If I could only take my own advice...

[cdn2wheeler]

I don't know if anyone else has an issue like this, but I've noticed for myself that I'm pretty good with dishing out copious - and sometimes ponderous - advice about stuff. Oddly, though, I have some sort of mental block which stops me from taking my own words to heart.

Or maybe it's not odd. After all, dispensing advice is one thing: actually DOING it is another.

For me, it's usually about relationships (surprise, surprise ). When I look back on previous relationships and realize how badly I handled some things I can often use those issues as touch-stones for helping other people through similar circumstances.

But when those circumstances arise in my own life, I have difficulty taking those lessons to heart.

Mostly it's because of fear: fear of losing someone, being rejected or dumped, fear of being alone for the rest of my days and all the associated stuff. Intellectually I know that those fears are irrational. But my body tells me different, the feeling of an iron ball in my belly and cotton between my ears gives me messages that don't make any sense.

Is there any advice you give to people that you have a hard time taking yourself?

Or, alas, is this just me..?

[Holistic Star]

I know what you mean.

I used to give a lot of advice - then get frustrated when it wasn't followed! I give much less advice now than I used to ever since I discovered coaching. With my friends, I only offer advice if they say 'what do you think I should do?' - if they don't ask but have a problem, I ask questions trying to find out what it is they really want.

I found that offering advice was a very effective way of distracting myself from my own issues because I was getting tangled up in other people's rubbish. I've purposely taken a step back from other people's problems and I do my best to follow my own advice but admit is isn't always easy. I don't believe in using willpower to force things through, but it does take personal discipline to use EFT and LOA when I'm in a fugly mood. (fugly is a shorthand for 'effing ugly!) and find the positive in the situation etc.

perhaps we should do a 30 day trial and only offer advice that we have already followed ourselves!

[Honeywith4bees]

I can certainly relate as well, although I find myself not really giving too much advice about the hard stuff. I usually just let other people do that because they seem to be better at it than I am anyway!

I also know, intellectually, what the "right" thing to do is in most situations, (that's probably our intuition leading us), but often do the thing that I have been conditioned to do instead (with the conditioning being out of fear).

I think that you are on the right track though, because you truly seem to care about other people and yourself, and you also seem to desire a healthy life for yourself and for others, and these are great qualities to have. I can't imagine that you won't have a chance for another try at a great relationship soon! Good luck!

[Dan.Linehan]

Hey CDN,

I don't know if its personal, but if not could you be more specific about an ongoing problem that you're having?

[kthdsn]

I'm also the type of person who gives out a lot of advice. People ask me what I think about their situations and they usually find what I say helpful.

When it comes to myself though, I have difficulty seeing what my problems are, or even that I have a problem in the first place. I think I'm just too "close" to my own issues to see them clearly. When I try to step away from myself and look in from the outside, that usually helps, but still I don't often end up taking my own advice unless I write it all down in my to do list as next actions, which isn't always possible depending on the advice.

[Mark Lapierre]

Oh hell yes.

And I think the reason is fairly simple. Giving advice is a mostly intellectual activity. I.e., you think about what someone else is asking, remember similar situations in your own life and how you dealt with them, or remember the advice you've read somewhere else. Then you share your knowledge. Some emotion is involved of course, but it's rarely at the same level as when you're in that situation. Emotions are integral to our ability to make decisions but they can also interfere. A lot. If you're at all like me (and it sounds as if you are) your thought processes are swayed by your emotional state a lot more than you realise (or would like to admit).

What I try to do is defer making any important decisions while in a highly emotional state. Combine this with talking it out with friends so that I can hear the advice I already know, but am prevented from thinking about because of my emotional state.

So for example, imagine I've been on a couple of dates with a girl and they seemed to go well, but she doesn't respond to my attempts at contacting her afterwards. In the past I probably would have got frustrated and said anything I could think of that would guarantee a response. Not surprisingly the response would be "not interested."

Now I'd do nothing until I could consider what I know about the situation, rather than what I fear. I'd talk to friends to see what they'd do, or what they'd like a guy to do in that situation. And only then would I realise that she's extremely busy (and because of that stressed and exhausted), has said she wants to take it slow, and at the moment may not want to talk to a guy who she wants to make a good impression on. Or that she's also seeing other guys and hasn't made a decision yet. Or she's simply not interested and for some reason doesn't want to say so. But in any case what I want and what I'm happy to give have already been made clear, so it's up to her, and trying to get her to respond when she's not ready to would only push her away. In the mean time I have a life to live.

That kind of thinking is impossible for me in the midst of the frustration I automatically feel when someone I'm emotionally connected to doesn't match my level of communication. Ironically I've been on the other side and that still doesn't prevent me from being swayed by my frustration.

I know that my body is using my past experiences of rejection to tell me that the same thing is happening again, so I try to acknowledge that message while allowing for the possibility that I'm wrong. I do that by not responding to the fear, and I do that by doing nothing (can be very difficult), or by talking it out with friends (always very easy, and productive. I love my friends).

[Jim11]

Knowing what to do and actually doing something are completely different things. I don't think it's odd that you feel that way

If people were better at carrying out the brilliant ideas they intellectualize then we probably wouldn't have these forums.

I personally have more than once been having a certain problem and thought to myself "well, I gave this person this advice and it sounded logical at the time........ let's try that" lol

Often you forget your own pearls of wisdom, but I don't think it hurts to write them down in a place such as this. Tell enough people something and you may actually believe it yourself.

[Lola]

You're not the only one, cdn. I'm so good at it *they* used to pay me the big bucks to be a corporate troubleshooter.

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

And I think the reason is fairly simple. Giving advice is a mostly intellectual activity.

I agree. It's soooooo easy to objectively view someone else's situation and see with perfect clarity the solution to their problem(s). After all, it's not your emotion - your heart, your feelings, your hurt, disappointment, disillusion, your desire. When the challenge is personal, well now you have a dog in the fight, as we say in Texas. Now you have a vested interest in how things turn out. Now you have a need to have your emotions validated and, with most of us anyway, a need to be right.

Originally Posted by cdn2wheeler

Is there any advice you give to people that you have a hard time taking yourself?

Only all of it.

edit: So, the above was written when I was up not sleeping. This is following a dose of cold meds and a couple more hours shut-eye. Not enough shut-eye, mind you. I'm very sleepy but have a test today and must. get. up. (Just for fun, let's see if one makes more sense than the other!)

I thought just now when I woke up that perhaps congratulations are in order. No, really. Think about it. a) you've evolved far enough (learned enough) to be cognizant in a situation of the need for change or a novel approach. b) you can articulate said approach well enough to offer it to others and now (this is the congratulatory part), c) you have developed sufficient self-insight to become aware when you would benefit from applying your own thought-full words.

That's great! Don't you think? And of course, in the above paragraph everytime I say "you" I mean "us" and "we" and (mostly) "me".

[Tayrak]

It's always easier to "do what I say, not what I do." Knowing a solution to someone else's problem can be easy, you're not the one who has to carry it out and deal with the consequences.
If there is something you want to do and you know how to get it done writing it down can be a tremendous help. Read it over daily, even twice, heck go for three. Know you have to push yourself because you are normal. That's just the way we humans are-that's why we're so much fun.

[Michael Chui]

I've disciplined myself to the point where I always verify that I am already following my own advice when I give it, or have very reasonable justifications for why I'm not. (I don't use tampons, for instance.) In order to get to this point, I had to buckle down and force myself to take the medicine I offered.

It's usually hard. Very hard. But I considered it a testimony of my personal conviction in my own beliefs that I could cross the threshold from hypocrisy to living what I believe.

Achieving it is a matter of metacognition. It's better outlined in three stages:

1) Stage of Ignorance. - You give advice, but you don't follow it.
2) Stage of Sophistication. - You start to ignore your own advice, then catch yourself in the act and backpedal. Or you just work at it more the next day.
3) Stage of Effortlessness. - You take your own advice: it's obvious, and you just do it.

Metacognition has to do with moving from Stage 1 to Stage 2. You have to catch yourself making mistakes and being hypocritical. You visualize yourself doing it right. You remind yourself over and over. When you make a mistake, you're stunned and apologize profusely.

After a while, the time between catching your mistake and apologizing for it gets shorter. Then, it gets so fast that there's no point in apologizing: you didn't actually make the mistake, and you do it right instead.

And then, without you realizing it, you're just doing it right. And you'll look back a year later and say, "Wow. I got it!" Welcome to Stage 3.

[Ilya]

Interesting way of explaining it Michael Chui. I was taught a slightly different model. It is called Knowing-Doing gap. We know with our mind. We do with our muscles. They are connected, but it is not enough to put knowledge directly into action. And to do something with any efficiency we have to know it with our muscles. For example, I'm typing this post and my mind is not taking any part in typing. The words are just appearing on screen, sometimes faster then I think the phrase. My muscles and neurology behind them know how to type. And it is almost effortless. Before they did, the hunt and peck typing was a major chore and completely prevented productive typing.

To bridge this knowing-doing gap we need to translate the abstract concepts in our mind into something that can be done with our muscles. There is a proper technique how to do it. I might be able to find it. But I use the faster method. I think of the concept that I want to put in practice, like doing morning exercises.
I imagine myself doing them in front of me and then I physically step inside the imaginary me. It creates a strange feeling in my body. And I start to adjust inside my image like inside an unusually cut clothes. And I do it until it is comfortable. I make sure that as much of my body as possible takes part in this exercise. The link between the mind and the muscle that is created through this exercise is rather weak. But it is enough to make putting the ideas into practice effective and comfortable. No need for discipline.

[Mark Lapierre]

Sounds as if your method, Ilya, is more suited to physical behaviours, while Michael's applies to any, including mental.

[ella]

Originally Posted by Jim11

Often you forget your own pearls of wisdom, but I don't think it hurts to write them down in a place such as this. Tell enough people something and you may actually believe it yourself.

Very very true!!
That's how I trained my brain to learn a lot of things.

[Angela]

Yeah, I think it's a good idea to pay attention to how emotionally invested you are in the other person *getting* your advice. The more important it is to you for that other person to take your advice, the more likely it's your own thick skull that needs penetrating.

By you of course I mean me.

[Rose of Cairo]

You're not alone, I have that too.

Knowing that you should do something is not the same as feeling that you 1) really want to do it and 2) are able to do it in the first place. You need to think in a certain way to feel that. Giving some advice is on the "should" level. But to take action and follow the advice, you need to go one step further.

I find giving someone else an advice I don't follow very useful for myself. When I give the same advice to three or four people in a row, it's like autosuggestion. My advice somehow slides into this deeper level of my consciousness, and - after enough repetitions - it becomes natural for me to think this way. Only then I'm able to go this one step further and actually do it.

[Fullcrum]

I think this phenomenon of giving advice while not taking it to heart immediately is a part of the learning process when persuing personal development. When you do that, you are consciously rewiring your thought patterns in a direction that you want to go. This is part of aligning your thoughts in the direction you want to go in, which is really important for getting things done in a state of flow, rather than struggling. I'd say just keep giving advice and allow your thoughts to become rewired. It's not like the advice you're giving is bad, I hope.

Compare this to someone who gives advice to maintain some image to others, or who gives advice to feel superior and above others, which are negative connotations. That's not cool . But from you, cdn, it sounds like you're just re-aligning, and there's nothing wrong with that

[Ilya]

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

Sounds as if your method, Ilya, is more suited to physical behaviours, while Michael's applies to any, including mental.

Heh. That is the beautiful part of it. I strongly believe that for personal development there is no division into physical and mental.
Of course there are mental and physical activities, no doubt about that. But there are no just physical or just mental changes (improvements, growth, etc).
If the change is purely mental and does not translate into some behavior change that can be observed by another person, than there is no change. There is an illusion of change, but no effective change. Purely mental development is a waste of time.
This is not to argue with Michael. I thing that he and I are describing the same process, but in slightly different terms. And the technique that I've outlined works for purely mental constructs as well. For example beliefs.
These are very prone to illusionary changes. And putting a new belief into muscles is a sure fire check that something has indeed changed.

[Michael Chui]

I'm not arguing with Ilya either.

[Ilya]

Damn, Michael, I was so hoping for a huge fight... sorry... debate!