You can say anything to anyone when you do two things:

• love them unconditionally
  
• take everything you are about to say and apply it to yourself first

Before you are about to speak a great Truth to someone, try it.

Let me know if that doesn’t work.

Much I as would rather hear positive thinking than negative, I’ll take my own feeble insights over inspirational sips from someone else’s fountain any day.

Maybe I should explain myself, for I realize that 'insight' could be defined in may ways.   I'm going to define insights as what happens in us when we have a moment of observation about the truth of our world and our experience: perhaps we notice what works and what doesn't for us, perhaps we notice the link between things, perhaps we have a AHA! of some sort based seeing something a new way - even if we’ve encountered it many times before.

Insights are personal, specific to us, and don't always (or maybe even ever) apply to other people. Although when shared they can have value for others, the main value of an insight is that it tends to reset the direction of our own inner compass.

And it happens in a wisp of a moment.  

Sometimes for me that feels like the moment I take a stand.  Other times I feel that as a sense of release or a feeling of "this, and not that." But it is always sweet clarity.

No matter whether we are talking to a friend or a coach, the moments that have the most meaning, are those when our own insights pop up in plain view.  Like a balloon we’ve tried to hold underwater.  

That’s why advice from others is so unnecessary and more often than not, unwelcome.   

The biggest disservice we can render anyone is to try to replace their wisdom with our own.