Taking My Own Advice

(I feel like I haven't written on my blog forever. I'm dissertating like crazy right now, but I'm burned out a bit today and feel justified in a 10-minute blog break.)

I had to make a decision today. I'm not talking about anything major (though there were bigger decisions to be made). It was a small decision about how to communicate something. Phone call? Email? I couldn't decide, and so I turned to a friend for help. The conversation went something like this.

Me: I can't decide if I should call or send an email.
Friend: Well for something like this you should probably call.
Me: I know, but I hate phone calls.
Friend: Sometimes you just have to do it.
Me: Yeah, but...
Friend: I mean, really, what is there to worry about? You don't know them, you won't have to talk to them again.
Me: I guess that's true. I just prefer email.
Friend: Well, what it really comes down to is that something like this is better to do by phone than by email.
Me: I know. You're right. I'll call.

And thus did I make my decision.

Here's the catch. The entire conversation took place entirely in my head. And by that, I don't mean that the so-called "friend" was actually me, or my alter-ego, or the responsible, non-phone-phobic side of myself. I really did have a specific person in mind, and for all intents and purposes, that's who I was talking to.* It was someone who I knew would straight-out tell me what I should do without letting me talk them into understanding why I felt like it might be okay to send an email. And it was someone whose advice I knew I would be inclined to follow. They weren't readily available in the moment and so I just summoned them into my thoughts.

After I finished the "conversation" I was sort of amused by the fact that I didn't need to actually talk to this friend to accomplish everything a real-life discussion would have accomplished.

I have conversations with people in my head a lot - does anyone else do this? I'm really good at arguing against myself, but other people have better perspectives and are harder to argue against. It's easier to listen to them and take their advice than to take my own. One problem is that they're not always around when I need them, and another is that sometimes even when they are, what they say doesn't necessarily turn out to be as perfect or helpful as I imagined it would be (though sometimes it turns out to be even more so). This is natural. I struggle to say the right thing to people all the time, and I can't possibly expect someone else to know exactly the right thing to say to me, without my actually telling them. If I just do it all in my head and cut out the middleman who has to read my thoughts, problem solved!

Of course, I really do prefer talking to people in real life. That's what I'll do if I have the chance. But I did have a real-life conversation with another friend about approximately the same decision less than an hour after my head conversation. It went something like this:

Me: I can't decide if I should make a call or send an email, but I should probably just make the call.
Friend #2: Yeah, you should call.
Me: Yeah, I know.

Yeah. Not nearly as helpful. But mostly because I'd already made the decision, thanks to Friend #1.

Thanks, Friend #1, for helping me out :).

(And Friend #2 for letting me talk through everything else - I had a lot going on in my head and needed to let it out.)



* I'm not telling who because it's unimportant to the story, and because I don't want anyone to be freaked out about the fact that I call on you for advice you don't even know you're giving. Yes, this friend is a blog-reader. Any of you can imagine your own voice in that conversation if it makes you feel happy and useful.