Take Your Own Advice

Personal growth enthusiasts are on a desperate search for tips, tricks and advice to help improve their lives. They read the books, listen to the audio programs, attend the seminars, participate in the workshops and do just about anything to find the right advice to help them grow.

But there is an extremely useful resource that we often neglect. While our eyes are busy scanning our environment for resources we can use, we neglect our most precious resource: our own knowledge.

Since we’re experiencing the problems, we figure that the solution has to come from the outside. We need other people’s help. We need to gain more knowledge. After all, the knowledge we already have isn’t helping us overcome our problems!

That’s because we can play two roles: the person giving advice and the person in need of advice. By recognizing the role and immense knowledge of our “Adviser Self” we can solve most of our problems without searching for answers in distant lands.

Meet Your “Adviser Self”

Has a friend ever came to you for help in overcoming a problem that you suffered from as well, but were able to give him the most eloquent and helpful advice to solve his problem, yet you weren’t following the advice yourself?!

That’s your Adviser Self speaking. The Adviser Self is very knowledgeable and clear headed. He tackles problems objectively and the solutions are apparent to him. When others seek his counsel, he can remain level-headed, calm and collected. He is willing to listen to the problem without being judgmental. He is able to ask sensible questions to better understand the problem and the situation in which it arose.

He focuses on finding solutions. He is able to make use of his past experiences and all the resources he has come across in the past to present the most beneficial advice he can come up with. And in most cases, his advice is effective in dealing with other people’s problems.

But when it comes to dealing with our own problems, the Adviser Self seems neglected. His voice is drowned in the noise of chaotic emotions, desperate rationalizations and defensive blockades that shun him away to the point where his existence is doubted!

We associate ourselves with our problems and not with our knowledge.

We see ourselves in need of help and not as the helpers.

The problem isn’t that we lack the knowledge but that we don’t even realize that we possess the knowledge in the first place!

This is when our most precious resource begins digging his own grave as we continue our struggle seeking other people’s help.

Listen to Your Adviser Self

Look at a single area of your life where you feel there is a great deal of room for improvement. Let’s take productivity as an example. Suppose your days pass by without you accomplishing anything. The default response would be: “Why am I such a lazy *bleep* *bleep*? I’m so useless! I need to read more about productivity! I need to find a productivity system to help me get things done! I NEED HELP!!!!”

This is what happens when you side with your Helpless Self. Your Helpless Self assumes that you are incapable of doing anything or figuring anything out by yourself. Therefore, it places its trust in other people’s advice while neglecting the Adviser Self.

Now, let’s try to pay attention to what the Adviser Self has to say. Rather than see the productivity problem as your own, assume a friend is asking you for advice. He has the productivity problem and not you. He wants to know what you have to say to solve his problem.

In this case, the most likely reaction is that you won’t side with your Helpless Self. Your Adviser Self will come to the rescue!

Write down all the observations, questions, answers, suggestions, comforting words and whatever else your Adviser Self has to say.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You won’t be too productive if you feel crappy about yourself. Don’t keep checking your email account every 3 minutes. Write a to-do list of the things you want to get done today. But be realistic about what you can accomplish…”

You will notice advice flowing that you may have not heard before!

And what’s special about your Adviser Self is that he knows you… very intimately! He can give you relevant advice that deals with the exact problems you are facing. But as long as you can project your Helpless Self and his problems onto someone else (a friend in need of your help), you can start listening to what your Adviser Self has to say.

An Exercise

Pick an area of your life you want to improve. Consider the problems you are experiencing in that area as problems your friend is trying to overcome.

Ask your “friend” the following questions (or any sequence of questions your Adviser Self comes up with) and write down the answers:

“What seems to be the problem?”

“How do you feel about it?”

“What do you think is causing this problem?”

“What do you think you can do about this problem?”

These are questions your Helpless Self will answer with the counsel of your Adviser Self.

Now, consider what your Adviser Self has to say about the answers. What advice can he give? How does he see your Helpless Self’s situation? What has he read that your Helpless Self can make use of?

Once you have presented your “friend” with the advice he needs, ask your “friend” this question:

“What will you do to put my advice into practice?”

Write that down as your stepping stone towards overcoming your Helpless Self’s problem. You now have a solution that didn’t need any reading for you to find. 🙂

Share your self-dialogue in the comments section below!