when it comes to getting advice , about marriage, or morals, or whatever

do you give more weight to people who have been where you have and turned it around, or people who avoided where you went

for example, I have had both the preachers who were always good people, saintly people,, and I have had those who used to be hustlers and turned their lives around

I tend to enjoy people who were always good, but learn more from people who have not always been good but turned around,,,


which helps you most,, the person who has always been where you wish to go

or the person who got there AFTER being where you are?

People who have turned things around.


I kind of flip flop. Sometimes good and sometimes not. Where do I fit in? You're making things too black and white.


Typically the person who struggled to get where I want to go. But the other's advice may be good too.

Actually both. I tend to listen to people who are genuine and real and do not offer their advice until asked.

Very good advice :-))

I think when you get advice or listen to people, you often you don't even know whether they were always good or had to turn their life around?

In any case I agree with Jack. Both can be equally valuable.

As long as it's not a preacher. Sorry to say, but as soon as I read that, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I give more weight to people I know and care about, people I know how they think and feel and respond to things and how they come to the conclusions and ideas they present.

Without that I have no idea if they've been where I have and turned it around, or avoided where I've been, due to sheer luck, with mindful discipline, or if they're lying about everything.


Always been where I wish to go? So they never avoided where I went?

Information helps me the most. The more consistent the better.
I don't take authority for granted or blindly follow it.
And that's ultimately what you are asking.
"Do you feel better when a guy in a white lab coat tells you about your cancer? Or when people with the same cancer tell you about your cancer?"

I take neither groups authority as a given.
Lots of doctors are horrible and barely know what they're doing, make crap up as they go along, trying to avoid definitive statements allowing you to hear what you want.
Lots of people get 90% of their medical information from reading web m.d. for confirmation bias.

One type of authority does not "help" me more than another.

Shouldda listened to my Mama...I gotta touch that stove

I've long found advice of any kind, to be a tricky business.

The thing is, that the way all human learning seems to work, is that it has to come as a combination of experiences and verbalizations of some sort.

Quite simply, I've found that I, and many other people, can only really UNDERSTAND the advice we get, after we go through some experience where it applies.

The worst mistakes I've made with women, I could not possibly have been warned away from by advice alone. I wouldn't have been able to really understand it.

It's like, when you're young and just getting started, someone might warn you not to let your lust control your decisions. But how do you tell the difference between falling in lust with someone, and falling in love with them? No one can tell you in advance how to do that, because it requires SELF KNOWLEDGE more than anything else. And that kind of self knowledge, seems only to come from experience.