giving advice

Giving advice can be a dangerous thing. And so can receiving advice, from the wrong people.
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One thing i've realised that most people do when asked for advice: they tell the person who needs advice what they themselves would do in the same position. "If i were you ... "
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The problem with that, of course, is that the adviser is patently not the advisee. They are different people, with different dispositions, values, aptitudes, resources, needs, desires. Taking on ill-fitting advice can be one of the most disastrous things you can do. It can throw you off-track, lead you down roads that you were never made to be walking, and sometimes, it might take a great deal of damage before you finally get back on the right path -- especially if the person who gave you that advice is someone you respect and look up to.
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Of course, the problem is, the people who make such mistakes are often the ones who are least equipped to deal with the fallout of such mistakes -- basically, if you can't distinguish between advice that would work for you and advice that just doesn't fit, what this means is that you don't know yourself very well, and that you're far too open to being led off your path by external influences that may have very little to do with who you really are as a person, what you really need and want in your life.
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Similarly, sometimes i think that people who have no hesitation about dishing out advice to others, often based on their own experiences and preferences, are often the ones who are the least thoughtful about how to really help the people whom they think they are helping.
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Giving good advice is not about putting yourself in the other person's shoes and imagining what you would do in that situation. Giving good advice is about knowing the other person, and based on that knowledge, recommending a course of action that will work best for that person specifically. Or, perhaps more usefully, asking that person questions to get them to think through their own situation more deeply, and allow them to come to a decision that works for them. [This of course assumes quite a great deal of maturity and honesty on the advisee's part ... a maturity and honesty that not many people have ..... ] Giving good advice takes, not just careful thought, but a sensitive heart, and a good deal of time. All three of which are things that, in this day and age, are very often in extremely short supply.
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