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Why Don’t We Ever Take Our Own Advice?
Why is it that so many of us are great about giving other people advice, but can’t seem to give ourselves the same good advice?
The answer has a lot to do with psychology and human behavior. When it comes to offering advice to others, we experience greater emotional distance. This allows us to zoom out and become more logical and objective. In terms of our own situations, there are more emotions involved, and our judgement can get clouded. This phenomenon can be fixed, though, by learning to separate our feelings from our decisions and by taking a step back when assessing our personal scenarios.
Another reason that we might not take our own advice has to do with issues related to confidence (or a lack of it). Sometimes we doubt our own abilities or suffer from impostor syndrome so we second guess ourselves or our recommendations. In order to fix this, we need to become more self-compassionate and remind ourselves that we are certainly capable.
Sometimes it’s a fear of failure that can prevent us from taking our own suggestions. If things don’t turn out the way we want them to, we will face a larger disappointment because we are the ones who came up with the plan in the first place. To remedy this, we should change our attitude so that we look at failure as an opportunity to learn instead of something that’s bad.
