We’ve all been in the familiar situation of asking someone close to us for advice. We’ve also all been in the situation where we don’t listen to said advice that was so thoughtfully given to us. Do we feel guilty when we inadvertently don’t listen to the people who love and care about us? Of course. Do we have a hard time moving forward with a decision that we know wasn’t of popular opinion by these same people? You bet.

It’s important to understand exactly what advice really was, and exactly what it isn’t. Advice is guidance. Advice is direction. It is given to us by those we love, those who want to see the best for us. Advice is not a suggestion that we have to follow. While we should certainly take what our loves ones have to say into consideration, it is not a path we have to follow.

Now I have advice figured out. But, for a long time, I would let the guilt of not listening to what others in my life had to say drown me. I thought that if I were going out of my way to ask someone for their opinion, and they took the time to give me a thoughtful, sincere answer, that I would be doing nothing other than letting them down if I didn’t do what they had suggested. I might even go as far to say that I was embarrassed to face them after not taking their advice, because I truly believed that they wouldn’t understand my reasoning of why I made the decision I did, that they would be nothing but disappointed in me. I really can’t tell you how I stopped thinking this way. How I eventually let myself make decisions for me, and not for the people around me. However, I do know that it happened very quickly, like a light bulb going on in my head.

There was a day not too long ago that I had asked one of my best friends for advice about a relationship in my life. I remember being so scared for what she had to say, because I knew it was most likely not going to be what I wanted to hear. Instead, she surprised me. She told me, “Forget about what other people think. In the end you are going to do what you think is best for you, and if you don’t, you’re never going to be happy.” And that was exactly what I needed to begin to focus on myself again. Looking back, I think of just how wrong I was to think that I had to listen to what everyone else told me to do, just because I had asked. How wrong I was to think that just because I was unsure, I needed to let everyone around me tell me how it should be.

You are the only one who really knows. You are the only one who knows whether or not your relationship is a healthy one, whether or not you should stay in on Saturday night and study instead of going out, or whether or not changing your major for the fourth time is really worth all the stress. And even if you don’t know yet, in the end you are going to do what you feel in your heart is best, and it doesn’t matter what everyone else around you thinks. But it’s okay, because those same people are just like you, and they will eventually face a decision where they do what they feel is best for themselves too.