When taking advice from someone, do you take it at face value? In this video, Dr. Carrie will describe the concept of "look at the fruit" and how to apply this to when receiving advice from others.
Kerry: Before you take advice from someone, look at the fruit in their life. Are their relationships going well? Do they have a healthy marriage? Are they finding success in life? Kerry: You do not have permission to judge people for not having good fruit.
Hey, Cadre, family doctor Kerry here. Every single fall, when I used to live in Minnesota, one of my favorite pastimes was to go apple picking. And there's just some amazing apple orchards there. The one of the most popular apples that was ever created, honeycrisp, came out of Minnesota, the go Minnesotans. And I would just love to go pick my own apples. It was just kind of a tradition to, like, be outside with the fall leaves and you just get to, like, put on a really cute sweater and boots and it's just all the things, right?
Like the hay bales, the hay ride, the pumpkin patches, all that stuff. And I just really loved picking my own apples and then making a bunch of fall recipes with it. And one of the things that you think about when you're walking through the apple orchard is you're looking for a tree that has a ton of really good apples, right? Because you want to make the most, like, good use of your time. And if you find a tree like that, you're going to find a bunch of apples to really fill up your bag. But if you, like, just go to a tree that has like, a handful of good apples, you're really going to have to kind of pick through which ones you want.
And I know anybody who's ever gone to the grocery store to buy fruit, right? You kind of like, look at the whole display and you're like, which ones of these look like the best? You may pick them up. You see if they have bruises or anything like that. But really, when you're picking apples from a tree or an orchard, you're looking for like, a tree that's just got a ton of them, right? It's just really ripe. It's the perfect day for that tree. And we use this phrase a lot in my group of friends that says, look at the fruit.
Look at the fruit in their lives. Do you want to take advice from them? Look at the fruit. And really what that concept means is look at the fruit in their life. Are their relationships going well? Do they have fruit in their relationships? Do they have a healthy marriage? Do they have supportive friendships? Are they, you know, doing well in business, in the marketplace, wherever their working is? You know, are they finding success in life? What are their kids like? Are their kids well behaved?
Are they involved? Things like that? You know, there's just look at the fruit. Before you take advice from someone, look at the fruit in their life and decide, is that the kind of person that I want speaking life into me, giving me advice? And so I just want you to think about that concept, look at the fruit. Because if you are surrounded by a bunch of people, or if your confidence or the people that you go to for advice have bad fruit, if they're like that apple tree that has maybe only one or two good apples on it, or it's like really not the right day for it, it's really not right.
Maybe that's just been all season, that apple tree has just been like a dud. Are you taking advice from those people? Think about that. Are their marriages falling apart? Are they on their 3rd, 4th, 5th marriage? Right? Are they constantly having issues with their significant others? Do they have supportive friends? Are they, you know, doing well in life? Are they always struggling to make ends meet? Are they struggling with bankruptcy? Are they, you know, going from job to job to job because they are struggling to stay with one company because they can't figure out what they want to do, are their kids a total disaster?
You know, are they struggling with things? And I'm by all means not saying to judge these people in your life, that is not what I'm saying. You do not have permission to judge them for not having good fruit in their life. But what I would encourage you to do is to look at the fruit in their life and look at what words of wisdom they are speaking into your life. Maybe in this kind of friendship, maybe you're the one that actually has the fruit and you're speaking life and help into them, and that's what that relationship is actually more like.
But I want you to think about that the next time you go to someone for advice or the next time you even just take advice from someone. How much weight should I put on what they just told me based on the fruit that I see me in their lives? Now, again, this is very subjective to look at the fruit in someone's life, but it usually trickles into every area of their life, right? If their life is falling apart, it probably trickles into more than one area. Maybe it's more than just their marriage. But I want you to look at kind of the whole picture of their life and what advice they're giving you and decide how much weight then you're going to put on that advice that they gave you because of the fruit that you see in their life.
I hope this was insightful for you. Take care, guys.
