Why Taking Advice from the Wrong People Can Derail Your Life

I am extremely selective about whose advice I actually listen to. Not out of pride, but because I have learned that this is essential for navigating life well. Not every perspective is helpful, and the wrong input can quietly derail you from your own path.

When I am facing a significant decision, I assess the person offering advice on two things: the breadth of their experience, and their level of emotional intelligence. If either one is lacking, their counsel is usually worth vetoing.

THE ISSUE WITH A LIMITED WORLDVIEW

It is surprising how many people operate with a deeply narrow view of life. This kind of perspective often sounds responsible, practical, or safe, but it is usually confined to what they have personally experienced.

People can only advise you on the roads they have travelled. If their life has followed a straightforward, predictable path, they will genuinely struggle to see other possibilities for you. Entrepreneurship sounds reckless. Unconventional choices feel unrealistic. Anything outside their norm, even when it is common elsewhere, gets labelled as too risky.

They are not trying to hold you back. They have simply reached the edge of their own mental map and are attempting to keep you safe inside it.

The danger is that when you follow advice from someone with a small map, your own world starts to shrink. You begin shaping your life around what makes them comfortable. That is a reliable way to end up feeling boxed in and stifled. They are not guiding you toward your destination. They are pulling you back to their safe harbour.

THE DANGER OF ECHO CHAMBERS

Echo chambers quietly shrink your world and distort your emotional clarity. When you are repeatedly exposed to the same ideas, unexamined beliefs begin to harden into unquestioned truths. Familiarity gets mistaken for accuracy. Over time, differing perspectives start to feel like personal attacks, and complexity feels inconvenient rather than necessary.

Advice formed inside an echo chamber is rarely malicious, but it is often dangerously overconfident. It reinforces what you already believe instead of expanding your understanding, leaving little room for nuance, growth, or honest reality checks.

THE DAMAGE OF EMOTIONAL CLUELESSNESS

A lack of emotional intelligence creates a different kind of harm, but it is just as serious. Emotionally unaware people tend to give advice that looks logical on paper but is emotionally brutal in real life. They focus on outcomes while ignoring the inner cost. They offer swift, blunt solutions without understanding the emotional terrain involved.

They miss the real complexity: shared history, attachment, fear, loyalty, grief, and timing. Often, they are projecting their own unresolved emotions onto your situation and calling it logic.

WHEN EMOTIONAL POROSITY GETS MISTAKEN FOR EMPATHY

There is also an important distinction to make between empathy and emotional porosity. Some people confuse porous emotional boundaries, the tendency to absorb and react to others’ emotions, with genuine empathy.

True empathy involves understanding and resonating with another person’s experience without taking it on as your own. The emotionally porous advisor, however, becomes overwhelmed by your distress. Their advice is less about your well-being and more about relieving their own discomfort. They are reacting, not relating.

WHAT TRULY HELPFUL ADVICE LOOKS LIKE

The most useful guidance does not come from people who claim to have all the answers. It comes from those who can see broadly and understand deeply.

A wide worldview allows for nuance, context, culture, and uncertainty. Emotional intelligence allows someone to sense where you actually are, rather than where they think you should be.

When both are present, advice changes quality. It becomes supportive instead of controlling. Grounded instead of forceful. Expansive instead of limiting.

Being discerning about whose advice you take is not an ego issue. It is an act of self-respect. Not everyone is equipped to guide you through your particular terrain. You can value someone as a person without handing them the steering wheel of your life.

Choosing whose voice influences your decisions is a form of self-protection. It keeps your life aligned with what is true for you, rather than what feels familiar or safe to someone else.

© 2026 Shamala Tan