I heard some advice recently that really resonated with me: listen to all the advice.
Of course, this is the opposite of typical, where we’re told to neither offer nor accept unsolicited advice.
The argument was that even solicited advice doesn’t always resonate, and you never know who will have something useful to say. We don’t know everyone’s stories and broadly have no idea who has life experience that might give them a useful take on our own situation.
The context for the statement was a conversation among three people where one offered advice that worked really well for the second and not at all for the third.
Listen to all the advice and keep what resonates, same as you do when you ask for advice.
This, of course, requires defenses down a bit, to be able to hear and evaluate what’s being said, but again, that’s always true of advice.
So. Listen and sift. You might find something useful in an unexpected place.