Whether or not you ask for advice and how you accept advice when it is given is a great predictor of your future. Those who are reluctant to ask for advice or are resistant when it is given are likely to have a poor future. The trick for success is to seek advice from those who are well qualified to give it.

When I say "well qualified" I don't mean that they have a piece of paper from some institution. I have had well credentialed financial planners attend my wealth creation course who were broke and knew nothing about the realities of how to become wealthy. There is a lot of difference between well credentialed and well qualified.

When I say "well qualified" I mean that they have the runs on the board. If you are taking financial advice from someone who has never been successful financially in their whole life then you are probably seeking counsel in the wrong place. Likewise if you are taking emotional advice from someone who is always stressed or worried or relationship advice from someone who has a history of short term or disastrous relationships then you would do better looking elsewhere.

But what if you're the type of person who never seeks advice at all, what does that tell us? Let's have a look at some interesting facts.

The people who need advice the most tend to have three characteristics in common with each other.

Firstly they are the last to recognize that they need advice. They go from one mistake to another without their life improving in any way year after year, yet they don't seem to realize that they could make could use of some well qualified advice.

These people are the victims of their own ego. They feel that they know everything that they need to know even though the facts are telling the world the exact opposite story. If you want to really succeed in life then you have to be willing to park your ego for long enough to admit that there are things you don't know.

The second characteristic that those in greatest need for advice share with each other is that even when they finally realize that they need advice they are the still the last to ask for it.

Again this is a sign of ego controlling the mind. They are afraid of appearing foolish by admitting that they don't know something. There is an old wise Chinese proverb that says "ask for help and you may appear foolish for a few minutes but if you don't ask for help you will be a fool for your whole life."

The third thing that these people have in common is that when they do get well qualified advice they are the least likely to appreciate it and will often argue against it.

I know a young man who fancies himself as an expert in stock market investing, even though he has no real life evidence to support the claim. Last week I asked him if he had read Buffettology, the book on the strategies that Warren Buffett uses in his investing. This young man told me that he thought Buffett's approach to investing was stupid and then he quoted a bunch of so called experts to back his opinion.

The facts are that Warren Buffett is the most successful investor in history. Starting from scratch and applying his particular investment strategies over a period of fifty years he has built a net worth of fifty two billion dollars solely from stock market investing and is the second richest man in the world at the time I am writing this article.

It is interesting that a person who is basically broke and wants to make a living on the stock market will argue against the strategies of the most successful stock market investor in history who has a fifty year track record of consistent excellence in results.

It is also interesting that there are so-called experts out there who are also willing to argue against a man who has made ten thousand times the money from stock market investing than those so-called experts could ever dream of making themselves.

It's again interesting that Warren Buffett himself, when he was a young man, was so willing to take well qualified advice that he offered to work full time for no salary just so he could work with the best investor of that era and learn what he knew.

What are you like at seeking and taking advice? Are you more like my young investor friend or are you more like Warren Buffett?