Not knowing how something works feels terrible.
In a school if you didn’t understand the subject you would get poor grades.
And maybe your parents would yell or be disappointed.
If I were to give you a broken pencil.
You wouldn’t stare at it and ask one million questions.
More than likely you ask for a pencil with a point or where we can go to buy more pencils.
When you are giving advice it is better to avoid making people feel lesser than, inferior, or stupid.
Because even if the advice is good the person won’t be in the right mindset to accept it.
Giving advice feels good.
It feels like you are helping and come from the “superior” position.
I don’t know about you but learning calculus was not fun for me.
It was a stressful experience I didn’t enjoy.
Here’s the thing you can give advice millions of different ways.
And whether or not someone accepts it is entirely depended on them.
So if you are the one giving advice it is better if you communicate in a way that inspires, empowers, etc.
For example, a parent could say you are an idiot you never mop the floors the right way.
Or, they can just show the kid how to mop the floor correctly.
This will be a more positive experience for both the parent and the kid.
Growing up I can remember wanting to learn everything so I no longer felt stupid or inferior.
I had a burning desire for wisdom and to eventually share wisdom.
As I grew older I realized learning everything is impossible and I became okay with not knowing certain things.
The sting of not knowing certain things still occurred but I no longer desired to learn everything to replace feeling inadequate.
I eventually realized the desire for learning came in the form of wanting to prove people something.
But that was a huge waste of time because no matter how smart I was it didn’t matter.
Why? Because people are selfish and self-absorbed. As they should be.
Due to a limited amount of focus people can only think for themselves and as such people care more about how they look and feel.
No one really cares how smart you, cool you are, how much money you have, etc.
What they really pay attention to is how much value you can provide to their life.
Value is subjective and can be multiple things.
When my pencil breaks I don’t sit there saying a million different things.
I just go to the store and buy more pencils.
So when giving “advice” it is better to avoid making feel people feel bad or dumb and just give them the solution they are looking for.
As opposed to sitting there talking about the problem.
Like in the above example, yes the pencil is broken, I don’t complain, or wish I had another pencil.
I simply go to the store and buy more pencils.
Helping people should feel good.
When you help people the right way people will thank you.
When you help people the wrong way you will make people feel worse and possibly even worsen the problem.
Everyone is “unique” to some degree so if you are giving advice you should consider what works best for that specific person.