, even if costly are really only that -- costly. But the costs come in the form of my own lessons and a respect for those who are making their own path through these costly lessons. If a lesson is learned at the hand of oneself, the lesson is their own. If a lesson is learned through the fear and command of others, it is a shelter and a loss of real wisdom and knowledge.

I am no longer scared of my decisions. But I am scared for those who believe their advice and injection of fear and doubt into the psyche of another is relevant, fair, or reasonable. If you tell a student that they are going to fall, they're probably going to fall. If you tell someone they can't, they probably can't. If you tell a friend that they shouldn't go camping because a bear might eat them, they will be fearful for their entire camping experience and will soon hate camping.

Instead... Tell the friend that bears tend to bother people who smell like food and buy them a can of bear spray and teach them how to use it. Tell the student that if they take a few extra minutes in the evening to study, that they certainly can. Tell the friend that you have never skydived, but you can't wait to hear what they thought of it. Then, consider that you may be scared, but the other person isn't. That's the difference between advice and support.

My new advice is: Live life the way you want to live. Follow the river you are unavoidably embedded in. Appreciate your own experiences and the different experiences those around you will have. Live through others to enrich yourself. People will stumble, fall, and may need help getting back up -- Instead of pushing them back down for making a decision that put them on the ground in the first place, help them back up... even if it was their "fault."