Little Nerdy Elephant

The concept of giving advice at face value seems like a helpful endeavor.  However more often than not, it’s often riddled with BS, which ultimately nullifies its effectiveness, even if the advice itself is solid.  Such is the nature of humans, that they must feel safe before adopting any changes.  This is doubly true for advice received, and any form of BS will mar the safety of that advice. Hate it all you want, but ignoring this facet of people will ultimately hinder your ability to guide and persuade others.   And if guiding others to better themselves is not your ultimate intention, then that’s an issue you should be sorting out for yourself (Hint: its probably ego related).

Effective advice is given from a place of kindness, compassion, and understanding.  However, too often it is tainted with some form of BS. 

Although the ways of BS advice are countless, the most common forms are the following:

Hypocritical Advice – People giving advice they aren’t willing to do themselves.  

Unproductive Advice – This can be in the form of cliches (i.e. “try harder”), to the non sensical, or just the flat out wrong

Unsolicited Advice – Perhaps one of the most common forms of inappropriate advice, this is advice that is not asked for (and usually not wanted.)  

Just those 3 examples alone violate the following commandments.

Commandment II – Ignorant
Commandment III – Inconsistent
Commandment IV- Unresourceful
Commandment VI – Indecent Assumption
Commandment VII – Misrepresenting
Commandment VIII – False Authority
Commandment X – Indecent Regard for Others

Be cautious and compassionate when giving advice.  It is often one of the most improperly used and over utilized tools.

The line between friendly banter and insult is razor thin.  Teasing and making fun of each other is so common place since our toddler years that it’s difficult to view it as BS.  The reality is that most of it was probably inappropriate yet from our youth we accepted it as such.  Anytime you try to bring someone down to any degree is an attack, and an attack is violation of commandment 10 – having indecent regard for others.  When someone says “you can’t take a joke,” or “you’re just sensitive,” it is a violation of commandment 5 – a misrepresentation of their true tone, commandment 7 – a deflection of their inappropriate action re-aimed to your alleged character flaw, which of course they don’t have the authority to make,a violation of commandment 8 – assuming false authority. And last but not least, it is another violation of commandment 10 on top of that from the original joke.

This is just one of hundreds of examples of how a single sentence can violate more rules of BS than there are words present.  Because most BS is such a medley of different combinations of BS it is often difficult to articulate just why it is so.

Does this mean you’re allowed to bite someone’s head off anytime they make an inappropriate joke and say one of these?  Unlikely, as that would qualify you as over-reacting and exaggerating, also a major form of BS (more on that for another time).   It does however give you the knowledge to disempower anyone that uses this common line.  They are generally using it to reassign blame to you.   Anyone who says one of these lines is probably the asshole.  

There may be times where it was intended as banter and was an attempt to add humor to the situation.  In this instance the person will not usually resort to these common lines of BS but should take accountability for their words and apologize.

A small sample of the types of BS you see in the world. Stay tuned as we break down the most common and most elusive.