Give yourself advice as if advising a close friend
Describe your problem as if a close friend brought it to you — then write the advice you would give them.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Describe your problem as if a close friend brought it to you — then write the advice you would give them.
- Why it works: The "Solomon’s paradox" research (Grossmann & Kross) found that people show greater wisdom and integrative thinking about interpersonal problems when reasoning about a friend’s situation than their own identical situation. The mechanism is classic self-distancing: we apply more balanced attribution, consider more perspectives, and reason with less ego- protective bias when the self is not directly implicated. Reframing your situation as a friend’s situation exploits this gap.
- Evidence: Backed by randomized trials / meta-analyses.
- Avoid: Writing advice so cautiously softened for the imaginary friend that it loses all useful content — advice you would never say to yourself in first-person but desperately need to hear is exactly what this technique should produce.
Why it works
The "Solomon’s paradox" research (Grossmann & Kross) found that people show greater wisdom and integrative thinking about interpersonal problems when reasoning about a friend’s situation than their own identical situation. The mechanism is classic self-distancing: we apply more balanced attribution, consider more perspectives, and reason with less ego- protective bias when the self is not directly implicated. Reframing your situation as a friend’s situation exploits this gap.
How to do it
- 1Write out your current problem or dilemma in one paragraph.
- 2Rewrite it substituting "my friend" for "I" — make the problem exactly the same but belong to someone else.
- 3Read the friend-version and free-write the advice you would give: specific, honest, and not ego-protective.
- 4Re-read the advice and ask: "What of this applies to me? Which parts am I reluctant to apply? Why?"
What the evidence says
RCT / meta-analysisGrossmann and Kross demonstrated the Solomon’s paradox effect: participants showed significantly wiser reasoning about their own interpersonal problems when distanced by the friend-framing vs. the direct self-referential framing.
Honest caveat: The Solomon’s paradox studies used vignettes and brief reflection tasks; application to real ongoing problems through journaling has not been directly compared to the laboratory protocol.
- — Grossmann & Kross (2014), exploring Solomon’s paradox, Psychological Science
Common mistake
Writing advice so cautiously softened for the imaginary friend that it loses all useful content — advice you would never say to yourself in first-person but desperately need to hear is exactly what this technique should produce.
IX Coach frequently uses the friend-framing reframe when you are stuck in first-person circular reasoning, shifting your narrative position to access the advice-giving clarity you already possess.
Practice this with IX Coach →