How do you give advice without chastising people for their bad choices?

In My Humble Opinion
1

How do you give advice without chastising people for their bad choices?

People often come to me for advice. I have a lot of life experience (particularly for my age). I am also naturally cautious, flexible and don’t have a problem delaying gratification. I constantly see people making horrible life decisions and then being surprised at how bad things end up. Not all are quite this serious but they include the league of getting kicked out of one’s apartment due to having a roommate not pay rent (it was much more complex than that simple description), failing to use birth control and ending up pregnant, consuming drugs knowing you have a drug test in the following week at work, cheating at graduate school and getting caught ect.

On the one hand, I am huge supporters of them getting their lives in order; on the other hand I feel a need to be like, look- you clearly made really bad decisions in the past- here’s what I think you should do to avoid that. I do not try and make them feel any worse about their bad decision. In many instances, I know that the person’s behavior is part of a pattern of damaging behavior that I have observed over months/years- not a one-off bad decision. This message board is full of similar examples; someone comes in asking for advice, describes a pattern of destructive behavior and then does the exact opposite of the good advice they receive, and resumes their old pattern of behavior. My sister jokes that you need to get through 10 minutes of lecturing to get an hour of good advice from me. So, my question is, how should I/do you help someone without pointing out what they did bad in the past? Or, is that even something that I should even be thinking of as important? I know it’s very annoying to have your mistakes pointed out… but in many instances I feel like people don’t know how or to break the cycle of bad decisions. Many times I can look at their behavior and be like: because you do x action you end up with y result; however, that connection does not seem clear them. Thoughts?

2

I always think it’s best if you can get the person to tell you why their choice was bad, rather than you telling them. So it’s about you asking questions to elicit the answers, rather than you telling them the answers.

Things like:

  • ‘What happened after you did x?’
  • ‘Why do you think that happened?’
  • ‘What do you think you could have done differently?’
  • ‘What would you do differently if you could do it over again?’
  • ‘What will you do differently in the future to make sure this doesn’t happen again?’

It’s a very similar technique when someone comes to you with a problem, looking for a solution. You can tell them the solution, but then they are likely to just come up with rebuttals. So rather than saying, ‘You should do…’, you can ask questions like:

  • ‘What are your options?’
  • ‘What do you plan to do about it?’
3

People often don’t want to change. Change is hard. Most people won’t change.

I also get approached frequently for advice. I give it freely. However, if the person just wants to complain, then I just listen and try to be supportive.

If it is someone who needs help, I offer up what I can. Whether it is going to a doctor’s appointment with them or having them crash at our place for a fews days or manual labour.

4

Two suggestions if you really want to avoid lecturing people on their bad choices:

  1. Give advice starting from the situation today. I’m always asking people, “Are you Superman?” “No? Then you can’t fly backward around the world and change the past.” People aren’t asking you what they should have done in the past, they are asking what they can do in the future. “You should have used birth control” = a lecture on past mistakes. “There are a lot of birth control options available – which one do you think would be right for you?” = advice for the future.

  2. Imagine yourself in the person’s current situation. Give the advice as if you’re figuring out what you would do about the problem now. Think “I’ve just been kicked out of my apartment – what’s my next step?” and then give the appropriate advice.

5

My best advice about giving advice is to give it seldomly, if at all. Unless you are absolutely convinced that your friend is about to wreck their life, you may want to keep your mouth shut. Lots of people try to give me advice. Then they wonder why they don’t see me much anymore.

6

Ownership. People cannot learn from mistakes that they then spin. Taking ownership of your mistakes/missteps insures you will not repeat them.

I usually ask them if they feel any ownership in the issue. Then go from what they say. Usually they will own shit like, “I care too much”, you got to move them on from there.

There is no greater waste of breath and energy, than giving advice to people who cannot own their part in the problems of their lives. We all have some ownership in everything that happens in our lives.

7

Adding to the good advice above: no matter how badly you want to say it, if you are sincere in wanting to help people who ask your advice, lose the phrase “I told you so.” Sure, anyone with a functional brain stem may have easily foreseen some consequences, and yes, it’s satisfying to be right, but “I told you so” is such an off-putting phrase, and I sincerely doubt it has ever helped the person who hears it.

8

Oy, elbows nailed it right there and, unfortunately for the OP, it’s not under your control at all. I opened this thread hoping for magic words or other advice for a friend of mine who constantly makes bad decisions … and I realized why I feel so helpless to advise her. She does not own her role in the consequences.

9

I think empathy is the key here.

I’m not talking about sympathy, or feeling bad for people, but true empathy- trying to see the situation from their eyes and really trying to understand what was going on in their heads.

People, with the exception of the insane, make rational decisions. In other words, they make the choice that seems the best out of the options that they see. This doesn’t mean that they always make GOOD decisions. Quite often they don’t have full information, or they are working off of a flawed premise. But most people have some reason behind why they do what they do.

So when someone makes a choice that seems baffling to you, try to see it through their eyes. What do they perceive their options are? What would they think the benefits and risks of these options are? What is in their life or experience or worldview that would make them think that?

Sometimes you can come up with something that is helpful- maybe the drug test guy on some level really didn’t want that job and was sabotaging it. It might be helpful for him to put into words why he didn’t want the job (for example, maybe he felt under-qualified and was afraid of being in over his head) and strategize about a more suitable career plan.

Sometimes though, people make decisions for reasons that you can’t fix. Ive known quite a few people to have kids in not-ideal circumstances immediately after a family member has died. In some way, they are doing the best thing they know to fill that void in their family. It’s probably not a great impulse for having an easy life, but what can you do? People get hurt, confused, lost and stuck sometimes. Not everyone has the opportunity to view the world with the clear-eyed perspective that you have. People work with what they’ve got.

10

I always say, “You can’t want something more than the people needing it.” If you do, you end up over invested and they don’t change. Presumably, people who come to you for advice would like to improve and change, but that’s not always the case. Your goal is to distinguish the two cases and offer help accordingly. The serious person will tend to listen and accept ideas and criticism. The rest try to argue you down and justify their situation. Let them go.

You can say anything you want in a diplomatic way. It never needs to be a personal attack. With people who know me and I have a close relationship with, I am more direct. They know it’s not personal and the result is what counts.

11

Not taking ownership of shit, is what makes people flail around emotionally. They are all rationalizing and spin, it’s kind of a natural reaction, really. But they won’t find resolution until they step up from there.

Sometimes, I tell people that* I *have found, for myself, when I can’t stop going over it, when I can’t put it aside, get any distance from it, usually it’s because I’m not owning my part in it. That when I’m having trouble owning my part in things fully, it’s always my ego that’s in the way. Then I usually ask myself, how would my ego spin all this, given a free hand. And how similar is that to the way I’m spinning it? Hmmm.

If you really want resolution and change for the better you have to own the difficult and the ugly. Owning it, is what insures you’re done with it, in my experience. You don’t have to like all your actions, we all make mistakes. But one way to stop making them, is to begin owning them.

Another thing you can do to help people who want advice, is to pick at their faulty thinking. Usually they are all, pouring their story out and then going back over it, often fraught with extraneous and tangential crap thrown in.

I usually listen politely, being duly shocked and taken aback, where appropriate. When they get to the recap, I start in. Along the lines of, “I’m not disagreeing that he’s a heel, but you do know that…has nothing to do with this, right? That part there was your choice, you were mad, sure, but still your choice, right?” You get the idea.

By picking out all the foggy thinking, you do begin to help your friend zero in on what’s really the issue. And I think that is helpful to the type of person the OP seemed to be referring to.

12

Here’s your first clue. Why do you feel the need to tell someone they’ve made really bad decisions WHEN THEY COME TO YOU FOR ADVICE??? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, they know they made a bad decision and that’s why they came to you?

Wait for it!

And there it is!

What’s your goal in giving people advice? To help them, or to prove how smart you are and how you were right all along? If your goal is to help them, skip the lectures and go straight to the good advice.

13

How do you give advice without chastising people for their bad choices?

Like this: “I think it would be wise to…”

14

Getting people to think about why they did what they did means that they’ll be more likely to avoid making the same mistake in the future; also, sometimes a decision which ends up having negative consequences was nevertheless the right decision at the time and with the information available - and it’s important to know that, you don’t want to get stuck in the “if only!” game. If every person who’s at risk of having a baby with very bad health issues refrained from having one - well, we all have that risk, so the species would die off real fast; that doesn’t mean I think it’s bad for people with known health issues to refrain from having biokids, but there’s a limit between careful and scaredycat.

And yeah, advice is for the future - lectures are about the past and with no input from the person who actually took that decision.

15

I don’t think there is much to be gained by telling people what they know. I often hear people tell other people, that they are fat and should lose weight. I mean what’s the point? Do you think there is one overweight person in the word who doesn’t know he or she is overweight? Of course they do. They all know they should go on a diet, so I don’t bother discussing weight with anyone.

And that’s how I pretty much am. If you want my help ask, otherwise I butt out.

16

I don’t know, I have a tough time of this myself. It’s worst when it comes to relationships, and the person wants you to agree what a horrible assholish jerk the other person was, and you’re thinking, “Um, you both were pretty much assholish jerks…”

17

Judging from interactions that I have seen in the past, I just stop giving advice. Most of the people just want to justfy their own choices and get pity.

98% of them will never change and nothing you say will ever change that.