When to Accept (or Reject) Advice
I consider the Stoic guidance to be rational and self-sufficient, seeking some principles for what makes advice worth taking. Fleetwood Mac is in there, too... somewhere.
In my third weekly post, I’ll explore a difficulty I’ve faced in my own life. Humility is one of life’s essential virtues, requiring a willingness to admit when we may be wrong. Epictetus, a Roman slave-turned-philosopher, once cautioned “it is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows:” if you can’t accept that you may have it wrong, you undermine your potential to reliably get it right.1
I count myself lucky to have received a lot of advice over the years, with many people in my life trying to help me along in my pursuit of the Good Life. Some of that advice was exceptional: it was exactly what I needed, in a form I could understand, and I could immediately use it to improve my life. However, some of it was bad: it was opaque, or inapplicable to my life, or following it would have made my life worse.
…people often take it personally when you don’t follow their advice, perhaps receiving it as proof you don’t love or trust them as much as they thought you did.
In pursuing the Good Life with some measure of humility, it’s here you may run into some trouble: when should you accept advice and when are you better off disregarding it? Some filters can be readily applied:
If the person giving you advice seems not to have your best interest at heart - the advice is offered insincerely - you can dismiss that out of hand; they are wasting your time, perhaps even hoping to see you stumble.
If the advice is too vague or irrelevant to be helpful, and the advice-giver can’t be prompted to ‘say what they mean,’ then you may have to let it go. If it isn’t illuminating enough to light your way, then don’t bother carrying it around; simply go by your own light.
Plenty of advice passes both tests, being sincerely given and relevant to our problems, yet we still don’t readily embrace it. To make matters worse, people often take it personally when you don’t follow their advice, perhaps receiving it as proof you don’t love or trust them as much as they thought you did. Given the stakes involved, making sound decisions and preserving good relationships with those we care for, how do we decide when to accept advice we don’t like?
Here I return, once again, to the well of the Meditations. In his personal writings, Marcus Aurelius advises himself to adhere to the principles of Stoicism, to “strive to be and remain the kind of person philosophy would have [him] be.”2 Among those principles are i) living a rational life ‘in accordance with Nature,’ using one’s rational faculty to only believe and act as truth and justice require; and ii) remaining ‘self-sufficient’ - not in a Doomsday-prepper sort of way, but emotionally - relying not on external circumstances for your happiness but instead trusting in your own reason and virtue.
In one entry, Marcus reminds himself these precepts do not preclude accepting advice, and even correction, from others:
“Remember that neither changing your mind nor being guided by someone who’s setting you straight impairs your self-reliance. It’s your own doing, the outcome of your own impulse and judgment, and of your own mind.”3
When considering whether to accept someone else’s advice, one can rationally assess its value, determining whether or not you should follow it. If you decide the advice is sound, then you allow it to guide your actions. In doing so, you decide to follow it on its merits, not as an act of subservience to the advice-giver’s will, but in recognition that it better serves your existing intention of living well.
In reminding himself of this, Marcus provides us with another filter for determining whether to accept advice from others: are they appealing to your sense of truth and justice, urging you to adhere to what is right? Or are they using some other tactic, attempting to intimidate, shame, or flatter you, appealing to baser instincts and bypassing your considered preferences? Such advice can also be dismissed: the advice giver may mean well, but they are not treating you with respect, and they are not helping you live a good life.
Unfortunately, plenty of people in our lives will not see it this way. They will pressure us to live the way they think we should, and in this respect Marcus’s life was no different. As the emperor of Rome, I’m sure he was under far more pressure than I am, surrounded by those in the imperial court seeking to control or undermine his decisions. He felt the weight of this pressure, and urged himself to maintain his integrity in the face of those who would undermine it:
“Live like a highlander.4 It makes no difference where a man is, here or there, if wherever he finds himself he treats the world as a single state. Let men see and observe an honest man living in accord with nature. If they can’t bear it, let them kill him, because that’s better than living as they do.”5
Marcus urges himself not to bow to the pressures that others put on him: to act dishonorably, to abuse his power to bring them wealth and status, or to back down from acts that require his courage. To suffer any fate they could bring upon him would be better than to degrade his character in such a way. He continues:
“The light of a lamp shines and continues to shed light until it’s extinguished. Will the truth, justice, and moderation in you be extinguished before their time?”6
After consulting the Stoic emperor, I think we arrive at a more complete picture of what makes advice worth following:
It should be given with our best interests at heart.
It should be sufficiently clear and relevant for us to see how it applies to our situation.
It should appeal to our sense of truth and justice, providing us with reason to pursue a particular path.
It should not rely on our lesser passions - fear, shame, greed, or others - to sway us toward its advised path.
Plenty of advice that meets these criteria will be uncomfortable, perhaps even insulting, but that doesn’t make it bad advice. Some good advice will turn out not to have been so good after all, and we may or may not be able to foresee that. I doubt there’s any perfect principle for knowing whether the advice we get (or give) is the right advice, but hopefully we get better at knowing the difference as we go along. It bears remembering that while advice should be freely given, and good advice should be carefully considered, it does not need to be taken: you can go your own way.
Epictetus, Discourses, Bk. II Ch. 17. Orig. cited by Patrick Allen, “You Cannot Learn What You Think You Already Know,” lifehacker, June 14, 2017, accessed May 28, 2023, https://lifehacker.com/you-cannot-learn-what-you-think-you-already-know-1796095391.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.30, trans. and edited by Robin Waterfield (New York: Basic Books, 2022), p. 133.
Ibid, 6.16, p. 182.
Ibid, 10.15, p. 236.
Ibid, 12.15, p. 281.