The Greatest Source of Wisdom: You

Have you ever given advice? Have you had people thank you for your help? However, have you ever followed your own advice that you have given to others? Have you caught yourself doing the exact opposite of what you told your friends? Have people called you a hypocrite? Unfortunately, I have to answer “yes” to all of the above questions. What about you? Answer them honestly before you proceed with the article.

If you answered “yes” to most of these questions, I have great news for you – you have wisdom stored within you that you might not be even aware of. Let us examine why that is the case.

There are couple of important things going on here that we need to explore to understand this completely:

• outside perspective
• oneness
• awareness
• congruency

Outside Perspective. When we give advice to another person, we provide them with an outside perspective on their situation. Outside perspective is usually very valuable and can help the other person deal with their issues effectively. Let us examine why that is. When people are faced with tough life situations, they lack clarity and direction. They seem stuck. The routine takes over people’s lives and they do not know how to get out of it. Then they turn to friends, like yourself, for help. You have the unique ability to look at your friends issues and give them a clear perspective and advice. You seem to immediately understand the action that should be taken. I believe it is because we do not have the emotional connections to the events in other people’s lives, more importantly most of the time we are looking at the situation for the first time and are able to determine the right solution right away. The value of the outside perspective is invaluable.

Oneness. Another piece of the puzzle is oneness. It is my understanding that we are all connected. I believe that all humans are connected because of our experiences in our lives. We all cry, laugh, love, hate, fear, get excited, sad, angry, disappointed, etc. Because of that we are able to connect and understand each other. Therefore when our friends ask us for help, it is likely that their issues and problems is something that we have already experienced or are yet to experience. In a sense, we are giving advice to ourselves! Yet, we have the benefit of added clarity and emotional disconnect to offer the right solution. That is great news because instead of just helping your friend, you are also helping yourself! The only thing we have to do to get the benefit of our own wisdom is to become aware of it.

Awareness. Often times when we give advice, it comes to us naturally. We do not even have to think about it twice. We just seem to know what the other person should do. It does not even matter if we have been in a similar situation before or not. However, we rarely take note of that advice ourselves and next time we get into the situation that our friend was in, we are lost just like they were! How do we solve this dilemma? I, personally, stared writing things down. I bought a journal where I keep solutions to various tough and routine life situations. Whenever, I notice a useful advice that I gave to somebody, I write it down in my journal. Writing things down accomplished a couple of important tasks. First, it helps you store the information for future use. Second, it helps you absorb and remember the information much better. I just recently started doing this and my plan is to have a journal full of ready to use solutions for common and unique life situations. This way I will be always ready to act when I am faced with life.

Congruency. The last piece of the puzzle is congruency. It means following your own advice. If you give advice to your friends and then do not follow it yourself, you will lose credibility. Even though it might have been a proper solution, you not following your own advice will discredit you. This way you might lose a great way to teach yourself and others a great way to handle difficult situations. Moreover, even if you write down your own advice and keep a journal of it, but do not follow what you said you would do, you will just have wasted your time and prolonged your learning process. Help yourself. Follow your own advice. You will be able to build credibility amongst your peers, you will solve your problems quickly and efficiently and you will be able to find any flaws that your advice might have had.

In short, all of us have wisdom of the world contained in us; it is up to us to recognize and use to help others and ourselves. Just trust yourself.