Are you able to advise people?

When a person come to you for advice, do you supply an answer immediately based on the question provided or do you consider all the factors first before even thinking of an answer?

For an example, a person who considers divorcing his/her spouse. Your immediate reaction is to advice against it right? Your advice may not work well.

Do you know the exact circumstances that leads to that decision? Do you see the points of the opposite party? Do you know exactly what the person wants? Is he/she asking you for an opinion, direction, or simply need some ears to listen? Does the person already have some answers in mind and just needs confirmation? Is the person wanting some one to decide so as to shift the blame on the advisor. Is the person totally lost and don't know what to do?

On your part, you may have your own bias in opinion. When you give advice, it is natural that you will apply your own bias to the question on hand. Do you not, in a way, trying to influence people according to your own bias?

There is always a danger of over simplification to an issue. If you are not the analytical type of person, you will probably give a simple solution without consider other factors. Thus, you may give an answer that complicates the issue further.

There are always things that we may not know or understand. No one is able to know all things in the world. We would not be able to give a good advice if we are ignorant of many things. The best answer then is to ask the person to seek better advisor.

You yourself should not be too emotionally involved. You may end up with a wrong advice.

There are a lot of situations where the answer is in the gray area. This is by far the hardest advice to give.

The person who ask advice should not be the only source of information. The reason is very obvious. It may not be objective information.

By now you would have noticed that most of the issues lies in you and not the person who seek advice. The above is to show you what it takes to be and advisor rather that how to be an advisor.

When giving advice you should always try to be neutral and objective. Your advice should be advice and not solution. That is to say, the person who ask the question should decide rather than you decide for them. If the person is indecisive, then you should help the person to come to a decision by weighing all the factors and/or eliminate them one by one till a conclusion is made.

If you really do all these just to answer a question like "where to eat?" I have to ask you not to give advice at all. You don't know what is the question in the first place.