A Zero Tolerance Policy for Unsolicited Advice Has Changed My Life
Access to My Energy is a Privilege, Not a Place to Work Out Your Control Issues
I want people reading this to feel capable of doing whatever they want to do and reaching their dreams despite, you know, life. A life that includes being exposed to articles like Ryan Holiday on Stoicism claiming “Our actions, our thoughts, our feelings — these are up to us.”1
Oh Ryan, you’re adorable.
Maybe, just maybe, if the vast majority of people in your life have felt entitled to criticize you, gobble up your time, tell you what to do, or remind you about some social role that you’re not living up to, then it’s perfectly rational to feel burnt out? Anxious? Mildly stressed all the time? Tired? Maybe it’s gaslighting to have other people say you’re overreacting when you’re acting in a perfectly rational way to what is actually a shitty situation?
Spoiler alert: letting go of certain people this past year (even family) has changed my life by releasing me of the looming stress of simply being in their presence.2
This is Your Brain on a Lack of Status
When you’re lower on the totem pole, you’re expected to be more sensitive to the needs of others; underlings have to wait their turn to keep the dominant ones happy, who are free to focus on doing whatever they want to do. Using the areas of your brain associated with mentalizing—thinking about what others are thinking about—is associated with more metabolically taxing, recently-evolved areas of the brain; there are real physical costs associated with the emotional labor of constantly being expected to think about what other people might do or say, especially when you’re not sure which set of rules they’re judging you by.
“A tendency to think too much about other people’s perspectives can lead to heightened anxiety,” says researcher Jacob Hirsh. Women are hit on multiple fronts, constantly being expected to consider or conform to others’ perspectives while deriving more of our self-worth from relationships. “Women are exposed to more conflicting expectations,” says Hirsh.3
Nothing makes sense in biology except through the lens of evolution, and humans are energy-stingy creatures who evolved to live in groups. That is it. Anything else you hear about the psychological difference between women and men or any other group is typically a form of system justification used by the group afraid of losing power to claim status.4
Women aren’t naturally more socially sensitive—but because we’re expected to be that way and held to higher standards, we internalize different self-regulation strategies to prevent an onslaught of criticism, rejection, and other threats to the self.
Incessant mental chatter—specifically the feeling that I need to consider other people’s opinions—is a stressful background noise that’s constantly running, like living next door to a train station and being told that’s just how life is. In truth, we never realize how noisy the train station is until we leave.
The Power of a Lack of Mental Chatter
You don’t get to see what life is like behind the curtain for someone else very often (if ever), and working with Chip Heath was one of the most eye-opening work experiences of my life. Over the course of those years, I witnessed a brain that was unencumbered by having to spend time defending his decisions, deflecting unsolicited advice, or exposure to messages that he was, somehow, doing things wrong. The result? Oh lord, the confidence. It was next-level shit.
Why Unsolicited Advice is Never Helpful
Can you imagine saying “you know, you might want to consider changing your behavior, Malala”? How about “You think you’re so tough Mr. Ernest Hemingway, but here’s how you really write a sentence.”
Advice-givers are assuming a bunch of things:
A certain level of status (you wouldn’t correct your boss)
That they have all the relevant information
That they know what would be best for you
These are all very pretty ways of saying “you’re doing it wrong.” Unsolicited advice comes from people either seeking validation for their way of doing things, attempting to demonstrate mastery, or trying to control someone’s behavior. When we get sudden advice, we’re subjected to the feeling of being criticized, being controlled, or second-guessing ourselves—that someone disapproves of what we do.
In the lab, simply being told that you’re a subordinate, not a boss, heightens your sensitivity to potential punishments—and it’s the anxiety related to choking or receiving criticism that redirects our attention, heightens stress, and impairs performance.
I’m not criticizing genuinely wanting to help others. But my time teaching, mentoring, and being mentored has shown me how damaging it is to fail to consider how our words make someone else feel. When you actually want to help someone, you’re mindful of not wanting the other person to feel badly. There’s no status differentiation, no condescension—just one person asking if the other needs help or wants advice.
“It’s impossible to love someone and control them at the same time.” -Terry Crews
It’s exactly how researchers induce social stress
Researchers studying the effects of social stress have used the Trier Test for decades. Summary? Standard protocol for the Trier is to give subjects three minutes to prepare a five-minute speech, which they give in front of a panel of people dissecting every bit of the performance. And yes, there are cameras and math involved.
In other words, researchers reliably induce stress by putting subjects in a situation where they feel like they’re on the verge of receiving criticism.
Because the mental, physical, and psychological effects of constant social stress are real and profound, we tend to self-select into positions where we feel like we’re less likely to get stressed or criticized. We go where we feel safe, because being in a less-than-safe place means having to edit yourself and stay quiet. It means anxiety for fear of getting called out. It means a constant running tally in your mind of possible responses to what you’re doing. It means constantly second-guessing yourself, about stupid things, and using your precious mental energy to try and choose or do the right thing—that magical thing that will somehow escape comment from every single person you know.
Instead of staying and fighting and being resilient all the time, it’s easier to simply accept one’s fate as an underling. The slow suffocation of constant, unsolicited advice reveals itself as a quiet crisis of confidence.
Escaping the Cycle of Crumbling Confidence
We don’t have to live right next to the goddamn train station. Personally, I’m often completely unaware of how much something affects me until I make a drastic change. We usually don’t realize we’re being micromanaged until we get another job, that our family has dysfunctional dynamics until we see other interactions, or that our current social circle is stressful until we step back and focus on hanging out with people who love and accept us for who we are.
In the past few months, I’ve told some people (a work accountability friend; a mentor; my own goddamn brother) about my new zero tolerance policy. One told me that it was my responsibility to stop him from giving advice, but here’s the thing: giving advice is the last leg of a series that includes I HAVE ALL THE RELEVANT INFORMATION → THIS PERSON NEEDS TO BE TOLD WHAT TO DO → I AM IGNORING THE BOUNDARY THEY EXPLICITLY SET → I KNOW BETTER. And why should I continue to bother with all of that crap?
It continued, so I cancelled the coffee with the friend.
I quit the group.
I fired my mentor.
I haven’t spoken to my brother in a while.
If someone has never asked you what would be helpful—or has explicitly been told that you don’t want their advice—you can’t make the argument that they mean well. You can’t ignore someone’s boundaries and then blame them for getting angry.
The flipside of this? I don’t give advice anymore, and it’s liberating. I don’t know what Tom and Michael and Erik need. I’ve got enough shit on my plate.
The takeaway
I didn’t realize how much I was affected by this constant tension, this on-the-verge-of-being-corrected feeling around certain people, until I cut these ties. They were dysfunctional, confidence crumblers whose presence made me even doubt the wisdom of letting them go. (Creating a borderline sick system, an attachment created by the sense that you can only get medicine from the very person making you sick.)
Getting rid of some people is less like losing a limb and more like pruning dead weight. It’s creating space for yourself by letting go of people in your life who fail to respect your autonomy and choices.
Access to your energy is a privilege. Surround yourself with others who lift you up and respect you for who you are. Even if, for now, it may feel like it’s just yourself.
UPDATE
Wil Wheaton just wrote something on this and now I’m thinking there’s a theory related to a perceived sense of powerlessness:
What is it with mediocre white men? Why are they just CONVINCED that everyone they encounter needs to be corrected for some reason or another? Is there a class or a meeting or something that I just didn’t attend? I don’t have this impulse in my life and I cannot wrap my head around it.
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Preview: “Everything in life is your responsibility/just go with the flow” is fine for privileged white men who are the beneficiaries of life today, and it’s a great way to make people doubt their own emotions. This was key for keeping slaves from revolting in ancient Greece—anger is a perfectly valid emotion when faced with injustice.
Why? Because science.
An excerpt from Can You Learn to Be Lucky?, my first book.
My friend Maggie Mertens just got a book deal explaining how bullshit the gender myths are when it comes to physical strength, and it’s making me ponder the idea of writing the version of this about psychology. What is, for example, evolutionary psychology but another form of system justification that is the antithesis of how science should actually work?