Let People Screw Up

When you care about someone you wish to prevent them pain and suffering and wasting their time. You just want them to be happy. You think by preventing them from screwing up that this will make them happy.

You are sadly mistaken.

If you truely care about someone you do this...

• Weigh the situation and decide if it's petty or not
• If the situation is petty then do not try to help them and let them do their own thing.
• If the situation is not petty then tell them you may know how to help them out or just tell them your idea. Do not tell them they are wrong but that it is something that you have found that helps you.
• If they do not like the idea or don't try it then don't bother them about it.
• Let them screw up
• Do not ever tell them, "I told you so" or "Didn't I tell you" or anything similar.
• Just say something like, "that sucks" or huh. Do not act like an asshole about it

If you bother people with your take on things after they already said no they will resent you. If you were right and things went badly and you tell them that you were right they will resent you. Basically if you act like you know more than them people will resent you.

Offer your advice and then let it sit. Do not push it.

You will lose friends, networking abilities, lovers, etc. if you are a pushy person. It is super annoying and nobody likes it.

One of the friendliest ways to say it is, "Hey I had to deal with this before, would you like some help with it?" or "Hey I had to deal with this before, I found a really cool trick. Want to see it?" If they say no then reply, "Ok" then go about your business.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't force them to drink. If you do then you probably end up drowning them and that isn't your intention.

Let's say you have a child. That child keeps trying to climb on something and you know there is a good chance they will fall. So you keep telling them not to climb on it. In their mind they have no idea what you are talking about. They listen but only momentarily.

The best bet is to tell them once. When you tell them once you gain credibility for when things do happen as you said. Then you let them mess up. After they mess up they will see how bad things suck and teach themselves that it sucked and that you were right. If you tell them you were right they will only hate you. They must trust you on their own. Doing this will give you greater power to teach them in the future.

I had to learn this the extremely hard way. Sometimes you have to let people burn themselves before learning.