You Don’t Need More Advice
This idea started at a baby shower. One of the games was a little card where you make predictions about the future baby like height, weight, eye color and all that. At the bottom it asked for a piece of advice for the parents. Immediately the only thing that came to mind was “don’t take advice from other parents.” I realized the irony as soon as the thought popped into my head because technically that is advice. But the thought came so quickly because when I had my first baby it felt like suddenly everyone had something to say about what I should do, what I should buy, what routine I should follow, what philosophy I should believe in. Friends, parenting blogs, random instagram accounts, the internet at large. Everyone seemed very confident that they had the right answer.
I remember putting the diaper bag that everyone swore was the best one out there on my registry. Multiple people recommended it. The internet praised it. And first of all I am very grateful someone actually bought it for me because I’m the one who put it on the registry in the first place. But to me it is basically just a glorified backpack and honestly, it kind of sucks. That is obviously a small example but it was one of those moments where I realized how easily we let the majority opinion guide our decisions.
There were also bigger moments where people had very strong opinions about what I “should” do, especially around parenting choices. And I noticed that when those moments actually arrived, something in my body would quietly say nope. Not in a rebellious way. More in a quiet instinctive way. I also knew that sometimes making the choice that felt right for me would invite opinions or confusion from other people, and it would probably have been easier to just follow whatever the dominant advice was and move on.
But the point is not that my choices are the right ones for everyone. I have friends who make completely different parenting decisions than I do and their kids are thriving. Different routines, different philosophies, different priorities. Some are strict about sleep, some are relaxed. Some breastfeed, some do formula, some do both. And yet the outcome is the same. Their kids are thriving. Mine is thriving. I remember being pregnant and reading what felt like ten different articles telling me the exact way I should set up sleep routines for my baby. One said if you missed a certain window you were basically ruining their circadian rhythm for life, another said strict routines were the worst thing you could do. At some point I just closed my laptop and thought this is insane. Humanity has survived for thousands of years without parenting blogs, surely we can figure out bedtime!! And that was kind of the moment it clicked for me. There is no single right answer. Every decision is filtered through our own values, our own lives, our own families, and something in me knew what felt right for mine. I am really grateful I listened to that instead of outsourcing the decision entirely.
Every decision we make sits at the intersection of our values, our bodies, our histories, our personalities and the moment we are living in. Advice cannot fully account for that level of complexity. Psychologists have even studied how having too many options or too many opinions can actually make decision making harder rather than easier. When we are flooded with input we start doubting our own judgment.
Even experts get things wrong sometimes. Every few years we learn that something we once thought was healthy or harmless is actually not so great. Entire diet trends come and go. Supplements rise and fall in popularity. Half the people reading this probably used a tanning bed at some point because at the time everyone thought it was fine. Science evolves because humans are constantly learning. Research is incredibly valuable, but it also reminds us that knowledge is always unfolding.
At the same time we are living in a world that is constantly telling us what we should be doing. Marketing is literally designed to make us feel like we are missing something so we will buy the solution. There is decades of research in psychology and political science showing that fear based messaging is one of the most powerful ways to influence human behavior. If you can make someone feel like they might be doing something wrong or falling behind, they are far more likely to change their behavior or purchase something to fix it.
Once you start noticing this dynamic it is everywhere, including politics. Every day we are fed headlines, clips, statistics and opinions designed to shape how we think about the world. Billionaires fund media outlets. Corporations fund research. Political campaigns hire psychologists and strategists to craft messaging that will influence voters. And yet we often talk about politics as if everyone is independently forming their opinions in a vacuum. The reality is that most of us are swimming in narratives that someone else paid to create. It is one more reason I think it is so important to slow down and actually think for ourselves instead of immediately absorbing whatever perspective is loudest that day.
You see the same thing when you open social media. Within a few minutes I have been told what workout I should be doing, what supplements I should be taking, what time I should wake up, what morning routine successful people follow, what app I need to optimize my brain, and what parenting strategy will make my child more resilient. According to the internet I should be strength training, drinking mushroom coffee, grounding barefoot in my yard, cold plunging, journaling at sunrise and practicing gratitude before my toddler even wakes up. And the funny thing is I actually like a lot of those things. I drink mushroom coffee. I practice gratitude. None of those practices are the problem. The problem is the expectation that we should somehow be doing all of them all the time perfectly. No one actually has the time or energy for that, and when we try to keep up with that kind of checklist we often end up creating more stress and shame than anything else. Instead of helping us tune into what we need, it slowly drowns out our ability to listen to ourselves. The more we chase someone else’s perfect routine, the further we get from the rhythms that would actually sustain us.
Even in my own field you see this. Therapists sometimes talk about certain modalities like they are universal cures. CBT. IFS. EMDR. ACT. All of these acronyms can be incredibly helpful for some people. None of them work for everyone. Humans are not algorithms that can be plugged into the same formula and expected to produce the same outcome.
When you zoom out historically it is actually kind of wild how many voices we are exposed to every single day. For most of human history people did not have millions of strangers offering opinions about how they should live. They learned through experience, observation and community wisdom. They probably made mistakes just like we do, but they also had to develop a much stronger internal compass.
Sometimes I genuinely wish I could spend a day as a cavewoman just to see what that felt like. No constant comparison. No endless stream of recommendations. No algorithm telling you that you are behind on your hydration, your productivity and your core strength before breakfast. Just figuring out what worked for you and your people in the moment. I imagine they still got things wrong plenty of times, but I also imagine they got very good at trusting themselves.
That is really the point of all this. I am not saying we should ignore information or expertise. That would be ridiculous. We absolutely benefit from collective knowledge. But there is a difference between gathering information and outsourcing your authority. Advice should be data, not destiny.
The people I admire most are not the ones who perfectly follow everyone else’s blueprint. They are the ones who take in information, think about it, and then trust themselves enough to decide what fits their life. Not in a reckless ‘I do not care what anyone thinks’ kind of way. In a grounded thoughtful way.
A question I try to ask myself is whether a decision is coming from fear or from self trust. Most external messaging is built around fear. Fear that we are doing it wrong, missing something, falling behind. The decisions that tend to feel right in my life usually come from a quieter place. Taking a chance on myself. Choosing something that aligns with my values. Nourishing my life in a way that feels true even if someone else would make a different choice.
Life is short. Like really short!! And when I imagine looking back at the end of it I do not want to feel like I spent my life following a constantly changing list of recommendations from other people. I want to feel like I listened closely enough to myself to build a life that actually felt like mine.
Which brings me back to the irony of writing this in the first place. I realize that by putting my own thoughts on the internet I am technically doing the same thing I am talking about. I share ideas because other people’s writing has helped me reflect on my own life and I hope sometimes mine does the same for someone else.
But even what I say should be taken with a grain of salt. If something resonates with you then great. Keep it. If it does not, leave it.
Because the whole point is not to replace one voice telling you how to live with another.
The point is remembering that the most important voice in the room is the one that already lives inside you.
