Gleaning Advice

Learn to listen and glean. Learn to utilize what is helpful for you, and forget the rest. It's a skill set that will get you through a thousand scenarios. It doesn't have to be your own personal form of hell for you to learn from it. You do have the ability to learn from the actions of others. But you also have the ability to recognize when something just won't work for you.

I'll give myself as an example. When Chief was deployed, I had a newborn. She was actually born while he was home on R&R (he left to go back the morning after we left the hospital). Everyone and their mother told me to not let her sleep in my room. Never mind that I was completely exhausted, an emotional wreck, and overwhelmed. That didn't matter. Everyone said if I let her sleep in my room she would get used to sleeping in there and would never want to leave and my sex life/marriage would be ruined.

I listened. For two weeks neither I, nor my daughter, got any sleep. The only time she would sleep was when I was holding her. So I got smart and realized that "everyone" was an idiot. Or maybe a better way to write that would be to say that "everyone" doesn't walk in my shoes, live in my home, raise my daughter. I do. (Well, Chief and I do, but for the sake of this paragraph it's much more kick-donkey to say "I do".) She slept successfully in my room for two months and then she was ready to move on. It didn't "destroy" my sex life/marriage. The thing that "everyone" didn't know (or failed to recognize) is that infants know their mom's by smell. Did you know that? They know you by your scent before sight. So when they don't smell you, it can effect their sense of safety and security. What did I learn? I know my child better than "everyone". I learned to fight for her best interests, not what everyone else thinks are her best interests.

Does this mean we should ignore all "advice"? No. Don't become the "idiot". Learn to know the difference between helpful advice and what should happen in your life. Learn to understand that people offer advice from their experiences, from walking in their own shoes. No one's life mirrors your own. But that doesn't mean that you can't learn from their knowledge. Just because I've never done drugs doesn't mean I need to go and take them in order to know they're bad for me. I can learn from those who've done them and recognize it's a bad idea.

There's a newspaper article that was turned in to a song (The Sunscreen song), where the author wrote "Be careful with whose advice you buy. But be patient with those who supply it. Advice, is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth." -Mary Schmich (which I feel the need to point out that "Mary's" are really awesome, FYI) I will leave you with her words.