I told you so

Is this ever a helpful thing to say?

There are many opportunities in medicine:

The twenty-four-year-old who was warned about the risks of long-term oral contraceptives. She's back at thirty with difficulty conceiving.

The executive who was warned, "your headaches probably won't go away if you don't significantly cut back on work and stress." Months later, nothing's changed, and she's frustrated treatment isn't helping.

The middle-aged sedentary who was warned about his lifestyle and diet, now scared about borderline blood-sugar.

Whatever you may tell a person about health, love, and politics, you can be sure that you're not the only one talking. There's their inbox, newsfeeds, marketers, politicians, family and friends, paid consultants, and a story in their own head tying it all together.

It takes empathy to see all that. There's really no way that the thing you said was exactly the thing they heard.

From that realization, you have two choices:

1. Find a way to help them now. If doing so requires you to change their internal story, just know that this is very hard to do, but worth the effort in specific cases.

2. Send them on their way so that you can focus your limited attention on the people who's story is more likely to let them go where you're prepared to lead them.

Either way, "I told you so" probably isn't useful.

Toward ego or toward better?