How Do You Deal With Advice And Feeling Guilty For Not Following It?

How do you use advice given by others, without triggering guilt?
That might sound easy – if you are asking for people’s advice on a problem you are having, it doesn’t seem logical to think that this will create any guilt – surely the two are mutually exclusive?

Not necessarily. When you ask for the opinion or advice of others, the relationship you have with them may start bringing in all sorts of expectations and assumptions about what you are going to do with that advice, and therefore may start triggering guilt trips.

Say that, for example, you have an issue with your partner, and you talk to your best friend, who has known you considerably longer than said other half. Depending on how you have phrased it (if you are having a general rant, chances are, you haven’t been kind about the perspective of your partner) their advice may range from sort it out to kick them out. Once you have had the empathy and compassion, and the time to rant and rage about everything, you calm down and realise that you were maybe a bit excessive with how bad the situation really was. Now you are in a conundrum – you feel guilty about painting your partner a certain way, knowing that it may not be strictly accurate. But you can also feel guilty that you have got some very wise advice from your friend who has always had your back and who may actually be around for longer than your partner. You want to keep both happy, but this can feel impossible – if you make up with your partner, it looks like you are ignoring the advice of your friend; and if you side with your friend, you may lose a partner who really didn’t do that much wrong. You can’t keep both happy – so what do you do?

The simple yet complex answer is to make it clear that your request for advice is based on your need to use it or not, depending on what you think the right thing to do is. What do I mean? Well, getting advice or wisdom from other people can sometimes help you process your situation and give you hidden insight, so there is a lot value in asking for it. however, many of us don’t set boundaries around that advice, by making it clear that, while you welcome their opinion, you are going to ultimately make up your own mind. This is really key to living guilt free, because you don’t want to get into that crazy situation where you feel obliged to act against your own values and judgement, just because you have solicited advice from someone who then expects you to listen to it.

By also focusing some time on understanding how you want to interact with those people – what do you want your role of daughter / son or friend to look like – you can more control over the obligations set up when advice is sought or given. Knowing that you appreciate their opinion but that ultimately, you are going to make the decision for yourself, can lead to deeper connections with people as well as a clearer mind when the decision has to be made.