Getting advice from others… or not

Hello there! I was thinking about the first official article I would write for this blog, and among many ideas, I picked this one. This is something that I’ve experienced so many times, so I thought this would be interesting to talk about. Bear in mind that those posts reflect my own experience of Life, and I will always speak my Truth with authenticity, vulnerability and humor. Enjoy!

Years ago one evening, I was getting back from work and I crashed with my bike. Weeks later, when my coworker saw me coming to work, riding my bike, he said to me “you should never ride your bike ever again, it’s too dangerous.”

At that time, I was just at the beginning of my healing work, so I was not feeling a lot of compassion for people with unsolicited advice. I wanted to laugh so hard at this guy’s face. I told him this was something that lit me up, and that I would do it as long as possible. He insisted by saying that I could end up getting really hurt NEXT TIME.

It got me thinking about all the advice people give you every day. You should stop being single. You should stop being broke. You should stop eating junk food. You should stop smoking weed. You should stop scrolling. You should stop being envious. You should stop seeing this guy. You should stop taking life lightly. And then, the other way around. You should get your Life together. You should get married. You should eat this healthy food. You should use this app. You should be like I want you to be.

I should stop being myself, right? I’m not saying here we should condone self-destructive behaviors, this is not the topic of this post. I’m talking here about people who give you recommendations on how to live your Life, while you are minding your own business.

It starts with family. Your parents or siblings who haven’t healed their stuff. Your grandparents, who might have experienced tremendous amounts of pain depending on where and when they grew up, and who have carried with them this fear of uncertainty their entire lives.

Then you have friends and lovers, who have been with you for a short or long period of time, and who know you through the lens of the common experiences you went through together, and the things you’ve allowed them to see.

Then you have coworkers or acquaintances, people you have to spend time in order to perform a duty you are all paid for during a timed period. Like my coworker who was obviously living in fear of what could happen.

There is a common human occurrence that happens in this world. Mostly in people who are not busy taking care of their healing. It is that of giving unsolicited advice. We all know we should never get an advice from a broke person regarding our finances, so why do we accept advice from people who are not doing the work or who do not have their shit together?

The advice people give you is most of the time coming from a good intention. They are either trying to help you out with their awareness of the situation or trying to control how they feel about it. It also might trigger something in them that they are not comfortable with. From a psychological perspective, people who give you unsolicited advice tend to see Life from a narrow point of view. They live Life through the lens of their experience, that they think is the best, and for them, there is no other way than their’s. This reveals a lack of compassion and self-awareness regarding your journey, and this is something that we can be affected by if we are not careful.

From a spiritual perspective, the unsolicited advisers hack the energy around you. Instead of letting you be, letting you experience Life as yourself, they are resisting reality. They are resisting the present moment, thinking it should be otherwise. That you should be or do otherwise. When you are doing something that people disagree with, they are stealing your energy. To worry for someone is to steal their energy. To reprimand a child is to steal their energy. To put yourself in someone’s shoes is to steal their energy. This energy stealing is the same we see in energy vampires or narcissists.

As we are all doing our best to understand how we approach Life from our personal perspective, we should be able to question whether the pieces of advice that are given to us are legit or not. Let it be from people, or internet, or social media, there are as many opinions as people on this earth. So we must be cautious what we let in, let it be an advice and the energy that comes with it. It will be fine as long as we are keeping our best interests in mind and are checking regularly with ourselves.

I’ll finish this post with a quote from The Minimalists: “Unsolicited advice is the ego’s most dangerous weapon.”

Thanks for reading!

With love and gratitude,

Caroline

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