When people ask my advice

I have no idea why!!

I will start this by saying that I’ve often been told I can be a cold-hearted person by people that know me. I’ve never found this hurtful or anything like that. I think I appear cold hearted to a lot of people due to the fact that I try to look at most things from a logical standpoint. I’m pretty good at pushing aside my feelings. I know there’s a lot of talk about men and bottling up feelings etc. and I’ve had many an ex-girlfriend tell me I’m an “emotionless robot” which would make me laugh but I’ve always believed that coming at problems from a logical standpoint is the best.

Anyways, I write about this as I’ve recently seen a number of Stacks talking about advice and it’s made me think about my time in the military and why I’ve had the people I work with ask me for advice. To start with, I joined later than a lot of other people. When I went through what is known as Phase 1 training I was 26 and had some real life experience compared to the others who were 17-20. I completed all my training and joined my first ship. Living on a ship you are in close confines with a lot of people and you all end up becoming a kind of pseudo dysfunctional family. You live together, eat together, work together and go out together. You share pretty much everything with each other. I’ve always said that to work out the actual REAL amount of friends you have in the military is by asking yourself how many you’d invite to your wedding if you ever got married. I have 2, maybe 3 REAL military friends.

I spent 4 years on the same ship, HMS Iron Duke. As the days and months passed I found more and more of the younger members of the ships company asking me for advice on various things whether it was relationships, money, family matters. You name it, they seemed to come to me. I found it quite bemusing because as far as I was aware, I never realised I was even approachable and had never given any indication that I even wanted to give advice. Yet still they came.

So what did I tell them? Well let me tell you how the situation would go. Said younger member lad or lass would come to me and ask to chat. I’d listen and then I always asked the same question as I’ve always felt that his is probably the most important thing in life. I would ask……Are you Happy? Yes or No?

The look I would get always amused me as I’m pretty sure they probably wanted more from me. But I would stick to my guns. I would get them to answer. Just a simple yes or no. I would then get them to explain to me what was making them unhappy and then point out that if they know what is causing them to be unhappy then they could then make the changes necessary to become happy.

I remember one time, one of the girls on board, let’s call her Demi, sitting down next to me whilst I worked. I heard her sniff. I knew immediately something was wrong. I’m not going to lie, I kind of hoped that if I kept silent that she might not say anything (does that make me a bad person?). She sniffed again, sighed, so I relented and asked her what’s up. She started telling me about this lad that she was seeing. Telling me about her situation etc. She didn’t sound very happy at all. My simple question pointed this out and within the week she was single (he sounded like a right arsehole and she soon found someone she called Mr Right and I think they’re still together to this day which is nice.)

I know that my singular question and way of giving advice is very simplistic, in fact it’s not really advice I give, more like helping them to see what’s causing their unhappiness so they can make the changes necessary. It probably doesn’t even help in the majority of situations, especially if it’s a complex problem, but it seemed to help the people that asked me whilst I was on board and I did pay attention enough to notice that they did seem happier.

I eventually left HMS Iron Duke (I was 31 at the time). I remember the day I left. Collecting up 4 years of loose change from various countries. I’m a multi-millionaire in Nigeria by the way. I remember one of the younger lads coming up to me telling me he was going to miss me. I was surprised and told him so because (and these were my words) I always thought I had been a “bit of a c**t”. He just laughed and told me THAT was why he was going to miss me. I was honest and didn’t bullshit them. I told them how it was and didn’t mince my words. He said he was going to miss that.

I’m coming to the end of my musing. What is the best bit of advice you’ve ever received? What’s the worst? The worst for me was “join the Warfare Branch of the Royal Navy. It’s really exciting.” Its okay but the gangway watches are awful. The best? Probably something to do with not giving up and always at least try rather than not bothering.

I hope you find this all healthy and happy and gets you thinking about the advice you’ve been given in life.

Vulkan

Advice: Noun. guidance or recommendations offered with regard to prudent future action.