Now that I have managed to receive some advice, seemingly good or bad, I use it to my benefit. But following advice story isn’t all that straightforward.
If I was just looking for some validation on a decision I have already formulated in my head, I would use the advice in a very restrictive way.
If the advice aligns with what I already had in mind, I would act on it with double the enthusiasm but if it doesn’t, I wouldn’t necessarily followed it. It will simply make little doubtful about the course of action I had in my mind. And I would probably seek some more advice from other people or resources. This cycle would end when the scales are overwhelmingly tipped in either direction.
If I get overwhelming evidence to refute my original thesis, I might change my mind and act on the advice. Or if I get overwhelming evidence supporting my thesis, I would definitely go ahead with the received advice. (Only if I am very “egg-headed”, would I act counter to the overwhelming evidence. More often than not, it will end in a disaster for me and once in a while, it will become that amazing act of defiance, an act that would “prove the established wisdom wrong”, an act that would serve as an example, for centuries, of the romantic philosophy of “following your own path”.)
There would be times when I will follow a piece of advice only because otherwise the advice-giver would be offended. That’s not a baseless assumption. People do get offended when you seek out their advice and don’t follow it, especially when they are intimate with you and hence more invested in your life decisions. “You would do whatever you want anyway, why seek my advice then!?” they would exclaim. But if you deem it better for you to not follow their advice, I suggest you follow your own reasoning or intuition. Because in the end, it’s your decision, your life and your happiness. Just don’t blame the others for the consequences when it doesn’t work. And also, don’t get act surprised or get offended when others say “see, I told you but you wouldn’t listen!”
Then there are times when I don’t follow a good advice even when I know or feel it is good way forward. Why would I do that? The same pesky power dynamics at play again. I might not want to follow certain piece of advice from a certain person in order to now give them “power over me”. Parent-child, boss-subordinate, male-female, and spousal relationships are prime example of this. I don’t follow my spouse’s advice (as in the example of Phil and Claire from the American TV show Modern Family) because “then I will have to follow all his/her advice throughout my life”. Or I might let my parents’ advice on my deaf ears because otherwise they would expect me to always say as they say. In the end, the best course of action is to make my decision regardless of the power-play, to do what I rationally think is right.
By the way, it’s also because of this power-dynamics that showing by doing works better than just saying. I remember one time when my nephew wouldn’t eat a strawberry-flavored protein bar upon insistence from his mother. Then I took a bite of the bar and told him that I liked it (it wasn’t a lie; I genuinely liked it). He immediately decided to “give it another try” and ate the whole thing. Kids!
Then there are times when we deliberately and purposefully do the exact opposite of a received advice. This is the extreme case of power-play: doing something that we know is possibly bad for us just to “show them”.
Showing what? Showing that we are not dependent on anyone for our decisions, or that we are not “mainstream”, or that we would “rather die than give them the satisfaction”. Sometimes such deliberate acts of defiance change humanity forever. Think about Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat to a white person under the racial laws in the US. When social vices like hatred, violence or mistreatment of nature become too mainstream, humanity does need those not-mainstream acts. But if ethical or moral values aren’t at play, it can be quite destructive to take a defiant decision “just because”. And if we do it regularly to not give up our power, it becomes counterproductive. We end up giving them the power to manipulate us with reverse psychology.
You would think that reverse psychology only works for children who “don’t know any better” but it works with adults too. As long as they put power politics over the rationality of their decision, even adults can fall victims of reverse psychology. Another example from another American TV series comes to mind. In The Big Bang Theory, Mary Cooper, the mother of Sheldon, says something like “He thinks he’s such a smarty pants. He’s no different from any man. You tell him not to do something, that’s all they want to do. If I hadn’t told my brother Stumpy not to clear out the woodchipper by hand, we’d still be calling him Edward.”
I am laughing out loud at this quote. Who wrote this!? I wonder if I could seek their advice on how to bring humor in my writing.