Don't take any advice from unhappy people.

[brit]

Well, I think from my opinion, it really depends on what were they going through. The “why” question is important to other people to understand the reason behind those unhappy things. It is not always right, and it is not always wrong, but what if we put ourselves in their shoes? Why they did that? why they are unhappy? What if we were them? It is always our choice to make ourselves better, or worse, if we take or don’t take from unhappy people.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

To me, i would say it depends on the advice. For the fact that someone is unhappy dosent make the person bad in wvery arear. For example, an unhappy person can be very good in academics or something else.

Ahh, but the question is not whether the unhappy person's advice is the worst possible advice ever. Likewise, the question isn't whether the unhappy person's advice is definitely wrong.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Don't take good advice. Take the best advice available.

Don't take merely reliable advice. Take the most reliable advice available.

There is a very important reason that, in the very first sentence of the Original Post (OP), I wrote, "in this human form, time, energy, money, and resources are very limited."

We don't have the time and resources to test out a diet and exercise plan from someone who's advice is less reliable than the most reliable advice available. When it comes to allowing someone (or a book) to fill the role of being your advisor, you are filling a job opening that has one or very few spots but millions and millions of applicants. You have to say NO to 99.99999% of applicants. You cannot afford to look past even a single red flag.

Thus, in that context, very good is not good enough.


Thank you,
Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, All,

I hope you are all doing great!

It's worth noting that while I used shorthand in the title of this thread, in the Original Post (OP) I explicitly specified that the "happiness" to which I refer is the true happiness that is consistent day-in day-out inner peace. Some people might even call it "nirvana" or such, but I'm not (necessarily) talking about anything religious. There are many people from all religions, and many non-religious people, who have each in their own way found that true happiness (i.e. consistent invincible inner peace).

I am one of those many people. And for that I am infinitely grateful. I don't remember the last time I wasn't happy, but I know it was years ago. In other words, in terms of the true happiness that is consistent inner peace, I have been happy all day every day for at least several years.

Yes, even when I fell out of my hot tub and ended up in the ER, I was still very happy, just like every other day. This is the nature of inner peace. It's why it's called inner peace and not outer peace. Falling out of a hot tub and getting 15 stitches in your face is not outer peace.

Of course, neither is boxing my best friends until we are bloody and can barely stand up, but I love it, and I am happy when I do that too.

In this topic, I think I have made the convincing case that, unless you want to risk staying or becoming unhappy yourself, you do not want to take any advice from unhappy people.

Sometimes you may need advice from an expert in a specific field. There are plenty of experts in any field who are truly happy. So, when you need advice from an expert in a specific field, find a highly qualified happy expert in that field from whom to get advice.

However, sometimes you may need more generic advice, from a jack of all trades like myself.

Thus, as a very happy person myself who has gotten to enjoy the true happiness of inner peace each and every day for years, I might be remiss to not offer my own services to you, free of charge.

Thus, please do use the following topic to ask me for my advice about anything at all at any time:

Public Q&A for My Mentees (or Anyone Who Wants My Advice)



With Love,
Scott

[Chinemezu Okafor]

I completely agree with you. We shouldn't take weight loss advice from obese people. We shouldn't take financial advice from poor people. But I don't totally agree with "we shouldn't take advice from unhappy people"; it actually goes down to why the person is unhappy.

[Covenant Olusegun]

In the sense that we can't give what we don't have, I agree with you that unhappy people may not have all the answers to how to find happiness, but let's not forget that we can learn from what makes them unhappy.

[Davey Chijindu]

I think it depends on the sources of the person's misery. If someone is distraught about losing a loved one or being abandoned, I might listen to them and offer advice. Many people tried to offer me advice when my husband passed away, but I ignored them because they didn't understand what I was going through.

[Stoppelmann]

I think it depends on the sources of the person's misery. If someone is distraught about losing a loved one or being abandoned, I might listen to them and offer advice. Many people tried to offer me advice when my husband passed away, but I ignored them because they didn't understand what I was going through.

That is true, I had a lot to do with widows and widowers in my professional years and there is nothing you can say, you just have to hug and be there when they need you.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Davey Chijindu,

Thank you for your reply!

I think it depends on the sources of the person's misery. If someone is distraught about losing a loved one or being abandoned, I might listen to them and offer advice.

I am not suggesting you don't give advice to to unhappy people.

Rather, I am suggesting you don't take advice from unhappy people, for the same reason I would suggest you don't take weight loss advice from someone who is morbidly obese. That's not to say a morbidly obese person's weight loss advice is necessarily incorrect or will definitely fail to work and make you fat too. Even a broken clock is right twice day. Rather, it's simply to say that advice from someone who has proven their advice works by putting into practice themselves is even more reliable.

All in all, I think we agree.


Thank you,
Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Covenant Olusegun,

Thank you for your reply!

In the sense that we can't give what we don't have, I agree with you that unhappy people may not have all the answers to how to find happiness, but let's not forget that we can learn from what makes them unhappy.

Yes, that's true.

It reflects what I wrote in one of my earlier replies in this topic:

Sure, one way to achieve a certain goal is to listen to what people who failed to achieve did and then do the opposite (or at least go of your way to not do what they did).

I wouldn't call that taking their advice. I'd call it learning from their bad example. It's the opposite of using them as a role model. We could call it using them as an anti-role-model.

If you are looking for directions to a place, you can use process of elimination: Learning, one by one, each route that is incorrect. However, if there are plenty of happy people who have successfully gone from where you are to the place to which you want directions, it will be much easiest, quicker, and more effective to ask them.

One role model is worth more than infinite anti-role-models.

We do learn something by learning that a wrong answer is wrong, but one right answer is worth a million known-to-be-wrong answers.

[Emphasis added.]

However, since there is plenty of truly happy people who are experts in any given field, there is generally little need to use such roundabout ways to learn. In other words, we don't need to resort to using time-consuming process of elimination to eliminate all the many paths that won't work, when we can just find a reliable happy person to show us a path that does work.



Thank you,
Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Chinemezu Okafor,

Thank you your reply!

I completely agree with you. We shouldn't take weight loss advice from obese people. We shouldn't take financial advice from poor people. But I don't totally agree with "we shouldn't take advice from unhappy people"; it actually goes down to why the person is unhappy.

I never said that "we shouldn't take advice from unhappy people". I don't use the word "should" and am not sure what you mean by it it.

I do suggest that, if you want to be happy, you don't take advice from unhappy people, for the same reason I suggest that, if you want to lose weight, you don't take weight loss advice from morbidly obese people.

I'm not sure how you can agree with the latter but not the former. Can you explain that a bit more? The reasoning seems to be the same for me, so it cannot be true for one and not the other.


Thank you,
Scott

[lec_nemanja]

I think it is completely justified to disregard advice from people who are by all accounts unsuccessful in the field they are trying to give us advice from. This is probably the most obvious when it comes to unhappy people, ie. about people who lack inner peace.

[lec_nemanja]

I would also take into account the fact that we are all very subjective when it comes to us, while individuals who observe us from the side have a better insight because they are often more objective.

[Yasmine M]

There could be exceptions. I am thinking that the same way we learn from our mistakes, we can learn from others' mistakes. We can learn from the very poor (financially) how they lost everything or what mistakes kept them poor. The same would apply from the lessons learnt from the morbidly obese people. They might not have the means to get themselves out of their situations but there certainly is something to be learnt from people's experiences. I would take an advice from them. There is a difference between having knowledge and knowing how to put that knowledge into practice; the latter is a skill. Not everyone has that skill. It is not because they are still financially poor or morbidly obese that they don't know what to do; it is the 'how' to make it happen that is the issue. We can still learn from them.

Regarding the unhappy people, there are different types. Those who are in that state because of something that is affecting them (death of a loved one, illness and pain, trauma...). I am not sure if they have so much advices, they probably need our advices and support.
And then, there are people who have an unhappy personality. There is nothing that can make them happy because they insist on seeing everything with a negative eye and they refuse to do otherwise. I surely don't want any advice from them.

[Surabhi Rani]

I agree with you that we should always strive for the best and not compromise on anything that comes in the way of our real inner peace and happiness. Our choices and preferences show our inner personalities and decide the course of our destinies. We may have to make an effort on our parts to harness the good resources available to us and get out of our comfort zones to achieve the best.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

There could be exceptions. I am thinking that the same way we learn from our mistakes, we can learn from others' mistakes.

I don't disagree that we can learn from other people's mistakes. But that's not an exception.

There is a difference between "taking an unhappy person's advice" versus learning from their mistakes.

We can learn from the very poor (financially) how they lost everything or what mistakes kept them poor. The same would apply from the lessons learnt from the morbidly obese people. They might not have the means to get themselves out of their situations but there certainly is something to be learnt from people's experiences. I would take an advice from them.

Why?

Why would you spend some of your very limited time and energy taking weight loss advice from a morbidly obese person when there are so many people who suffered for years from morbid obesity before finally getting their way out of it?

You do not have enough time to take advice from even 1% of people. You have to say no to 99.999% of people offering advice because time is so limited.

So why would you refuse to take advice from someone who successfully lost weight and kept it off to instead take the risk of taking advice from someone who has failed to prove their advice works by putting it into practice themselves ?

Don't you agree that it is at least slightly less reliable? If so, why would you choose to take the less reliable advice over the more reliable advice?

Even if both were very reliable, it still makes sense to choose the even more reliable one; doesn't it?