What advice would you give a friend in this situation?
Gain clarity by seeing your decision as a friend would.
When you’re facing a hard choice, tangled in your own thoughts and feelings, it helps to step back and ask:
🤔 What advice would I give a friend in this situation?
Then offer that same advice to yourself.
When we’re caught up in a decision, it can feel like there’s no clear way forward. Maybe we’re wrestling with whether to leave a draining job, stay in a difficult relationship, or move to a new city. Because it’s personal, our emotions run high, clouding our judgment. We keep turning over the same arguments and options in our minds. It’s natural to feel this way, but it can make it harder to see what truly matters.
When a friend faces a similar choice, we often see their situation more clearly than they do. Our minds are naturally inclined to evaluate others’ problems with more distance and fewer emotional blind spots. From the outside, we can take a more objective view and spot challenges and possibilities they might overlook. It’s like standing at the edge of a forest, where the whole landscape comes into view instead of being lost among the trees. From that place of distance, we’re calmer, wiser, and more clear-headed.
Looking through a friend’s eyes is like rising above a maze to spot the exit or stepping back from a painting to see the full picture.
When we’re struggling with a decision, we can gain clarity by imagining the advice we’d give a friend in the same situation. This shift in perspective helps us step back from the biases, mental loops, and feelings that cloud our judgment so we can focus on what really matters. From this distance, we gain clearer insight, greater objectivity, and deeper compassion, all of which help us make wiser choices. This puts us in a stronger position to take the next step toward what matters most.
The next time you feel stuck, turn to this question:
🤔 What advice would I give a friend in this situation?
