[DullPointer]

This is good advice in general, but feels like it’s missing the point of what it’s replying to.

Concretely, it assumes a lot of agency.

The words “major life calamities and personal loss”, were key words that really change the amount of agency it’s reasonable to assume.

[neilv]

I have actually done something like the situation that the earlier commenter described, and would still go back and give this advice to myself of back then.

I could add more examples that touch on these extreme situations, but I was trying to give examples familiar to most of HN.

[DullPointer]

Fair enough. Do you think you could have taken that advice then?

Even if taking it negatively impacted loved ones (in the short term at least)?

Personally, I just don’t know how to make that kind of decision well beyond a certain point.

[neilv]

I agree that some of the times people might not take good advice about a situation is when they're overextended, beyond the ability to reason about the situation, nor to have energy to invest in the research/legwork to get out of it.

And maybe it seems like there's no good option or way out -- but they're too overextended to reason about whether that's actually true.

In those times, if you're in the position of advice-giver, one of the best things you can do is to also help relieve some of that overwhelming/unsolvable pressure that's the most immediate barrier. Maybe the most common example is to offer crash space.

With the immediate barrier relieved, then you can pair that with now-viable advice, like they need to quit that toxic environment minimum-wage job, or do couples-counseling or break up with that troubled relationship, or move out of that bad locale, or try out for this better job opportunity you can refer them to, or whatever the bigger problem is.