Sometimes, people give me advice when I don't ask for it. We've all had that experience, right? I'm going about my business, I share something about my life, and bam! Advice! How I should be living my life or things I need to do to right what is clearly wrong with me.
Sometimes, it's bad advice. Sometimes, it's really bad actually. An example: being told I just need to find little ways to cheer up when I have postpartum depression is very bad advice.
However, sometimes people give really good advice. Like really good advice. I thought I'd gather up the best advice I've ever received and share it.
1. "You make mistakes and you learn. Otherwise, how will you know what to do in the future?"
The only reason I know right from wrong, really, is because I've done wrong in the past and learned from it. When my mom was driving me to the hospital to be induced, she told me this: "you're going to make mistakes." It's really freeing to be told that and to go forward with it: to know that I was going to do things the wrong way for Forrest, but that ultimately, it will be okay. I can make mistakes, and then I can move forward with new information to do better next time.
2. Use Psychology Today to find a therapist or counselor.
This is a piece of advice I actually got from a true crime/murder podcast. Seriously, I'm not joking. One of the best things I've learned from my favorite podcast, My Favorite Murder, is PsychologyToday. It's an easy way to find therapists and counselors in your area. For me, the process of finding a new, or available, counselor is super overwhelming--but it's so easy to just search online. Best piece of advice I've ever gotten from Karen and Georgia--besides staying sexy and not getting murdered.
3. You don't know what you don't know.
This is another piece of advice from a podcast. I started listening to Food Psych, a podcast about body positivity, body image, and eating disorders. "You don't know what you don't know" is a phrase that's often repeated. Sometimes, when people talk about their food issues, it goes back to childhood--I know it does for me too. This can have a number of problems including: 1) making your parents feel guilty for things they did (like not letting you eat sugar during the week), 2) making you become paranoid about the choices you make for your child, and 3) making you feel like it's your parents fault. Realistically, though, Christy, the woman behind Food Psych, always says, "You don't know what you don't know." Your parents did the best they could with the information they had, basically, and unless they were being purposefully abusive, which is rarely, it's not something that you can consider faulty. Eventually, you have to let go of being afraid or feeling blameful and accept that you don't know what you don't know--but once you do, you can do better.
What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
