Why don’t we take our own advice?

'There's a huge gulf between grasping something intellectually and really feeling it in your bones'

"Why is it so hard to take your own advice?" the psychology writer Melissa Dahl asked in a New York magazine essay some months ago, and the question's been bugging me ever since. I have the towering arrogance to imagine that if you followed some of the suggestions made each week in this column, you might be moderately happier or more productive, with a little less relationship drama, a little more inner calm. (From my email inbox, I know this happens at least occasionally.) But were you to infer from this that I follow such advice flawlessly myself, you'd be hilariously mistaken. When friends mention their difficulties with partners or bosses, Dahl wrote, she always tells them to talk to the person involved. Just say something! "And probably, this is good advice," she mused. "I wouldn't know, as it's something I rarely do myself." I can relate. I suspect most of us can. As the old wisecrack has it: "Take my advice - I'm not using it."

The cynical take on this is that we ignore our own advice because it's rubbish: we dispense it to seem wise, when in fact it's glib nonsense. (All exhortations to "try harder" or "snap out of it" or "look on the bright side" fall into this category: if the recipient could do so, he or she already would have, without your so-called help.)