How to Take Bad Advice: Staying Calm When People Give You Terrible Solutions

The world is filled with bad advice. We often have to listen to this bad advice on a daily basis, whether it’s from family, friends, coworkers, bosses, or even a random acquaintance.

This is especially true for those who struggle with their mental health. Often people don’t understand how difficult and complicated these problems can be for us, so they try to help by giving vague and over-simplistic solutions like, “Just be positive!” or “Just smile more!” or “Just be yourself!” or “Just relax!”

But when someone is in a bad mood, this advice can often backfire immensely.

When someone is really stressed out or anxious about something, telling them “Just relax” is probably the last thing they want to hear. Often that just makes them more stressed out and flustered. It heightens their negative feelings, not helps them.

In the heat of the moment, it can be really difficult to swallow bad advice. But one big part of becoming a more emotionally mature and emotionally intelligent person is knowing how to take bad advice without letting it get too under your skin.

While no one likes being misunderstood, we have to accept the fact that people often want what is best for us even if they don’t exactly know what is best for us.

One reason bad advice exists is the hot/cold empathy gap which is a theory in psychology that describes how it’s more difficult for a person in a positive state to empathize with someone in a negative state, and vice versa.

It’s hard to fully empathize with someone if you’ve never been in their shoes before. So from an outside perspective someone may feel like they have all the answers, but to the person who is experiencing it first-hand, the advice may be woefully misguided or unhelpful.

While it’s difficult to avoid bad advice altogether, here are a few healthy suggestions for what you can do when you come across it.

• Accept the person is likely coming from a good place. Most people don’t purposely give bad advice to sabotage you or make you feel like crap – they genuinely want to help you and make you feel better. So pay more attention to their positive intentions rather than the substance of their advice.
• Take a step back and breathe. When we hear bad advice and we’re in a negative mood, it’s very tempting to want to snap back or tell the person their advice is useless. However, the key to maturity is being able to add a space between your immediate reactions and how you respond to them. When you feel that negative reaction bubbling up, take a step back and a few deep breaths before saying anything.
• Thank them for their efforts anyway. Being polite and patient is way easier than being mean, and it’ll make you feel better in the long-term. If someone gives you bad advice, keep in mind where they are coming from and just give a simple, “Thanks” or “I appreciate your concern.” Then you can go back to ignoring them. It’ll often save you way more trouble in the future.
• Seek good advice from the right places. Good advice is out there, we just need to find it. One important thing to consider when seeking advice is to find people who have already been through what you are going through. We often find motivation in other people’s struggles, especially when they are people we can relate to. With the internet, it’s often very easy to seek out people on social media, message boards, or websites who have already been through similar experiences as us. You are likely not the only person to ever be in this situation.
• Ask for specific, actionable solutions. One characteristic behind most bad advice is that it is too vague. When someone says, “Be happier!” or “Be healthier!” there’s usually not much we can takeaway from it and apply to our daily lives. Instead, if you think a person has more to offer you, ask them directly, “What exactly do you think I should do?” or “What exactly would you do if you were in my situation?” By asking people to be more specific, you’ll get a much clearer idea of what advice they are offering you. Then you can still choose to accept it or ignore it depending on if it’s relevant to you.
• Be open to your potential blind spots. Sometimes a person may have good advice for us but we interpret it as bad because we are unwilling to accept it. This is one big reason why it’s important to at least listen to your friends and family because they can often protect you from blind spots in your perspective that you are unaware of. Many times our pride and ego can stop us from taking in good advice, because it rarely feels good to admit we don’t know what is best for us. However, we should at least be willing to give other people’s perspective a chance if we truly want to learn and grow.

There’s no escaping bad advice in this world. And sure, it sucks to have to hear it when we are looking for real, helpful solutions to our problems.

However, because bad advice is a part of living, it’s important we have healthy ways to respond to it without letting it get too under our skins. Hopefully you can keep these guidelines in mind the next time someone shares something misguided, unhelpful, or just plain wrong.

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