We all ask questions we don't really want an answer to. When you walk up to someone and say "Hey! What are you doing?" We usually don't really expect an answer; we can obviously see what they are doing. It's more of a greeting than a question. Another one is "How's it going?" If someone stopped and started giving you detailed information on how it was going in their life at the moment, we'd probably interrupt them and tell them that we weren't really that interested. Again, it's more of greeting than anything.
Someone once asked me for some advice about something. I listened to what they had to say and gave my honest advice. "That's a really bad idea." Hey, I'm a straight forward kind of guy. That same person later asked two other people for advice on that same topic in my presence. And they both said, "That's a really bad idea." Ok, they used different words, but basically the answer was the same - don't do that. Yet this person went ahead and did it anyway. Guess what, it truly was a bad idea. There were repercussions regarding that action. Something that could have easily been avoid if they had simply listened to sound advice from three people.
Why do we ask, if we aren't going to listen? Many times it's because we aren't really looking for advice - we are asking for permission. But even when we don't get the permission, we often do it anyway. What makes us so hard headed sometimes?
Please do me a favor. If you get some advice, especially if it's from multiple people, listen to it. You asked those people for a reason, presumably because you trust them. So trust them. And if I ever ask you for advice - make sure I listen.
No comments:
Post a Comment