Why are we incapable of taking advice?

posted by Jeff | Thursday, June 30, 2011, 10:30 PM | comments: 0

I've handed out a lot of advice to people, particularly people younger than me. I don't know that it's because I'm particularly wise or anything, I think it's just because I've experienced a great many things. In fact, I've had more failure than I like to admit.

Take for example, relationship advice. I've pointed out to friends how they were settling, compromising, being toxic, etc. The friends never take my advice and change things or get out of the relationship. Not even once. Why? The typical line of thinking is because they have to "figure it out for themselves."

I was watching a speaker at work today talking about better processes, and how certain things we tend to do are slow and prone to failure. He was preaching to the choir, as my experience aligns with his advice. So if this guy offers up this advice to people at the company who have been doing it the old way for ten years, what incentive do they have to change anything? They just have to experience it for themselves?

History does repeat itself. And yet, it seems were doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. Failure is totally overrated. It hurts and makes you feel shitty about yourself. Who wants that? I would much rather have taken the advice given to me and acted on it. I never wanted to be wise by way of all of my mistakes. But the problem is, if I could tell my 21-year-old self what I know now, I'd tell myself to f-off.

I suppose that's the hard part about maturing. By the time we know better to listen to advice, we've already made a mess of things. On one hand, that sounds kind of grim, but on the other, I'm glad I'm through that.


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