When someone gives you advice, are they giving you advice because they can see the future? Because they know what is in store if you do something?

Until time travel is invented; no.

Advice comes not from knowing the future, but instead from experiences in the past. Anyone who says differently is delusional or has ulterior motives.

For example, when uncle Bill is telling you that college is the best way to get a good education and land a good job, that’s not because he knows personally for you that that is what will make you the most successful. Perhaps it’s because he went and was successful doing it, perhaps it was because he didn’t go and he saw many of his friends go and find great success, maybe it’s just because he has seen so many other kids who haven’t gone to college waste their life.

He pulls from his own experience of what he has observed to give advice to you. This is all he knows, how can he give you any other advice besides what he has experienced?

So, if we can’t take advice as infallible truth of the future, how do we treat it? Do we disregard all advice? Of course not. As they say, there’s nothing new under the sun, so having advice that is pulled from the past is not a bad thing. It simply means that it isn’t always going to be 100% true from one person to the next.

Advice is pulled from individual perspectives from people with their own personal motives. Instead of disregarding it, simply get more of it. Two proverbs speak clearly on this subject:

Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. ~ Proverbs 11:14

Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed. ~ Proverbs 15:22

By opening ourselves up to many perspectives, we are better able to compare all the sides of an issue and come up with a solution that works best for our individual problem.

Remember, this doesn’t mean get advice from a bunch of people and try to please all of them. Advice should be taken and turned into something useful for you. Maybe that means following it to the letter, maybe it means throwing it out. But you’ve got to listen to it before you know.