poproxy360 asks: I love giving advice but I don’t know where to do it. Where can I give advice to people?
Hi poproxy360 –
I find that one can give advice anywhere, and I mean anywhere, but only as long as the other person WANTS the advice. I see people give advice all the time, and get resented for it, because the person giving it isn’t paying any attention to what the other person wants to hear.
For example, if you wore something to school tomorrow, and I thought it looked lousy, and told you so, you’d probably be very hurt. But if, instead, you’d asked me if I thought that was the right thing to wear to school and I said, “Oh no, you would look so much better in that other outfit of yours,” you’d be very happy with my honesty, and hopefully take it as a compliment.
Now you can easily see how I’ve got that worked out on my website – I only give advice to people who’ve written in questions. I do also write my newsletters, which give my thoughts on numerous issues, but people have a choice of whether to read them or not.
So of course you could do exactly what I do, and put a website up and see who writes in. But there are other ways to do it as well. You could write comments on blogs (I would LOVE it if you wrote some comments on my answers on my website – I’m always happy when people do that, and you know it’ll be seen by lots of people!). You could write an advice column in a newspaper (maybe your school has one?). And you can always just be a great friend to your friends, and offer to help them out.
But again, remember, you don’t want to throw that advice out when it’s unwanted. Instead, you could first say something like “You know, I have some thoughts about what you’re saying. Would you want to hear them?” And usually they’ll say yes, and then… you’re IN!
Thanks!
Shirelle