Years ago, I asked a fashion aficionado friend to help me select a few new outfits on a shopping trip. The outcome was a disappointment. We did pick a few new outfits but none was what I wanted. Out of courtesy, I bought them, and then returned all the next day.
How did this happen? Each time she saw something she liked, she would pick it up and say: this is my favorite color, try it, it will look beautiful on you. If I protested, she would respond in her authoritarian tune: you just have to trust me, I know what looks great on you. If you don’t listen to me, why did you ask for my advice?
I learned a lot from this experience about giving advice.
First, before we can help, we need to be curious about what the person real needs. If we make assumptions, dispense advice irrelevant to her, then we are not being helpful. To help someone, we need to walk into her world, understand her, identify her real needs, ASK PERMISSION, and then offer our help.
Second, giving advice is not the same as making decision for someone. When we share advice, we contribute new perspectives as ingredients for decisions. In the end, the person affected by the decision has the right to make the decision.
Third, we are not our advice and we are not our identity. Often we try to control the outcome because our identity (e.g. fashion expert) is at stake. We don’t know what is involved in other people’s decisions, therefore, we are not responsible for them. When people reject our advice, they are not rejecting us. If we take other people’s decisions personally each time, we create unlimited reasons for unnecessary sufferings.
