My “toxic trait” is that I sometimes pretend I’ve been asked to give a high school graduation speech. It’s an interesting exercise because it basically boils down to, “what have I learned about life that I think a young person should learn.” But I also want it to be a set of lessons or ideas that they can remember and use. And ideally, this set of lessons will help to individuate them and help them lead their own lives, rather than unconsciously follow the trajectory they were set upon at birth. Essentially, I want to give them advice that is personal enough to for each student to use, but flexible enough that any student can use it.
My best idea so far has is to give some suggestions on asking people for advice. They’re young, they don’t really know anything, and if they want to go anywhere in life, they’re going to be asking a lot of people for advice.
- People tend to give the advice they wish they had gotten. With the exception of certain, rare individuals, their advice will be more about them than it as about you. Even though you’re the one who needs help.
- Good advice for one person can be bad advice for another. Consider whether you and the advice giver have similar values, or personality traits.
- Advice is easy to give and hard to follow.
- If you want to flatter someone, ask their advice. People LOVE to give advice. Case in point: yours truly.
- Not all advice should be followed. Be careful whose advice you listen to. If you follow someone else’s advice, your life will probably turn out a little more like their life. Make sure that’s something you want, and that their advice is on an area you want to emulate. Is their career the type of career you think you’d be happy in? Is their relationship the type of relationship you think you’d want? Do they have hobbies in the way you’d like to have hobbies? Do they have the kind of friendships you’d want to have? Are they family-oriented? Are you?
- Don’t take advice from unhappy people.
- Don’t take financial advice from broke people (or unhappy people).
- Don’t take relationship advice from people who aren’t in the type of relationship you’d want to be in.
- Don’t take career advice.
- Just because you listened to advice, doesn’t mean you have to act on it. It’s your life to do with as you choose. Take what you like and leave the rest.
- Life is funny. Usually, there isn’t a “right” or “wrong” so much as a complex set and shifting set of consequences. Usually your choice isn’t between “Thing A” and “Thing B,” it’s about a set of things that all come packaged together. You might choose a set of things oriented around family, friends, hobbies, and a flexible schedule. That package comes with less money, less career excitement, and almost certainly less prestige than more ambitious career packages. You can create the life that works best for you, but “having it all” is a recipe for stress and burnout. Attempting to “Have it all” is born out of a failure to choose. It’s okay not to be super ambitious, or super impressive, or super anything. It’s your life. If it’s good enough for you, that’s good enough for me. Go be a good parent, or a good teacher, or a mediocre writer, or whatever!
- Before giving advice, ask if they’re looking for advice. A friend of mine says you should actually ask twice. I’m a financial advisor (advice is literally in the name). Despite that, it’s amazing how rarely people actually are asking for “advice.” I’ll ask, “are you just talking this through or are you looking for advice?” 9/10 times (no joke, literally 9/10 times), these people who are paying me for my time and expertise when it comes to their finances, do not want advice. They are looking for someone to listen to them, to give them space to think through their own problems, and to ask a helping question or two to guide that process. The irony is that this works FAR better for their personal growth and life outcomes than blindly, obediently following all my suggestions. They are the experts when it comes to their lives, not me.
- Seriously, try your very hardest not to give advice. The best relationships, the relationships that really get you through life, are mostly not about giving advice. Usually, “just talking it through” is all it takes. You can joke, you can vent, you can play with crazy ideas… that’s what having friends is all about. You don’t want a wise master who always has the perfect thing for you to do. You want people who help steady you, inspire you, but you want to be the one in the driver’s seat of your own life.
- People will ignore your advice all the time. They are allowed to do so. It’s their life, not yours.
- Lastly, here’s the advice I wish I’d gotten when I was graduating high school. Actually, it’s still probably good advice for me to follow today. When I was graduating high school, a couple dozen well-meaning adults all asked the same question, “what are you going to do now?” That question came with a lot of pressure for me. I thought I needed to have it all figured out, have an impressive answer. But actually, a perfectly acceptable (and more lovable) answer would have been, “I’m interested in …., and I’d like to go learn more about that. Also, I’ve always wondered whether I’d be any good at …., so maybe I’ll try that out too and see if I like it. …. is a cool place, I’d like to visit there sometime.” What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was being introduced to the standard adult cocktail party question of, “what do you do?” But I think what’s actually being asked is, “who are you? Please, tell me something about yourself because I’d like to get to know you, and maybe we can be friends.” So give an answer that fits the larger goal. Don’t allow yourself to be pigeon-holed into XYZ major or ABC university or 123 job. An English degree? What are you going to do with that? Translation: I care about you and your livelihood, and I’d like to know that you’re going to be okay. But Please Please Please change the subject so that this conversation is about your flourishing instead of my fear. I love you.