On Giving Advice

[healthwiz]

Do you give advice to others? Do others give advice to you? What does advice really mean? How valid is advice?

Write your thoughts here.

Jon

[Tara]

Yes, I have always been the type of person who has given advice.


Others give me advice depending on who the person is and what the situation is.


I think advice is somebody's opinion on what to do based on his or her own experiences...


I think the Validity of advice all depends on the person and the situation.

Advice can be a good things even if a person doesn't take it because he or she may get a different view point of the situation.

I think people need to becareful when taking advice too. They need to look at the motives of the peroson who give the advice.

When it comes down to it I think the person who has been given advice needs to make his or her own choice.

[healthwiz]

Advise is rarely about another person...its almost always about oneself..

People we advise are opportunities for us to act out our own internal dramas; whether they like it or not is often an afterthought. People are mirrors for each other, and the things people react to are the unresolved and unconscious issues they have difficulty dealing with in themselves.

The judger, who judges another, is really acting out their own internal drama on an external stage, and you are just one of the actors in their theatre...it is only a theatre of what is occuring internally for that person in that moment....and is likely a repeat of a drama they play over and over.

Externalizing the internal is a way for people to resolve internal issues, yet most do so unconsciously and lose many of the learning opportunities and benefits of truly getting to know oneself.

Becoming conscious of our internal dramas and how we externalize them, allows a special and wonderful and freeing process to happen, allowing us to recognize when we have used external circumstances to resolve internal conflicts. Its a relief sometimes to realize other people actually had nothing to do with our dramas, but only played roles in the dramas as needed to work out the scenes. We tend to unconsciously pick people who can conveniently fit into our scripts, but we type cast people to fit as well, even if they don't fit, based upon small similarities we may find like color of hair, or simply based upon the need for the script to go a certain way so the actors must be cast into the roles as dictated.

If we don't realize how we have used this internal/external process in our lives, we can waste valuable learning opportunities and end up resolving the same dramas repeatedly in our lives. How many times have we looked at someone and simply known their actions have nothing to do with external circumstances, but everything to do with their own personal drama? We all have seen this in someone else. Its harder to see in ourselves.

Have we been able to recognize the external world is often just the stage for the internal state? Have we been able to see the hateful words we say have little to do with the external reality and everything to do with the internal drama? Reality sometimes mirrors our internal drama and triggers us to play out our drama, Even when reality is only similar to scene one, we will often play it through scene 12....even long after the similarity ends, at which point the dissimilarity casts an uncomfortable shadow over the ending.

Can we go a step further and see what the internal theatre is playing - often unconsciously- so we can become a conscious director, not an unconscious director in our lives....that is the secret to love, growth and happiness.

And all advise we give eminates from the theatre we are portraying internally....so the quality and applicability of advise is dependent upon our consciousness of our unconscious theatre.

This is true of the advise others give us, sometimes harsh or inappropriate advise is given, based upon circumstances and processes taking place internally in another at their unconscious level, and we must ask ourselves about the theatre another is playing internally, and are they a conscious director while giving advise, not simply accept the script without questioning the play. The play might not be about our lives, or the resemblence may have ended in scene one but the advise might be unconsciously based upon scene 12.... or the advise might be because we have the same blonde strands of hair as another actor in another persons's drama...we have to consider this, not just accept the roles others give us.

Listen to advise, and think about how that advise applies to the person giving it. That is the most helpful and insightful thing we can do when listening to advise. If the advise resolves one of our internal dramas, we will know it and accept it. Otherwise listen and learn about the other....its a valuable opportunity.

And in closing, my advise on this is really directed at myself, about my own desire to increase my consciousness of this process between the internal theatre and the external reality.

Jon

[joanrdtobe]

Nope, I think there is nothing worse than starting to give advice to someone when they did not ask for it. I mean SO rude and arrogant to think that I know what it is best for someone. Heck, I can barely figure out what I need in my own life...let alone what someone else needs to do. And even when someone does ask me for advice, I have found in more cases than not, that they didn't really want advice. They just wanted to be heard. They wanted to be listened to. So that they could figure it out for themselves. And I think the greatest gift we can give others -- is to just listen to them. Not say anything except responses which indicate that they indeed have been heard....such as paraphrasing. Otherwise just listen.

good deal joan.the only so-called "advice" igive is the advice im paid to give at work! i give it because im expected to.people pay me for it.so i give it.no hiddenagendas there which is good.its never about me. its always about them.joan you ARE a goodlistener which is probably one of the many reasons you got misclee and myself armwrestlin' over ya

no i do give the socalled unsolicitedtype of advice to my close buddies only.its assumed thing between us.one of us will go, "hey pal why not do such and such".no problem there.but they're close buddies of course.no boundaries broken there.and of course i give ageappropriate advice to my 5 yearold son.most often when he asks questions.hes adorable.looks like his old man

other than that, i try to stay out of other peoples business.and i appreciate it when they extend to me the same courtesy.