Advice seems to be particularly easy for people to give online. I'm not sure what it is about this space that makes it easier for someone to blurt out a whole lot of recommendations that someone else should take up.
It's really quite arrogant when you think about it.
What seems to open the floodgates the most is if you implicate even a whiff of a negative emotion you're experiencing. Then some people seem incapable of not rushing in like a tsunami to offer you ways of removing yourself from its clutches.
I find that 90% of the advice that I am given is stuff that I already know and practice.
Ergo, 90% of advice that we think we should give ... maybe we just shouldn't. Especially if someone hasn't actually asked for it.
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Totally. One of the greatest lessons I've finally learned enough to actually DO on a regular basis is that most of the time when I feel the urge to give advice, being quiet and simply listening is the far more powerful and kind action.
ReplyDeleteWe all think we have everyone else worked out, and can't wait to tell them all about it. Being 'space' for them is far more healing.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lovely way of putting it. Space. Yeah.
ReplyDelete(PS: My next post is not directed at you in any way ... and is a little tongue in cheek, but feel free to yell and scream and berate me in the comments if you so wish) ;)
It really is. There's something about the listening without trying to direct the outcome which is so lovely.
ReplyDeleteI try to do this on a regular basis. I *think* I achieve it pretty well (but hey, maybe someone reads this and gulps on their coffee in disbelief that I can be so blind, haha :) But I don't think so).
It's a lovely art to have learned. It makes you safe :)
What worries me sometimes if I decide not to give advice is that, say someone online hadn't told me about lyme disease, then I'd still be getting sicker and sicker and not knowing why. If someone online hadn't told me about methylation, I still wouldn't understand why I went bonkers from a certain antibiotic and i wouldn't be able to support my body as it fights the lyme like I can now. What if someone way back ten years ago knew about lyme but refrained from mentioning it as a possible to me? They could have saved me that ten years and maybe my life as i knew it, because I'm pretty darned sure now i will never get back there as the lyme damage is too deep in my body systems. We can't know what people know, we can only offer advice if it's something that has helped us. The trick is to not get attached to it when we give it, so if the person isn't ready to hear it or knows already, then that's ok, and the trick with receiving it is to see the spirit in which it is offered and to react accordingly.
ReplyDeleteHey Tina. Yes, I know what you mean. I think in some ways health is a completely different subject and that's not really what I was talking about here. That's specialised, and so if you're talking in an online health space about your symptoms and someone else has an idea about what it could be - then that's absolutely the advice I want to hear. And that's the advice I tend to give, too, even though I struggle to give advice.
ReplyDeleteThe advice in the Facebook forum we both frequent is always welcome, even if it's stuff I've already heard before. I guess I'm just talking about advice in general. For example, someone who doesn't understand your health issues. I guess the reason why it frustrates me so and why I seem so grouchy writing this is because (a) well, because I *am* grouchy at the moment and (b) I am a really uber-thoughtful person. I examine the angles of things. I research before I ask. I probably over-think things. And so I find that so much of the advice I get that is of a general nature feels a bit like, "Duh" to me. It's that sort that frustrates me. Even if the spirit in which it is offered is a helpful one. It's like, "What, do you think I haven't already thought of that?" It's thoughtless advice I guess is what is frustrating. The kind that is really easy to give with a few keystrokes and which is really ultimately designed to make the person giving it feel good about themselves when it's actually not helpful at all :)
Waiting to be asked is good. At least if a person asks, the door is open and the person doing the asking should be ready for whatever might come through.
ReplyDelete