I’m pretty sure this is close to a universal issue, but it is so much easier for me to give advice to others than to give it to myself. Even when the advice I’m telling someone else is exactly what I need to do as well, it’s still easier to tell it to someone else. I know that some of it is probably being resistant to change and so I might be hearing my own advice and just not taking it. But more often than not I feel like the advice isn’t something I realize until I say it to someone else.
But I’ve noticed a related issue lately for me. It’s so much easier for me to work for something for someone else than for myself. For example, if I need to work on something for myself it seems like an endless task that is impossible to start. But if someone else asks if I can help them with something, I don’t see those challenges and I am able to not only start right away but complete it quickly. I have no clue why I am so much more willing or able to help someone that isn’t myself.
I’m sure someone would say that it’s about how I value myself against others. And there likely is an element of that happening. I don’t see myself on the same level as others around me and I feel like sometimes my issues are not as important as someone else’s. Or I feel so much easier to put myself last and prioritize what other people need. I can always make excuses to myself for why something isn’t done but I can’t do that for someone else. I’ve known this is a problem for myself for a while and it is something I am working on. But it seems to be so easy to drop everything to help someone else when they ask, so I keep doing it.
But I also have people in my life that call me out for doing that. Even if I’m sharing advice that someone thinks I could use too, they will point it out. I really appreciate when someone does that because it does make me more aware of when it’s happening. I do get a bit annoyed that it has to pointed out and not that I realize it on my own, but that has to do with me and not with other’s pointing it out. And I have asked friends to continue doing it because it is much more helpful than annoying and I know I need it.
What I have started to do as people point it out is to make a note of what the advice is. I’m hoping I can find some trends of what type of advice I can easily give to someone else but not apply to my own life. I know a lot of it has to do with how I see myself compared to how others see me as well as realizing my importance, but that is something that I have struggled with for so long so I think it may be an ongoing issue for me. But if I see specific advice happening over and over again that I share with others, maybe that can give me a bit of guidance to what I should focus or work on.
But at least when friends point it out to me, they share that they have the same problem which does help. There are some things I struggle with that I wonder if I’m the only one who has the issue. But not being able to take my own advice is something that at least the people I know have trouble with too. I think because it is something that is so well understood by others that they are more willing to help me figure it out and don’t judge when I am having trouble with it. If only so many other things in life were so easy to relate to with others. I’m sure it would make working on things so much easier.
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