Why is it easier to give others advice?

It’s another Sunday!

I have kept my weekly commitment to posting for about four weeks in a row now and that’s great! Looking back, I realise that if I didn’t start then, 4 weeks would have gone by and I still wouldn’t have gotten around to writing.

I am finding that picking a topic to write about has been one of the most daunting things so far. There’s the picking a topic to write about, and then choosing what title the post should have. Honestly, sometimes I really just want to publish without a title, but I am not sure how that would go. Thankfully, I am not optimising these posts for SEO I can get away with not stressing about it.

During the week, I had something in mind to post about but sitting here and typing, I really cannot recall it. I should do better with my random documentation so I can easily access my random ideas. In lieu of that, I’d share a bit of what’s on my mind today.

On Saturday, I gave a talk to a group of people. A friend had invited me months back to be a guest and I agreed to it. Few days to the event, I found myself panicking about it; the reason being the topic I was to speak on is an area that I have struggled with personally and am still navigating. I was able to keep it together and body my presentation as the badass that I am (*winks). The whole process got me thinking – why is it easier to give others advice than to act on said advice?

My first answer to the question is ‘things are easier said than done’. However, I know that alone does not answer the question so I did some search and came across a study that termed this scenario Solomon’s Paradox, mirroring the story of Solomon in the Bible. In the study, they found that when people were exploring a friend’s problem, they were more likely to consider several options and admit limited knowledge.

The same pattern showed when participants used first-person pronouns (I, me) to describe a situation – they had a tendency to not recognise their limited knowledge or consider other perspectives. The study also highlighted that this phenomenon was found across age groups, and did not reduce with increasing age.

To overcome Solomon’s Paradox, the article/study suggested self-distancing when we need to give ourselves advice. (It also mentioned that the specific situation may determine our response). The idea is that this helps us assess situations more objectively.

I will be putting that to practice more over the next couple of days to weeks and if I do see results, it would become a more present part of my process.

Cheers to making better decisions and taking our own advice,

Sisikunmi.