The advice we give to others...

I'm a firm believer that the universe brings people into your life for a reason. The people you interact with are all there to teach you something, or to learn something from you, and most often, both.

I've had a lot of interesting conversations this weekend with people both new to my life, and old friends and the one thing that I'm taking away from it is that most often the advice that we give to other people reflects advice that we should probably listen to ourselves. It's scary how often I'll give advice or explain something to someone, and then have a light bulb moment about how I should have dealt with something.

This weekend I've learned:

While talking to my friend A about his girlfriend and how she felt about him having more sexual partners than she had, I explained to him that most of the time that becomes an issue when a girl is concerned that she won't be able to keep up, or that you'll ask her to do something outside of her comfort zone.

Further to that, I advised, he will have to watch out for her talking a big game in order to give the impression that she can keep up, and then not knowing how to back down from that if, in the moment, she is not actually comfortable with what's going on.

As I was sitting there telling him all of this, and it suddenly hit me. Holy shit. I've done this a lot of times. I've gotten myself into more than a few situations that I'd much rather not be in, and not known how to get out because I was scared of what the person I was with would think. Oh my god. I'm giving him the advice and warning him about something that I wish someone had have given me the heads up on.

While talking to L about people in her life and how to know who could be trusted, and who was playing the game, I realized I should watch how people behave with other people and then decide if that is how I want to be treated. If you would tell your friends not to befriend someone because they are playing games or are manipulative, why would you want to be friends with them yourself? Generally that type of behaviour is a systemic problem. I don't know why I let people in my life even though they aren't good to other people. It's so much easier to stand up for others than it is for one's self some times, but I need to work on doing both.

While talking with E, I realized that I need to be more aware of people in my personal life, and in my professional life, and the fact that I'm two totally different people in those two worlds. I suddenly understand that it is asking a lot of people to be able to reconcile the two because in my personal life I'm a lamb, and professionally I'm a lion. I tend to be very assertive and confident professionally; in fact I am quite aggressive. That works for me in the professional world, however when it trickles into my personal life, or when the submissiveness and compliance of my personal life trickles into my professional life, it can have a huge impact, which is rarely positive. I need to remember to keep the two separate, and to be more understanding when the differences between the two are hard to cope with.

While talking with H about her insecurity, we talked about how second guessing yourself all the time isn’t an attractive quality. You deserve the chance to be who you are, and you don't need to ask the permission of other people to take that chance. She was concerned about her tendency to wear her heart on her sleeve and wanted to know how to not feel like she needs to be so guarded all the time. I told her that wearing her heart on her sleeve isn't a bad thing, but a risk for sure. The thing is, sometimes it's worth the risk. I told her that most people don't walk through life with the sort of malice of intent that would cause them to purposely hurt her.

In a nut shell, I have learned:

It's important to be honest about how you feel about things, and to not make decisions based on fear.
It never hurts to observe how people treat others, and decide if that's someone you want in your life.
Keep your professional life and personal life separate, even when the two collide, or be understanding when people don't know how to reconcile that the two may not be the same person.
Be confident, and have faith in people. You don't need their permission to be who you are, and if you're at peace with who you are, they would never ask you to second guess it.

So, in short, next time I'm giving advice, I'm going to try to listen harder, because most of the time it applies to me too.