Much Bad Advice is Offered Freely

As a potential future financial planner, I'm sure I will spend the rest of my life suddenly shutting my eyes at social gatherings and gritting my teeth while trying not to break the glass in my hand whenever somebody offers some particularly terrible and naive advice about investing.

The thing I've come to learn about advice though, is that people almost never ask for it, and as such you should almost never offer it.

One! I'm a firm believer that nobody has the answers to our deeper, inner questions but ourselves. Another person is no more the answer than a puppy is. They can be a comfort, a distraction but not an answer. You gotta figure it out for yourself, you can't be told the answer. Thus with matters of the head and heart, when peeps ask you for advice, you really should be giving them questions. Your answers aren't their answers, even if the decisions to be made are identical. Your experience doesn't fit.
My psychologist asked me startelingly simple questions and eventually I arrived at answers I needed to figure out myself.

Two! My brief experiences in consulting, and pretty much every experience anybody ever has in marketing is that when people come asking for advice often they are asking for permission. I'm a firm believer in taking responsibility, so I try to refrain from giving people permission. I sow doubt, which I'm not sure is helpful for anyone, see point one. But what I mean is that peeps ask for your advice in the same way they may ask 'how was your day?' as a courtesy and what they want is not your honest opinion, insight or even clarifying questions, but for you to agree with them so they feel better. Or to be taken to some meeting and back them as a genius. If you don't, and are honest about it, you can be taken as discourtious. The trick is to learn when it is concerning a matter of import or not. If it is important, you should risk being seen as uncouth, if it isn't just be courteous.

Three! Dan Gilberts work shows that whatever decisions we make aren't really that important in terms of our percieved long term happiness. We will simply backfit our lifestory to pretend things worked out for the best. This is an evolutionary marvel. It allows us to dread things that may threaten our survival, such as becoming paralised, but if we do it ALSO allows us to avoid things that would threaten our survival by not accepting our new circumstances and becoming suicidal. Once your back is broken, it is no use to go on dreading the lifestyle, it is much more useful to accept it and start dreaming within its confines.
This doesn't as a prospective financial planner let me off the hook legally - you can't say 'it doesn't matter that I invested your mothers retirement fund into a Ponzi scheme, now she has lost all her money she'll start appreciating the opportunities that destitution affords her!' no. But legality aside, this is why we should be cautious and conscious when offering advice, just because somebody can survive a situation doesn't mean you can get away with putting them in it. The thing is that you can give somebody objectively bad advice (something that makes their life more challenging) and they may thank you for it. It's not that it doesn't matter, its that its their choice not yours.

I endeavor to offer Advice in the form of a question. But lastly, it is very flattering to get asked your opinion by anyone, ever. The temptation is always to give it. Asking questions is the cornerstone of listening, and its hard. That is why there are professionals who give advice on shit. Peeps should use them.