What to Offer Instead of Advice
Let’s get all meta for a moment: here's the best advice I’ve ever gotten about…advice.
This useful meta-advice comes from the classic book The Dance of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You’re Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate by the beloved psychologist Dr. Harriet Lerner. Dr. Lerner writes that when someone repeatedly shares their problems or struggles with us:
“The least helpful thing we can do is to keep focusing on [their] problems and trying to be helpful to them. Instead, it would be more helpful for us to begin to share our own problems, limitations, and needs… We diminish people when we don’t allow them to help us, or when we act like we don’t need anything from them and they have nothing to offer us.”
Those of us who are our own harshest critics, paradoxically, often enjoy being helpful to others. But while altruism is a cornerstone of being a healthy, happy human, when we default to offering advice, we set up a teacher-student dynamic, which in turn sends the message “we are not the same.” “We are not equal.”
But equality—”we are the same”—is the foundation of friendship. This is how giving advice can backfire, especially with people we’re close to or trying to get closer to (i.e., when we’re trying to make friends or deepen a relationship).
What to try instead? An equal friendship will include a big minestrone soup of all of the following:
A listening ear. Simply listening and validating shows you care and accept the trust they are placing in you.
Disclosure. “I can relate.” “Oh, I totally get that.” A “me too” moment signals trust.
Asking for help or advice. Don’t forget to ask for advice yourself. Asking for help signals that you trust and like them enough to reveal something personal about yourself.
All these send the message: “We are the same.” And again, that is a foundation of friendship.
A last thought: If you truly have advice to give but aren’t sure if you should offer? Go ahead and ask: “Do you want my two cents or do you just want me to listen?”