What's the Best Advice You've Ever Received?

Let's share the most helpful advice we've gotten and how it has changed our lives

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I’ve been absorbing a lot of wisdom lately, most recently from Dr. Gabor Maté. I devoured his book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture and highly recommend it!

That led me to wonder about the wisest advice each of us has ever received and how that advice has changed our lives. It doesn’t matter whether the advice was intended specifically for you and communicated by someone you know personally or was general advice you got from a book, video, or some other source. I just want to know what it was and how you applied it to your life. That wise advice could help me and anyone else who reads your comment as much as it helped you!

It’s hard for me to single out only one piece of advice as the best I’ve ever received. There are many, though they tend to have a common theme. Right now, this is the advice I’m finding most helpful:

Don't be afraid to follow your heart or to do the work you are truly called to do. Don't buy into the common social constructs of 'achievement' or 'success.' You define those things differently. And that's a good thing.

That advice comes from Heidi Priebe’s book The Comprehensive INFP Survival Guide. I confess that I haven’t yet read the book, but this quote and the fact that I am an INFP make me eager to.

For readers who don’t know what an INFP is, it’s one of 16 personality types identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory; see brief descriptions of each type here. This is the description of INFPs:

Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Want an external life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilities, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened.

My desire for an external life that is congruent with my values is what makes Heidi Priebe’s words such great advice for me. It’s taken many years and painful experiences for me to realize that I define achievement and success differently than society does. I have often been afraid to follow my heart because doing so usually entails losing both financial stability and the approval of some very important people in my life.

But I finally understand that I must follow my heart and do the work I’m called to do regardless of the consequences. It’s the only way for me to have a life I consider worth living.

Okay, now it’s your turn. Leave a comment about the best advice you’ve gotten, who provided it, and how it’s changed your life. I look forward to reading all about it! Paid subscribers, please comment in the private discussion thread if you don’t want your words to be visible to everyone who reads the comments posted here.