We all wanted to help our friends, that's just common courtesy. We want to make help them succeed in life, so we can watch and cheer them on the entire way. So, we often times give our advice to our friends; it doesn't matter what the topic is, we all have at one point caught ourselves telling a friend, "Well I think you should..." However, even though this might be helpful for them, or even us for that matter, sometimes it's best not to throw your two cents in on the situation.
Let me give you an example; I run quite a bit in order to stay healthy. In fact, I consider it one of my few passions in life. Sometime about running just gets me going, you know? I have been running for around three years now, closely approaching four, and as a result, my body has changed quite a bit. I dropped from 195 pounds to around 155, and look so much better than how I looked before I started running; granted, I still have a ways to go, but I have still made some visible progress.
In addition to this, however, I have also developed shin splints. In case you don't know what this is, shin splints are essentially micro-tears in the muscle and bone tissue in the legs, from overuse; or, in laymen terms, I ran too much, and thus started to kill my legs. Now, this became a problem for me, as it prevented me from running every day; however, being young and stupid, I just powered through the pain and kept going, and magically, the pain virtually went away. Now, I understand how stupid and dangerous that was, but what can I say...we were all idiots back in high school.
Recently, my shin splints came back in full force and were causing a lot of problems. So, I did some research, went to see a doctor (which wasn't really needed) and started to take the steps to fix the problem. I reduced my running, only ran on certain days, and iced my legs every day, and lo and behold, the pain went away almost immediately. In fact, on the third day of icing, my pain went from completely unbearable, to barely a dull throb if I pushed too hard on the problem areas. So, after two weeks, I went back to running normally, remembering to still ice my legs, and I haven't had a problem since.
However... a friend of my is a kinesiology major, so she knows more than the average person about the human body. She heard me talk about my shin splints and told me that I should be cross-training, to prevent them from coming back. Now, I was greatly appreciative of her concern and her willingness to give me advice; after all, I trust her more than other people when it comes to the body, excluding doctors and the like.
Plus, she was trying to help me out, showing how much she cared for me as a friend; I saw this, and greatly respected it. I told her that even though that was good advice, I didn't want to cross-train for a plethora of reasons. One being that I only wanted to run and do nothing else, and two, that I have already almost entirely removed the problem by icing and taking it easy. So, in my mind, while cross-training could have helped, it wasn't desperately needed. She however...thought otherwise.
My friend kept going on and on about how I NEED to start cross-training or else I will severely fuck up my legs, that I am hurting myself if I don't follow her advice. I kept telling her that I see what she means, but that I have already figured everything out myself, and didn't need an extra workout regiment. She did not get the hint.
It's almost like she was completely offended about me not taking her advice and just kept pushing and pushing me. She didn't listen to a word I had said, and kept trying to force her own opinion down my throat; it got to the point where I was basically replying to her in monosyllables, to try to end the conversation, and when that didn't work, I had to ignore her completely before she would stop talking about it. It was a nightmare.
Now, this isn't to say that I am just unwilling to take someone else's advice, far from it. In fact, I love to get other people's opinions on any matter or problem I have because I know the value of an outside perspective. Sometimes I just want to do things my way, as long as that way isn't hurting me. And if it is, and I can fix it myself, I'll do just that. The problem here is that my friend would not take no for an answer.
She believed that she knew what was best for me when I am the one who knows my body the best. She kept trying to force her advice down my throat even when I had repeatedly said that, while it's good advice, I won't do it. This is exactly what I was referring to from the start; even though you believe you have someone's best interests at heart, there will be times where you need to not throw your two cents at someone; it may just end up hurting your relationship with them.
Because with me, I know that I did not like the way she talked to me during that conversation, and now I want to limit my interactions with her; this makes me depressed, however, as I do consider her a good friend...even if she doesn't know when to stop. None of us want this to happen to us, as we all know that we are just trying to look out for our friend's well-being.
However, let it be a lesson from me to all of you; sometimes, it's just best to keep your mouth shut on certain matters, as if you don't, you may end up hurting your relationship with your friend for a while, or worse, permanently.
