The internet is flooded with all sorts of advice. We don’t even know who these people are. We don’t know if these people know what they are talking about. What proof do they have? Ryan Holiday, stoic philosopher and writer, phrases this so clearly and effectively in his youtube video entitled 54 Stoic Truths for Life.
Lee sent this exact video to me back in September of 2024.
Forever grateful, yet again, to Lee for that.
Ever since I received this video, my whole world has changed positively in a pretty profound way and my views on the world around me have opened up and brightened for the better. I am doing better. I am feeling better. I am better. I am learning from these lessons, studying the many teachings, and I have only just started to truly apply all that I have learned and studied.
I would highly recommend Ryan Holiday’s books to anyone and everyone. In fact, I really have started passing his name and work around to a lot of people I care deeply about.
Adrian and I read from The Daily Stoic together as often as we can (the idea is 1 meditation/page a day – 366 meditations to read from and learn from in total) and I recently gifted him The Daily Dad which is really applicable to any parent, but regardless Adrian seems to be enjoying that one a lot as well. Right Thing, Right Now is my current ‘daily’ read. SO GOOD! We have The Obstacle is the Way waiting for us, and we are going to pace ourselves on the rest of his collection. I do enjoy listening to his work as well, and most recently I have enjoyed two of Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom podcasts ‘interviewing’ Ryan Holiday. Side note: ALL of Williamson’s podcasts are superb!!!
Anyway…
I am clearly thinking a lot about this concept of ‘everyone has advice’ as I have been reflecting on my past struggles of sifting through what everyone has to share and have their various opinions and advice on…
It can all feel so contradictory sometimes.
So confusing and overwhelming.
I went a lot of my adult life NOT having my own personal opinions and beliefs. Or maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t have them, but rather I didn’t own them. I was very naive and subject to other’s opinions before my own. Easily swayed by others around me. Constantly questioning myself and my thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Part of me remembers it as it didn’t feel okay or right or acceptable to think fully for myself and have a difference of opinions. It might have just felt easier to be agreeable to others. Less nerve-wracking. I do feel that I have always had some pretty core values that I held tightly to. Flashback to my ‘goody two shoes’ days… Also! I just looked up how to even spell that! In all of the years that I have referred to this term to describe the younger Izzy – I have NEVER known how exactly that term was spelled. Weird! I learned there is a Goody Two Shoes bar! I’ll add that to my list to check out! =) According to Dictionary.com, the meaning of this term is ‘a prudish, self-righteous individual’ – always follows the rules, potentially pretentious and insincere at times, a ‘wet blanket’, a ‘party pooper’, an ‘old maid’, ‘stuck in the mud’. Alright, alright, I think we all get the point…
By values I held tightly to ~ I do feel like I genuinely wanted to be kind and be honest and show compassion for others. I genuinely recall not grasping how or why someone would act dishonestly or cruelly. I distinctly recall this line my mom always shared with the four of us “those that are bullying are being bullied themselves” ~ something like that – the idea of those suffering inflict suffering and pain on others… This all referred to some of the many school bullies we all faced throughout our school years. No one would intentionally bully someone else unless that individual was experiencing such harm themselves. It did help to try to grasp the psychology behind all of this. I do remember that. I do apply this same teaching to my current life. Also, I definitely do recall and believe that I took my ‘good’ nature to an extreme and then eventually used it as a way to feel I was ‘better’ than others around me, specifically my siblings. I completely own that now. I definitely had my ‘pretentious’ moments of feeling I am better because I ‘do the right thing’ and that luckily came quite naturally to me. I still believe I should have been doing the right thing, but what I am trying to clarify is that I don’t love the way I went about flaunting that I was somehow better because of it. Not better. Just different.
Anyway, back to it again…
Everyone has their own advice.
We really do live in a world of information-overload.
Constant stimulation.
Constant opinions.
Perhaps why everyone at one point or another may crave the desire to ESCAPE the day to day norm and live far far far away from everyone and everything. Simplify their lives by hiding from people and the constant buzz and noise of the world around us.
It’s a lot sometimes.
No one is better.
We are all learning and growing one day at a time…
At our own pace.
On our own journeys.
On our own paths.
I believe it’s finding that nice balance of staying open to what others believe and share with us while owning what we have learned to believe as well. Not tuning out the word of others completely. But trusting ourselves and our opinions and our experiences. Rupi Kaur put it nicely in the following poem in Home Body – there is a conversation happening inside you, pay deep attention to what your inner world is saying. I really really like this. As someone who always looked outward first almost instinctively, I am working on looking inward more. The answer does lie within me. I am still learning and growing. I will continue to learn and grow until the day my time comes. I can still own that I know a thing or two about the life I am leading. I can trust myself and my own advice. I can live true to my core values of kindness, curiosity, and integrity. I can do the right thing and feel good about that. I can remain open-minded to other’s perspectives. Opinions. Beliefs. Advice. I can also choose to tune out other’s advice at times. Everyone has advice. No one knows it all. No one is better. No one is perfect. No one is immune from learning and growing at the cost of some mistakes and potential regrets. I sometimes like to believe that we are all just ‘faking it till we make it’. This exact phrase was told to me when I first started my new role as Associate Center Director of the Lindamood-Bell office in Los Angeles. I was SO nervous to be in such a BIG role with what felt like minimal, unqualified, questionable experience, and I was only 23 years old. I did kind of ‘fake it till I made it’, and I ended up ‘making it’ and doing quite well in this managerial position with time. As we all do. With time, we figure it out. We keep trying. We keep learning. We keep growing. We keep bettering ourselves. We can take the advice of others and we can also choose to leave it. I believe staying open-minded is important and valuable, but I also believe in this information-overload phenomenon I am writing about, and the many negative drawbacks to having TOO MUCH noise all around us. Too many opinions. Too much advice. Too much!
We can trust ourselves and our INNER WORLD.
We can look inward more.
The Way Out is In is the name of a podcast I recommended in the past. LOVE THIS ONE! The name says it all!
When I think about ‘fake it till you make it’ – I think that’s what I am doing and probably a lot of parents are doing of course. As I have written before, I did not take yet pass a test to become a mom. The early days and months with Bryson were incredibly challenging and not just because of the sleep-deprivation. I wanted to know all of the answers. I wanted all of the advice. I wanted the golden handbook! I wanted the teacher’s notes! I wanted to know what the hell I was doing! I wanted to ensure I was doing the whole parenting thing right.
Alas, I have since realized… NOBODY TRULY KNOWS! We are all in a way just ‘faking it till we make it’ and we are all just doing the best we can with what we know and have in the moment. I can look around at others around me and feel less-than and worried and insecure and more… I won’t do that though. I will own what I know and don’t know. I will own that it is perfectly okay to not know everything. It is perfectly okay to be a novice in this still-new title I now carry. I don’t know how to parent a 16 month old toddler. I don’t know how to parent two kids under two. I don’t know a lot. A lot, a lot. I will figure it out though. We all do. The most comforting thing of it all ~ I know this part of myself so well ~ I WILL do my very best. I will try my very hardest without putting unrealistic pressures and expectations on myself and our family. I will love myself in the process. 38 weeks along today. Any day or week now, we will be meeting Bryson’s little brother or sister. Our 2nd child. This brings tears to my eyes… I am not nervous. I am ecstatic. I am not ready. (I keep getting asked that exact question “are you ready???”) HELL NO! No one is! I sure am not! We are not! It’s not about being ‘ready’. I don’t believe. I believe it’s about being open and loving and excited and trusting and fully aware that we will be doing a little ‘faking till we make it’ and we will own that and we will love our newest addition fully and we will do the best we can with what we know and have in the moment. We will LOVE our # 2 and ourselves every step of the way.
So what is MY advice to MYSELF?
Bryson has since woken up, so I am getting wrapping to wrap this up for right now…
My advice to myself is ~ You got this, Izzy. You will have moments of complete WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON, but trust yourself, trust the process, trust your loving husband, trust your partnership, trust your love, trust. Everything will be okay. You know you will do the best you can. You wouldn’t allow for anything else. Your best will look and feel different every day, and perhaps potentially every hour (a big thank you to Adrian for introducing this concept of multiple versions of ‘my best’ and reminding me oh so often! so helpful!) Pause and take deep some breaths. Be in the moment. Enjoy. Embrace the moments. Embrace the challenges. Embrace the high highs and low lows. One day at a time… You got this, Izzy!
And with that…
Thank you for reading!
BABY IS KICKING UP A STORM RIGHT NOW!!!
This is it! Any day or week now!!!
With love,
Izzy
♥️
calculatedchaosofthemind 