Why Are We Taking Advice From People Who Haven’t Asked Us a Single Question?
Imagine walking into your doctor's office and being handed a prescription before you've even been asked why you're there. You'd question their judgement immediately. Yet somehow, we've become completely comfortable accepting advice about our careers, relationships, health, leadership, finances, and even our happiness from people who haven't asked us a single question about who we are.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped expecting understanding before advice. And I think that's costing us far more than we realise.
The strange thing is that most of us don't even notice it's happening anymore. We’ve become so accustomed to taking advice and being told what we should do that we’ve stopped questioning whether the person offering it understands enough about us to have an opinion in the first place.
It happens in conversations with friends and family. It happens in the workplace, on social media, and in the endless stream of books, podcasts, courses, and products promising to improve our lives.
Before we've even had the chance to explain who we are, what matters to us, or the challenges we're trying to navigate, someone is already convinced they know the answer. We've normalised advice without understanding, and I can't help wondering what we've lost in the process.
When answers come before curiosity
The problem isn't that people have opinions. It's that we've become so comfortable offering answers before we've taken the time to understand the person standing in front of us.
Every answer is shaped by the experiences, beliefs, and priorities of the person giving it. That's simply part of being human. The trouble begins when we assume those same answers must automatically apply to someone else. Without meaning to, we stop being curious and start becoming certain.
We prescribe before we understand, recommend before we listen, and advise before we've discovered what really matters to the person we're trying to help. In doing so, we risk solving the wrong problem for the wrong person, simply because we never stopped to ask who they were in the first place.
The real cost of constantly being told what to do isn't that we make the wrong decisions. It's that, over time, we begin to lose confidence in our own ability to make any decisions at all. We become so accustomed to looking outside ourselves for the next answer that we stop recognising our own judgement as something worth listening to.
Instead of asking ourselves what feels right, we wait for someone else to tell us. Instead of trusting our instincts, we search for another opinion. Slowly, almost without noticing, we stop believing we're capable of pointing ourselves in the right direction. Not because we aren't, but because we've spent so long being taught that someone else knows better.
Why certainty can be so convincing
There’s something incredibly reassuring about someone who seems certain about what we should do. When we’re tired, overwhelmed or trying to make sense of something complicated, a confident answer can feel like a relief. Someone else appears to know the way forward, which means, for a moment at least, we don’t have to.
But certainty and understanding aren’t the same thing.
Someone can be absolutely convinced they know what you should do and still know very little about you. Their confidence might come from years of experience or qualifications they’ve worked hard to earn, and they may genuinely care about you and want the best for you. All of that can make their perspective worth hearing, but it still doesn’t mean their answer automatically fits your life.
I think this is where we can get ourselves into trouble, because confidence is easy to mistake for authority. The more certain someone sounds, the easier it can be to assume they must know something we don’t. If we’re already questioning ourselves, their certainty can quickly become louder than our own judgement.
We see this happening all the time when someone discovers something that works brilliantly for them and begins to believe it should work just as well for everyone else. It might be a particular way of running a business, a morning routine that has changed how they feel or a major life decision that has taken them somewhere better. Their experience can absolutely give us something useful to think about, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a set of instructions for the rest of us to follow.
There may be something valuable in what they’ve learned, and we don’t have to dismiss their experience simply because our circumstances are different. The problem begins when we stop treating their experience as something we can consider and start treating it as evidence of how we should live.
Perhaps we need to become a little less impressed by certainty and a little more interested in curiosity.
The people whose advice I value most aren't necessarily the people with the fastest answer. They're often the ones who are willing to stay with the question for a while because they want to understand what’s really happening underneath what I’m saying. Rather than rushing to tell me what they think I should do, they give me the space to explore what matters to me and what I might already know but haven't quite been able to articulate yet.
And sometimes that’s where the most useful advice begins. It doesn’t come from someone telling you what to do; it comes from someone asking a question that helps you hear what you already know.
Learning to ask yourself first
If we've spent years looking outside ourselves for direction, it's no surprise that turning back towards ourselves feels unfamiliar.
At first, making your own decisions can feel uncomfortable. You might wonder whether you're missing something, whether someone else knows better, or whether you're about to make a mistake. That's completely understandable. Confidence in your own judgement isn't something you suddenly discover. It's something you build, one decision at a time.
And it starts by asking yourself the questions that no one else can answer for you. What matters most to me? What kind of life am I trying to create? What feels right for the person I am, rather than the person everyone else expects me to be?
Those aren't questions anyone else can answer on your behalf. They're the questions that quietly lead you back to yourself.
The questions that matter most
And right here is the shift we need to make. Not from learning to knowing, or from openness to scepticism, but from accepting every answer to expecting better questions.
The next time someone tells you what you need, pause for a moment before accepting it as truth. Ask yourself whether they've taken the time to understand you. Have they been curious about what matters to you? Have they asked about your circumstances, your values or the kind of life you're trying to build? Or have they simply assumed that what worked for them, or for someone else, must be right for you? And most importantly, ask yourself whether what they’re telling you is right for you!
The difference matters.
Advice that grows from genuine curiosity can change a life. Advice that grows from assumption asks you to fit yourself into someone else's view of the world. One honours your individuality, while the other quietly erases it.
That's probably why so many people are tired of being told who to be. Not because they've stopped wanting to learn, but because they've started recognising the difference between being understood and being instructed.
And maybe that's the question we've been missing all along: has this person been curious enough about me to earn the right to answer?
If the answer is no, then perhaps the most important thing you can do isn't to follow their advice.
It's trust yourself enough to keep asking your own questions until you find an answer that truly belongs to you.
Written by Bronwen Sciortino, CEO & Founder of sheIQ Life
Based in Perth, Western Australia, Bronwen is an International Author & Simplicity Expert and provides in-depth insights into simplifying health and wellness solutions. If you're a busy, stressed and overwhelmed individual you'll benefit from Bronwen's knowledge on how to create simple, practical and easy steps to live life in a very different way. As a leader in the health & wellness industry, Bronwen’s books and programs have received international critical acclaim and 5-star reviews and she is sought as a media expert globally.
Claim a free 15 minute Executive Coaching call by emailing bsciortino@sheiqlife.com and quoting ‘The Industry Leaders’
Read more about Bronwen Sciortino
