Dr Phil is a popular American talk show host and counsellor. He is especially good at helping people with family, relationship and other personal problems.
But he is not without marriage problem of his own.
We are all good counsellors. We all can help others solve their problems but we can't solve our own same problems.
Many years ago, I read a short story about a couple. The wife worked as a relationship adviser. In those days, when people had emotional problems, they wrote in to the newspapers, periodicals or weeklies which employed columnists to advise the readers on their problems. So this wife worked as a columnist and she regularly worked all day including deep into the night to pen out her advice for her readers. She neglected to do her part for the works required at home. For her, work was the most and only important task.
She was so good at her work she was appropriately called 'the light of the community".
One day she received a help request from a man. The man had a problem. He did a day job, cared for his children and did all the house chores. His wife was busy with her own work all day and night and ignored his and the family's need. He had no way of communicating with his wife to resolve the issues. All he wanted was for the wife to work a little less and paid some attention to him and the family.
The wife sympathetically wrote a reply to this reader. She gave him advice on how to approach and deal with his wife. She said, his wife was wrong to have put all attention on her work, at great expense to the emotional needs of her family, and yada, yada, yada.
Next, this woman columnist was shown her own exact words by her husband. He had written to his wife for help. He was that reader.
We are all great advisors, for others. Somehow, when we deal with our own affairs, we become totally paralysed and useless.
We just do not listen to those who are close to us. They may have that exact medicine to cure our ills, but that medicine is more effective if dispensed from others.
Why?
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