I Told You So

As you know, I’m of the Myers-Briggs personality type INFJ, aka “The Counselor”. I love helping people with their problems, allowing them to see the situation and their own behavior more clearly, and giving them words of wisdom for the steps ahead. That really is my purpose.

However, when someone comes to me for advice on the same thing time and time again, and I give them the same advice, and they express that they know it is true, and yet they continue to do the opposite… and then they come back yet again for more advice from me… it drives me nuts!

I can’t even tell you how many people this has happened with. Huge pet peev of mine.

But I tried to look at this from a place of love today, and based on this spiritual journey I am on now, I think I can make peace with it and not be so frustrated. The reason why they keep doing the wrong thing is because they haven’t learned the lesson yet. Everyone is on their own journey, and I can relate to knowing something logically but just not yet fully absorbing the lesson in your soul. The WHOLE experience, front to back, will teach them the lesson. Getting halfway through it and then having me tell them what the lesson is will not truly teach it to them.

As I think about this, I actually have another thought. I was raised to analyze and plan and not make mistakes that are easily foreseen. I wasn’t really raised to learn by doing, which honestly I think would have been more beneficial sometimes (but who knows) – I was raised to learn by… advice and instruction, I guess. I’m trying to break out of that and trust myself to learn by doing, but that’s exactly my point here – maybe these people learn by doing and are NOT AFRAID of FAILING the way I am in these scenarios. Sure, they are afraid of failing and getting their hearts broken, but maybe not as much as I am… I won’t risk “stupid” decisions if I KNOW what it will lead to in the end. But isn’t that one of the lessons I’ve been learning? Not to try to predict the future? Not to have limiting beliefs? Not to confine myself to certain actions just because they are safe and free of betrayal, pain and rejection?

Granted, I have gone against that logic before, and that gave me an experience that jump started this entire journey for me!

So, yeah, how can I be frustrated with them? They would just rather try and suffer that pain than suffer the pain of wondering what could have been… and isn’t that really the whole point of life…? So sure, the advice I give them always turns out to be true, but going THROUGH that is way more important than just believing a wise friend, giving up and moving on.