"What advice...?"

Giving advice is a significant proportion of my employment.I give advice to people for five days every week. The other two days I try to keep it to myself.
The pattern of interaction runs along the same general lines; some prompt from a student, the class or the content being taught. It invites a clarification and a worked example or two. Often a tangent comes next, but this is optional, and then... some advice.
For the most part the advice is about how to approach specific problems or how to think more broadly about terminology. This advice is pragmatic, specific, prying apart a concept and inserting a new perspective or approach. But then, every day there is at least one interaction where something more is required. Most of these interactions involve tears from someone young who is confused and hurt. Someone trying to meet the expectations imprinted upon them by family and peers. Someone who ultimately burnt these expectations onto their own psyche.
What do I say to them?
Each time I try to weigh what will help them most. So many assumptions are tied up in these interactions. I'm looking to understand their underlying motivations, to see how I can get them to re-align with aims that ring true to them. It's emotional field surgery; time poor, risky but vital.
I tell them, sometimes, about the promises we make to ourselves; "I'm going to get better, I'm going to be better", "This time I'm going to do all the things, make all the advances, show all the people what I can do." These promises are made in heat, when we see the barrel of the year, the term, the week extending before us with the disappointments of the past pressing hard at our backs.
These promises can turn to poison, I tell them, if they are made too boldly, if the architecture of our behaviours doesn't bear the weight of our best intentions.Time, and the tiny distractions, the little forgettings the fun alternatives undermine our goals.
Eventually we begin to question whether there was ever any point to pursuing these now unattainable aspirations. Apathy and procrastination wedge  into the gap between this higher path and the real, everyday trajectory of our lives. Guilt festers this rift. And we begin to drift.
"You don't have to be your past. Let it go. You can start now and be the best you can be from here, and every day you can choose to do the same. To let go. To start afresh and make the most of what is before you."
This is the advice I must remember also for myself.
(3/6/18 - Sunday sketchiness)