Best Advice I’ve Ever Gotten? Stop Listening to Everyone’s Advice

When it comes to your life, there is such thing as ‘too many cooks in the kitchen.’

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

I used to listen to every piece of advice anyone ever gave me. I even remember wondering why my young peers made so many mistakes and broke so many rules, ignoring all the advice that was around them. After all, adults were experienced; therefore — in my young mind — they must know better.

As a result, adults tended to really like me. Fellow kids, not so much. After all, who doesn’t love someone who thinks they are right and actually listens to their hard-earned experience?

But as I grew into an adult myself, I realized three things:

1. Adults (no matter how old and experienced) don’t know everything.
2. Trying to be likable is limiting.
3. If you ask for enough advice, it will eventually contradict itself.

Anyone who watches the news frequently will recognize this last point. How many times per year are we told coffee is good for our health, only to be told a few weeks later that it contributes to cancer risk? Social media, too, is rife with these contradicting statements and mandates.

Moral of the story: you have to make your own decisions.

That being said, you should seek out and listen to some advice, just not everyone’s advice all the time. So who should you listen to, and when?

Creating a Personal Board of Directors

Many of the world’s most successful people credit their accomplishments to the support of a personal Board of Directors: a group of people with varying expertise who can help you make important decisions. Before I go on, it is critical to emphasize that no matter how brilliant and accomplished these people may be, the person making the decision is you.

The purpose of a Board of Directors is not to abdicate responsibility for decision-making, but to guide you to make the best possible decisions for your life.

So who should you appoint to your Board? Much like the Board of a big corporation or nonprofit, your personal Board of Directors should be carefully selected to represent various facets of your life and each plays a different role in guiding you. Some people on my Board of Directors:

A. My parents and sister

B. My partner

C. My coach and their online community

D. Mentors in the sustainable tourism and startup worlds

E. My lifelong best friend

F. My boss

G. Select colleagues in science and conservation

H. My therapist

Depending on the decision I’m facing, these are the first people I’ll come to for help. Sometimes what you need is advice, sometimes a listening ear, sometimes someone to distract you, or sometimes, it’s just brutal honesty. Once you know what you need, seek it out from your Board first.

Does this mean I don’t listen to anyone’s advice outside of this group? Of course not! I still love finding people older and more experienced than myself and seeking out their advice when it is relevant and helpful. Sometimes the right answer is to spot correct and find an expert outside your network, especially when you’re facing a hairy problem that they might have faced before.

And to be honest, I still often fall into the trap of not thinking for myself and allowing people to guide my decisions too much. It’s really easy to do, especially when you don't love confrontation and also work with a lot of smart people that you respect and trust. And at the beginning of your career, it can actually be helpful to listen more than you assert yourself, giving yourself time to learn. But how do you know when to go a different way?

Learn to trust yourself.

This is much easier said than done. My self-trust is still a work-in-progress, especially after so many years of telling myself that others knew better than me. But sometimes you just know, deep inside, that the advice you are receiving goes against what you believe to be right. You might not know why, but you know.

It’s what you do in those moments that defines your integrity to yourself.

Do you cave and convince yourself the person giving advice must be right? Or do you stick to your guns? It can be difficult to trust that your feeling is right compared the lived experience of someone else but the important thing is that your feeling is right for you. You are the only person living this experience.

One thing that has helped me learn to trust myself (or my intuition) has been to create a long list of the times I made gut decisions and it turned out well. I don’t mean impulsive decisions or self-serving decisions. Gut decisions. Those times when the right answer just stuck out because it felt so right.

If you, like me, have spent long periods of time twisting into pretzel shapes to follow advice to be liked by people who give you advice, it can be difficult to know what gut decisions (or intuition) actually feel like. After all, you’ve probably tucked it away into a side pocket so it doesn’t annoy you when you feel the need to agree with a boss, mentor, or teacher. But revisiting your intuitive decisions can be a great way to take it back out and examine it in the light of day so you can remember what it feels like to trust your gut.

Without the trust in these feelings, you can easily become an empty vessel, ready to be filled with advice from others. Without your trust in your decision-making ability, your Board is just an echo chamber.

With your trust, your Board is a launchpad for success, where advice enters, gets processed, and comes out as a fully-formed decision on the other side.

Ask for advice — then think.

When you’re facing a major life decision, it can be very tempting to ask advice from everyone you meet until you hear the answer you were looking for. After all, it’s much less painful to be able to lay responsibility on someone else if things don’t turn out the way you hoped. Well, so and so told me I should wait, so I did. I missed my chance, but that’s just because I was following their advice.

I wrote this article because I have fallen into this trap and have seen scores of friends do the same. But ultimately, you are responsible for the decisions you make in your life — not your mom, not your grandma, not your partner, not your boss, and not your teachers. You.

So my advice, should you choose to take it:

1. Find a group of people you trust to give you great opinions and advice. Experts, people who love you, professional guides (even spiritual guides if you choose), and colleagues make a great mix.
2. Read lots and lots of books. Or listen to podcasts if that’s your thing. If you’re anything like me, you want to get as much information as possible. Just don’t let it stop you from making a decision. You could always read one more book. But I recommend making a habit of learning as much as possible from the brilliant people in the world doing cool things so the information is already in your brain when you need it.
3. Shut out the noise and trust yourself. Have the conversations, ask for advice, and read your books. Then shut it all out and listen to yourself. When it comes to decisions about your life, you do know best. Even if you’re talking business decisions, there is only so much overlap an advisor has with your experience; listen to them, then pursue your own path. There’s a reason it’s your business, after all.

You can always ask for more advice, read another book, or listen to another podcast. Usually, when you’re up against a wall with a tough decision, all that will fade away and you’ll have to trust your intuition. So rather than muddy the waters with advice from all sides, get clear on what it feels like to make a decision — then live with the responsibility, no matter what comes.