Hindsight advice

The most useless kind.

There you are. Sitting with your thoughts. Now that you have clearly seen the result of your actions. The relentless thoughts of what if and why and what was I thinking.... Then there comes a wonderful character - waving their finger and yelling - "I told you so.' 

The most useless advice is lecturing someone who is already repenting about their actions. Let someone who is morning, morn in peace. 

The person could have used that enthusiasm before something bad has happened. All the experts that emerges from the dead in a postmortem analysis is a tad bit late. The I-told-you-so disorder must be a psychological condition cause so many of us are guilty of it. It is rare to find someone not jumping at a chance to advice in hindsight scenarios.

I wince when I think of the times I remember myself doing it in the recent past. Even if I am aware of a bias or an action that I want to avoid, it takes a lot of work to avoid it. After being on the receiving end of this warm gesture, I have come to understand just how useless this form of advice is. I now want to get better at avoiding it. Though I am a fan of hindsight analysis (to better understand failure), the best thing I should work on doing for another person who is experiencing failure is only to emphasize and actively listen. Listening is turning out to be a very useful skill in many scenarios. 




I've been the i-told-you person many times. And I've never felt good about it in the long run.

And I've known people who never I-told-you-so and those people I have always admired. These people i speak of, they aren't blind to the fact that I made mistake... they just don't see any purpose in i-told-you-soing.

I would caveat by just saying that
listening
is useful in all scenarios lol
2021-05-20 02:15:27