8 Best Pieces of Advice I’ve Ever Received
I’ve tackled many struggles and obstacles throughout my relatively short life. Along the way, I’ve learned and developed a few mantras, outlooks, philosophies, what-have-you to make my life the best it can be. Most of these pieces of advice were given to me by people much wiser and more experienced than me, and they’ve all helped me immensely. Perhaps they’ll help you too. Without further ado, here are 8 pieces of the best advice I’ve ever received.
Just a few pieces from my notebook collection. Don’t leave it to grey matter!
Don’t Close Any Doors
Life is an infinitely unpredictable journey that we all must face. One of the most helpful pieces of advice I’ve ever received to weather that storm is to never close any doors. Never shut yourself off from opportunities or pigeon-hole yourself into being any one thing. We are all massively complicated people. Our wants, needs, situations, and interests can change at the drop of a hat. The best way to make your way through this life is to be open to it in the first place.
If you limit yourself, your life will inherently be limited. And what a waste of this one wild existence we have. Keep your options open, don’t let yourself get tunnel vision in regard to who you are or what you can be. We’re endlessly changing and that’s just a part of life. Be open to it.
Don’t Sweat the Small Shit
This is something I’m sure many of you overachievers can relate to. When I was younger, I used to stress about every little thing I needed to do, every piece of schoolwork, every commitment I made. But that kind of outlook will only keep you in a state of mild panic at all times. Of course, if you have clinical anxiety, not sweating the small shit is a lot harder (and often impossible) to do. But if you can control your response to the stressors around you, learn to prioritize, to recognize the true importance of the things in your life, and treat them accordingly. Missing one reading, doing badly on one exam, not putting 100% of your effort into one minor duty is not going to be the end of the world.
You will get through it, move past it, and likely not even remember the thing that was causing so much stress in a matter of weeks. Just take a breath, prioritize the things on your plate, and don’t stress about the things that don’t truly matter. You’ll be infinitely happier for it.
The Only Opinion That Matters is Your Own
This one was hard for me to grasp, and even now, I struggle with putting this advice into practice, but it’s some of the most empowering and fulfilling advice you can follow. As someone who thrived on the validation of my role models growing up, I learned to base a lot of my self-worth on other people’s opinions of me. Luckily, from a young age, I’d learned to only really care about the opinions of people I respect, and am that way today, but it still puts too much agency in the hands of other people to determine my worth.
The truth of the matter is, no one else’s opinion should impact the way you view yourself. Letting others influence your self-esteem is a recipe for disaster. But, if you don’t care about other people’s opinions and have no self-awareness, then you’re in for trouble as well. The key to mastering your self-worth (at least in my opinion) is to be truly honest with yourself.
If you did the best you could given your circumstances, then you did the best you could. If you couldn’t complete something on time or do a stellar job without sacrificing your mental health, then don’t judge yourself for it. You are the best judge of your own efforts, skills, and capabilities. Hold yourself accountable to them. Always strive to improve yourself by your own standards. Slipping up occasionally is natural, but giving your all to your life on your own terms is key. Do your honest best, and you’ll be the best version of yourself possible. What other people think, be damned.
The Best Revenge is Living Well
This is a common piece of advice that I’ve heard over and over again throughout my life, but somehow, it always seems to hit different. It sounds cynical and pessimistic, but there will almost always be a time in your life when someone close to you disappoints you or treats you badly. In fact, it’s likely that every single person close to you will do something that disappoints or hurts you. It’s just human nature that no one is perfect. The trick though, is to establish boundaries for yourself. If every single slight against you causes you to freak out and push people away, you’ll end up quite alone.
It’s for you to judge which actions are worth cutting people out of your life for, and which you can move on from. When you do encounter situations where someone hurts you too badly, disappoints you too much, and they fail to recognize the damage they’ve done and apologize for, or at least communicate about it, you might have to cut them loose. When you do this, it’s incredibly difficult and painful. There will always be an element of self-pity and wondering if you did the right thing by cutting them out of your life, but once you have some time and space from the situation, you’ll get to a point where you’re at peace with the way things happened.
When you reach this point, the best thing you can do is make your life as wonderful as it can be. Embrace the freedom you have from people who bring you down and, at risk of sounding cliche, live your best life. At a certain point, you’ll stop doing those things to spite the person who hurt you, and instead will be doing them simply because they make you happy. You are the source of your own happiness and no one can change that, no matter what. So, take the hurt and the pain, genuinely feel it for a while, and then go forward and make your life better. You’ll never regret a thing when you do.
You Don’t Have to Be Good at Everything
This is another hard one for me and my fellow over-achievers. It’s one I still very much struggle with today. From a young age, I was good at most things I tried. I was a relatively good artist, slightly above-average at soccer, a phenomenal student, and a great writer. Those things I was good at right off the bat turned into the only things I spent my time and energy on. When it came time to try new things I was interested in or needed to accomplish (dancing, playing guitar, driving), I was full of panic and frustration.
Being bad at something wasn’t familiar to me and having to face that lead to some very immature behavior on my end. I would postpone, procrastinate, or just give up on the things I struggled with and return to the things that came easily. But this kind of behavior completely limits your life, and if there’s one thing I don’t want to do, it’s close any doors or turn away any opportunities. So, I’m still struggling, but actively working toward embracing the things I’m bad at.
Everyone starts from somewhere, and as they say, practice does make perfect. I’m now learning to be okay with being bad at things, and that’s made all the difference. I wanted to learn photography, but am ridiculously awful at it. I’ve still enjoyed the process and my small successes as I learn what I’m doing. If you learn to take joy in the process and not let the fear of failure or inadequacy hold you back, there’s no telling what you’ll be capable of!
Don’t Leave it to Grey Matter
As a writer, this is one of the most important things I’ve had to master. I used to trust my brain to hold on to the little tidbits of an idea, character inspirations, and incredible scenes it came up with. Needless to say, 99% of those have been lost to the ether. Never leave a brilliant idea to grey matter. Write it down somewhere, in shorthand, on a napkin, in the Notes app, in a tiny journal you take with you everywhere. No matter what, write it down. If it’s an idea you have just as you’re drifting off to sleep, do yourself the favor of grabbing something, anything, to write it down. If you experience a hilarious moment or one of those tiny glimmers of profound joy that come across every once in a while, WRITE IT DOWN. You’ll be so glad that you did.
Put Yourself First
This can be a tough one for my fellow empaths out there who just loooove putting other people before themselves. But as they say, if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have anything to give to other people, and it’s beyond true. If you always put your needs on the back burner, you will become unhappy, dissatisfied, stressed, and all around miserable. In return, you most likely won’t behave like the best version of yourself to other people, and that’s no fun either.
Check in with yourself frequently, make sure you’ve figured out and established your own boundaries, and continue to enforce them. By putting yourself first, you will live the fullest life you can, and be able to enrich the lives of those around you, which, after all, is what it’s all about, is it not?
Appreciate the In-Betweens
I was forced to learn this valuable lesson when I moved to Los Angeles. I was living in a tiny (and I mean tiny) apartment in Ktown, working overtime more days than not, and just absolutely exhausted and wiped out every single day. But after a while, I learned to appreciate the little moments. The cute dog I passed on the way to the bus stop, the smell wafting out of the bakery on my way to work, the curious and adorable baby on the bus with her mother a few seats away from me all brightened my day. These moments were, for a time, all I really had to keep me going. If I’d let them pass me by without noticing and appreciating them, I would’ve been infinitely more miserable. Sometimes, when everything else is shit, the in-betweens become the most important things imaginable.
And that’s it, the 8 most essential pieces of advice I’ve ever received. Hopefully these can help you improve your life bit by bit. If you have other lifechanging pieces of advice I didn’t mention, share them in the comments! We can all use a little help every now and again.
