We've all been there, your best friends tell you not to text that guy at 3 a.m., you don't listen to them and you wake up with at least four unanswered text messages of regret as if one wouldn't have been bad enough. You think to yourself, why didn't I listen to my friend? Don't feel bad, usually, no one does. And if the roles were reversed and your friend wanted to text some useless guy and you told her not to, she probably still would.
Why do we do this? This is exactly what friends are there for, to give us advise and guide us when the problems are no longer something we want to tell our moms. We tell our friends that we want them to be honest with us, when that dress looks awful or getting another piercing is a no, or when we aren't being treated the way we should be. And then we tell them, and they don't listen and might even be a little salty about it for a while.
The kicker is the whole roles in reverse part. The friend who doesn't listen is also the friend who gives you the exact same advice. So if we can see it when it's happening to our friends why can't we see it when it's happening to us? Because you don't think of it that way, when it's happening to you, you have blinders on and all you are focusing on is the attention you are getting, how the dress looked on the mannequin, or how badass you would look with a nose ring.
It took me a while to figure this out, 20 years to be exact. Until walking home from a party with my friend when this guy was being such a jerk and I was complaining about it the whole walk home. My friend turned to me and said: "take your own advice." And it all hit me, she was so right. And I never even thought about him again.
In that moment I put myself in one of my best friends' shoes, what would I say to her? What would I think she would do? And the phone went back into the pocket.
So the trick is when you are stuck between a crossroad, you want to do something but think you probably shouldn't, and all of your friends advise you not to, ask as if it was your best friend in your shoes, what would you tell her to do? And do that.
Because at the end of the day our friends care about us and just want the best for us, but they can also see so many things we are so blind to. Start taking your friend's advice less offensively and realize that they are telling you exactly what you would tell them.
