Advice

The Best Advice

People say that the best advice is not to give any advice at all. But is this really the case? When one searches Google, 594,000,000 hits are recognized under the word advice. A cacophony of different pieces of advice with the corresponding sources jumps out of the screen. Is the whole idea of advice, therefore, any less important? The world does not probably think so. In fact, there are one million hits on the tag: advice quotes. People from all walks of life can say their two cents worth and offer a helping word or two when it comes to giving advice. In fact the word advice itself has much metamorphosis: advice, advisor, advisory and others that have become already a daily word in today’s conversations.

Before we delve on advice, let me first offer an advice. To avoid being grammatically incorrect, use the word advice when we are talking about advice as a noun and use the word advice when we conjugate the act of giving an advice such as advising, advised or will advise. In addition, the plural form of advice, as in the noun, is not advices but pieces of advice (similar to evidence, the plural of which is pieces of evidence, not evidences). But then again, you may completely junk my advice and advise other people on your own merits. Now, that is concrete application of advice versus advice!

Definition of Advice

It is usually the case that the most commonly used terms are those which are harder to define. Hence, the word advice and the action advice are conversation regulars that fall under those categories that people do not define. Simply put, it is hard to categorize an advice because it is very broad and it seems to be more academic than practical because almost everyone understands what an advice is. But to give us a working definition of the word advice, it is sufficient to say that to advice is to offer a possible suggestion, whether solicited or unsolicited. Now, the word suggestion might seem to be synonymous to the term advice itself, but then again, this is just an attempt to concretize what is otherwise a broad term.

This definition limits that not everything uttered is a piece of advice. Some smart ones can excuse themselves of saying a faulty advice by claiming that what they said is just a point of view. What is a point of view? A point of view is merely one’s opinion on a certain matter. It differentiates from advice as a point of view does not offer anything. It may influence a person from doing certain acts or in believing into certain things, but such is not the direct objective of a point of view; whereas an advice is intended to somehow exert influence on one’s actions or way of thinking.

An advice is also starkly different from a command. A command will always impose not just influence but control. Hence, when a general commands a private to fire the armalite, the general is not giving an advice on how to kill the enemy; rather, the general is imposing that the private must and should fire the armalite to the enemy. There is no other recourse than to really pull the trigger.

Hence, if a spectrum should depict advice versus point of view and command, the scale would follow this sequence based on the level of influence objectively sought: point of view, followed by advice and lastly by command. Note that the degrees of how one’s action is governed by these three concepts are not exactly equally divided. There are other circumstances that must be accounted for. What is however clear is that these three are different from one another; and for purposes of discussion, we are concentrating on advice.

To stress, an advice is a suggestion offered which aims to direct one’s action or influence one’s way of thinking. A lot of things can fall under advice. Advice does not only cover advice columns or helpdesks. It is a lot of things; and as mentioned, with five hundred ninety-four million hits, the concept of advice is too difficult to ignore. Thus, there is a need to somehow understand its many forms and varieties. Specifically, we need to know the types of advice out there, the sources of advice and the methodologies of receiving and giving an advice. After all, the key to saying anything, including advice, requires thorough understanding to avoid possible adverse effects. A word is difficult to swallow once it slips past a person’s lips.

Types of Advice

Since it is imperative that one must advise properly, there is a need to have the skill of knowing what type of advice one renders. The key delineation of these types of advice lies in the audience or recipients of the advise.