I’ve been thinking about advice lately. Not because I’ve been given any particularly terrible advice, but because I’ve been noticing just how much of it we’re surrounded by, how readily we absorb it and how easily something that was offered with the very best of intentions can leave us feeling as though we’re somehow getting our own lives wrong.
We live in a world where everybody seems to have discovered the answer to something. There’s the morning routine that transformed somebody’s energy, the diet that changed somebody’s life, the exercise programme that finally made them feel amazing, the book that saved their relationship and the supplement they absolutely swear by. There are people telling us how to manage our hormones, improve our sleep, organise our homes, become more confident, set better boundaries, build successful businesses, raise happy children and generally become healthier, wealthier, calmer, happier and more productive versions of ourselves.
And that’s before we’ve even finished our morning cup of tea.
I don’t think most of this advice comes from a bad place. Quite the opposite, actually. When we discover something that genuinely helps us, it’s natural to want to share it. We want other people to feel better, avoid the mistakes we’ve made or experience some of the relief or happiness we’ve found. I do it myself. It’s part of being human, isn’t it? We learn something, it changes the way we see the world, and we immediately want to tell somebody about it.
But I’ve been wondering whether, somewhere along the way, we’ve started confusing somebody sharing what worked for them with somebody telling us what we should be doing.
And I think that distinction matters rather a lot.
Because something can be absolutely wonderful advice, given by somebody knowledgeable and kind, based on years of experience, and still not be the right advice for you.
When somebody else’s answer becomes another thing on your list
I wonder whether you’ve ever had that experience of feeling reasonably content with something in your life until somebody tells you how much better it could be.
Perhaps you’ve been quite happily going for a walk most mornings, enjoying the fresh air and the chance to clear your head, when somebody explains that you really ought to be doing strength training instead. Or perhaps you’ve finally found a way of eating that suits your digestion, energy and appetite, only to hear somebody enthusiastically explaining why you should be fasting for sixteen hours a day.
Maybe you’ve been feeling pleased with yourself for getting to bed a little earlier, but then you read that the really successful people are getting up at five in the morning to meditate, exercise, journal and plan their day before the rest of us have even located our slippers.
And suddenly the thing that was working quite nicely for you doesn’t feel quite good enough anymore.
I think this happens particularly easily when we’re trying to improve our health or wellbeing, because there’s often a little vulnerability underneath our curiosity. We want to feel better. We want more energy, less pain, better sleep, steadier emotions or simply to feel a little more comfortable in our own bodies. And when somebody appears to have found an answer, it’s tempting to wonder whether we’ve been missing something important.
So we investigate. We read a little more. We add another idea to the list of things we might try, and perhaps another, and another. Before long, looking after ourselves can begin to feel like a collection of instructions gathered from people who don’t know us, our bodies or the lives we’re actually living.
The irony, of course, is that many of those people are probably offering perfectly sensible suggestions. It’s just that nobody has stopped to ask whether they make sense for us.
And I think that’s where we need to become a little more discerning.
Good advice isn’t necessarily good advice for you
One of the things I’ve learnt through my work is that two people can be experiencing something that looks remarkably similar on the surface and yet need quite different kinds of support.
Two women might both be struggling with exhaustion, for example, but one may be exhausted because she’s constantly doing too much and never allowing herself to rest, while the other may be dealing with disrupted sleep, hormonal changes, illness or a combination of things that need investigating. Both might benefit from looking at their daily routines, but telling them to follow exactly the same plan would overlook so much of what makes their experiences different.
The same is true of exercise. One person might feel absolutely wonderful after a challenging workout, while another might find that the same intensity leaves her depleted for days. Somebody might discover that getting up earlier gives them precious quiet time before the household wakes, while somebody else desperately needs that extra hour of sleep.
Neither person is necessarily doing it wrong.
They’re simply different people, with different bodies, responsibilities, preferences and needs.
And those needs can change, too. What worked beautifully for you ten years ago might not be what you need today. Something that was helpful before menopause might feel quite different during it. The routine that suited you when your children were small might no longer fit the life you’re living now, and the approach that helped you through a particularly difficult period might have served its purpose.
I think sometimes we hold on to advice long after it has stopped being useful, simply because it once made sense or because we respect the person who gave it to us.
But we’re allowed to change our minds as we change.
We’re allowed to discover that something no longer fits.
And we’re allowed to acknowledge that somebody else’s wonderful solution simply isn’t ours.
You can respect somebody’s wisdom without adopting their choices
This is probably my favourite part of the whole conversation, because I think it offers such a lovely sense of freedom.
We don’t have to decide that somebody is wrong in order to decide that their advice isn’t right for us.
You might have a friend who absolutely loves running. She feels fantastic afterwards, has made wonderful friendships through it and genuinely cannot imagine her life without it. You can be delighted for her, admire her commitment and listen happily when she tells you about her latest race without feeling the slightest obligation to buy yourself a pair of running shoes.
You might know somebody who thrives on having a completely organised home, with everything labelled, scheduled and arranged beautifully. You can appreciate how much pleasure and peace that brings them without deciding that your own slightly chaotic kitchen cupboards are evidence of some personal failing.
Perhaps somebody you admire has built a brilliant career by taking risks, working long hours and constantly seeking new opportunities. You can recognise their achievements and learn from their experiences without deciding that you should want the same kind of life.
Because I think this is where advice sometimes gets tangled up with comparison.
We don’t just hear what somebody did. We see the result they achieved, the confidence they seem to have or the happiness they appear to experience, and we start wondering whether we ought to follow the same path.
But we don’t necessarily want the same destination.
And even when we do, we may need a completely different route to get there.
I’ve become increasingly interested in this idea that we can admire qualities in other people without needing to reproduce their lives. We can appreciate somebody’s discipline without wanting their routine, enjoy somebody’s adventurous spirit without wanting to travel the world and respect somebody’s ambition without wanting to build an empire.
There is room for all of us to have different ideas about what a good life looks like.
And I think happiness becomes a little easier to find when we stop assuming that everybody else’s version must somehow be better than our own.
The difference between listening and handing over the decision
Now, I don’t want this to sound as though I’m suggesting we should simply ignore anything that doesn’t immediately appeal to us, because that would be rather unhelpful advice in itself!
Sometimes the things we most need to hear are uncomfortable. A good friend might gently point out something we’ve been avoiding, a healthcare professional might recommend something important that we wouldn’t necessarily choose for ourselves, or somebody with more experience might help us recognise a pattern that we haven’t been able to see.
There are also situations where professional guidance matters enormously. Medical treatment, medication, safeguarding and other important decisions need proper consideration, and feeling uncertain or uncomfortable about advice doesn’t automatically mean it’s unsuitable. Sometimes the most useful thing we can do is ask more questions, understand the reasoning, discuss alternatives or seek another qualified opinion.
So I’m not suggesting that our immediate emotional response should become the final authority on everything.
What I’m suggesting is that we remain involved in the conversation.
That we don’t hand over all our judgement simply because somebody sounds confident, has a qualification, has thousands of followers or happens to be somebody we love and respect.
We can listen carefully, consider what we’re being told, ask whether it applies to our circumstances and then make a thoughtful decision about what to do with it.
And I think there’s a particularly important distinction between advice that helps us understand our choices and advice that makes us feel as though we have no choice at all.
In my own work, I never want somebody to feel that they have to do something simply because I’ve suggested it. I might share an idea, explain why I think something could be useful or offer a different way of looking at what’s happening, but ultimately I’m interested in helping that person understand herself and make decisions that fit her own life.
Because I don’t live in her body.
I don’t wake up in her house, manage her responsibilities, experience her relationships or know exactly what it feels like to move through her particular day.
And however much experience or knowledge I might bring to a conversation, that matters.
Good support, to me, should help somebody feel more informed and more capable of making their own decisions, rather than increasingly dependent on somebody else telling them what to do.
Sometimes the advice isn’t wrong. It’s just arriving at the wrong time.
There’s another part of this that I think we often overlook, and that’s timing.
You might hear a suggestion that sounds genuinely helpful, something that you can see could make a difference, but right now you simply don’t have the capacity to do anything with it.
Perhaps you’re already managing a difficult health situation, supporting somebody you love, dealing with a stressful period at work or trying to get through a particularly exhausting few weeks. The idea of adding another commitment, however beneficial it might eventually be, feels like one more demand on an already stretched system.
And that’s worth acknowledging.
Because we can become terribly good at collecting things we think we ought to be doing, then feeling guilty because we haven’t found the time or energy to do them.
We turn helpful suggestions into obligations.
The yoga class becomes something we should attend. The healthy recipe becomes something we should cook. The journalling practice becomes something we should maintain, and the relaxation exercise becomes yet another task we’re failing to complete.
Eventually, even the things intended to make life feel better can begin to make us feel worse.
We talked recently about how sometimes care itself can feel like too much, and I think advice can work in a very similar way. Something may be genuinely supportive in principle, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s supportive to add it to your life today.
Perhaps you can simply put it to one side for now.
You don’t have to reject it forever.
You don’t have to promise you’ll do it next week.
You can just acknowledge that it’s an interesting idea and leave it there until, or unless, it becomes useful.
There’s something rather lovely about allowing ourselves to learn without feeling compelled to act on everything we learn.
What happens when we start trusting ourselves a little more?
I think one of the reasons we’re so susceptible to advice is that many of us have spent a long time looking outside ourselves for confirmation that we’re doing things properly.
We want to make good decisions, particularly when those decisions affect our health, relationships, families or future. We don’t want to miss something important, make a mistake or discover later that there was a better way.
And when we’re uncertain, somebody else’s confidence can feel very reassuring.
But I wonder whether constantly looking for the next answer can sometimes make us less confident in the answers we’ve already found.
We stop noticing what works for us because we’re too busy wondering whether there’s something better.
We stop trusting our own experience because somebody else has a different one.
And gradually, we can begin to feel as though everybody else knows how to live our lives better than we do.
Of course, we all have things to learn. I certainly do, and I hope I always will. I love discovering new ideas, having my thinking challenged and finding out that something I previously believed wasn’t quite right.
But learning doesn’t have to mean abandoning everything we already know about ourselves.
In fact, I think some of the most useful learning happens when we bring new information into conversation with our own experience.
We hear something interesting and wonder how it might apply to us. We explore it, perhaps try it, notice what happens and decide whether it deserves a place in our lives.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
And sometimes we discover that a little piece of the idea is useful, even if the rest isn’t.
We don’t have to accept or reject the whole thing.
We can take what helps and leave what doesn’t.
Your invitation this Monday
So this week, rather than giving you another collection of things to try, I’d love you to spend a little time noticing the advice you’re already carrying around.
Perhaps there’s something somebody said years ago that still influences the way you think about yourself. Perhaps there’s a routine you’ve been trying to follow because everybody seems to recommend it, even though it doesn’t really suit you. Or perhaps you’ve recently heard something that sounds interesting but you’re not quite sure whether it belongs in your life.
You don’t need to make any enormous decisions about it. Just get curious about where the advice came from, what it was intended to help with and whether it actually fits the person you are today.
And if you find yourself wondering whether you ought to be doing something simply because somebody else thinks it’s a good idea, perhaps these three questions might help.
Does this advice actually apply to my life?
Does it help me understand myself and my choices, or does it simply leave me feeling that I’m doing something wrong?
If nobody else knew what I decided, would I still want to follow it?
I particularly like that last one, because sometimes we don’t realise how much our decisions are influenced by the imagined reactions of other people until we quietly remove them from the picture.
Perhaps you’d still choose exactly the same thing.
Perhaps you’d choose something completely different.
Either way, you’ve given yourself a little space to find out.
A little more freedom to be yourself
I think there’s a quiet kind of happiness that comes from no longer feeling that we have to turn every interesting idea into a personal improvement project.
From being able to enjoy a conversation without coming away with another thing to do, read a book without feeling obliged to follow every suggestion and admire somebody else’s life without immediately questioning our own.
We can remain curious, open-minded and willing to learn while also becoming more comfortable with our own preferences, values and ways of doing things.
And perhaps that’s one of the loveliest things about getting to know ourselves better. We gradually become less interested in finding the one perfect way to live and more interested in creating a life that actually feels good to inhabit.
A life that makes room for our own rhythms, our own interests, our own bodies and our own particular ideas about what happiness looks like.
There will always be somebody doing something differently. Somebody who gets up earlier, eats better, exercises more, achieves more, travels further or seems to have discovered a wonderful new way of doing something we’ve been doing quite happily for years.
And sometimes they’ll have something genuinely useful to teach us.
I hope we never stop listening.
But I also hope we remember that listening doesn’t mean agreeing, learning doesn’t mean copying, and respecting somebody’s experience doesn’t mean we have to make it our own.
So perhaps this week, give yourself permission to be a little more selective about the advice you carry with you.
Keep the ideas that help you understand yourself, care for yourself and create a life that feels more like yours. Stay curious about the things that challenge you, especially when they come from people whose knowledge and judgement you trust. And allow the rest to pass by without feeling that you need to justify why you haven’t taken it on board.
Because the aim isn’t to become somebody who never needs advice.
It’s to become somebody who can receive it thoughtfully, make use of what’s helpful and still trust herself to have a say in the life she’s creating.
You can be grateful for somebody’s wisdom without making it your own.
And perhaps, amongst all the voices telling us how we ought to live, there’s something rather wonderful about making a little more room to hear our own.
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#HalcyonDays
A little invitation before you go...
This idea of finding what works for you, rather than trying to follow everybody else’s advice, is very much at the heart of something I’ve been creating at Halcyon.
The Halcyon Women’s Wellbeing Library is a growing collection of FREE resources, guidance and self-care practices designed to help you understand yourself a little better, explore different ways of supporting your wellbeing and find the things that genuinely make a difference to your life.
It’s not about giving you another enormous list of things you should be doing. Quite the opposite. I want it to be somewhere you can wander, explore, learn something new and take away whatever feels useful, at your own pace and in your own way.
The Library will be opening soon, and if you’d like to be amongst the first to hear about it, I’d love you to join the waiting room.
🧡 Join the Library waiting room here
No pressure to do anything just yet. Just a little invitation to come and see what’s waiting for you when the doors open.
