Be Mindful of How You Advise Others

Advice is a powerful thing. It can uplift, encourage, and redirect someone on a better path. But it can also wound, alienate, and deepen a person’s sense of struggle especially when it comes unsolicited or without context. That’s why we need to be extremely cautious with how and who we advise.

It’s easy to mean well but end up doing harm. People carry silent battles, and no matter how close we are to them, we rarely ever see the full picture. You may be looking at someone’s life and think they just need a little push, a bit of motivation, or some straight talk to get back on track. But what if that “push” is actually a shove off the edge?

What you see is never the full story

I remember a deeply personal example: a time when I was hustling just to survive in Lagos, lagos life tough gan, if you know you know. Work wasn’t paying much, and I was juggling stress, uncertainty, and the sheer pressure of trying to hold myself together. In the midst of that, my parents, unaware of what I was enduring, started advising me to be “more serious with life”, that I should get married and settle down.

Then my father mentioned a distant relative, a junior police officer, who had already bought a piece of land and was building a house. That broke me. I just burst into tears. It wasn’t the comparison alone, it was everything that had been building up, everything I had been shielding them from so they wouldn’t worry or break down themselves. To them, it was "just talk." But for me, it was the last straw after months of bottled-up pressure.

They were shocked by my reaction. But that’s the point: people often don’t realize how close others are to their breaking point.

Another example that comes to mind is of Azeez and Kunle. Azeez kept pushing Kunle to get married, thinking he was just being lazy or unserious about life. It was only after they visited a prophetess that it was revealed Kunle was under serious spiritual oppression, something far beyond what Azeez had imagined. Azeez later apologized, realizing he had been unknowingly adding pressure to an already unbearable situation.

Bottom line

The bottom line is: you can mean well and still be doing the wrong thing. That’s why, unless someone specifically asks for your advice, or you genuinely understand the full context of what they’re facing, it’s better to just be kind. Support them however you can, offer your presence, not your opinions. Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is simply to be there without judgment or commentary.

Let people open up on their own terms. Respect their silence. And remember: what you see is never the full story.