Year Three, Skill #1: Follow Your Own Best Advice

Hypocrite.  None of us want this label ascribed to us. This word is slung around pejoratively to insult people who don’t follow their own best advice. 

We all are experts at giving advice, aren’t we? Telling others what to do might make us feel important and needed.  If we are lucky, sometimes that advice or counsel will actually be solicited, wanted by a friend, a family member, or a co-worker who trusts our wisdom or expertise. But the question for today is: Do you follow your own best advice?

Let me boast for a moment. Rhea and I are happy to announce that we have been following some of the advice we have given you over the past two years. Our blog and website needed changes. But because we are both technological luddites, we made the decision to ask for help. We believe so strongly in asking for help that it was the very first skill we published in May, 2015.  Our technological progress and our social media outreach have been facilitated by a smart, hip consulting team and we couldn’t be happier.

What advice did we follow?

What other skills have we applied to our love of all things messy and marvelous? We took a break, literally, taking some time in quiet to allow our deepest desires to speak and to discern where to go next. We persisted, and are persisting, because we believe in what we are doing. Minding the gap, paying attention to where we are and where we want to go, is a skill we are applying weekly. And we are certainly trying to be possibilitarians.  Following our own best advice hasn’t been easy, but how could we be authentic if we didn’t? We’d be called hypocrites for sure. Ouch.

Here’s our new plan.

We are going to write four skill series, one for each season of the year.  Our fall series will begin next week and is entitled, Five Ways to Tame Your Fear.  You will get a winter, spring, and summer and summer series if you follow us.

In addition to our skill-based blogs, helpful, free downloads will soon be offered to keep your life on track and fired up.

Because so many of you have asked, we are beginning to do some @messymarvelous dreaming about products. Our first offering won’t be too far away.  Keep your eyes on our FB page for a holiday surprise.

Find that place of authenticity and integrity, and heed your own best advice.

If you know how to give advice but don’t know how to follow it, take a minute. Could you–would you–follow your own best advice? Don’t be a hypocrite. Find that place of authenticity and integrity, and heed your own best advice.  Life is messy enough, Friends. Perhaps by following your own best advice it could be more marvelous.

Look for us next Monday, on FB and in your inbox, as we tackle some sure and perhaps surprising ways to tackle your fear.

Amy

Amy Sander Montanez, D. Min., LPC, LMFT has a private practice of individual psychotherapy and marriage counseling in Columbia, SC. Her book, Moment to Moment: The Transformative Power of Everyday Life, won Spirituality and Health’s top 100 books of the year.  Amy is passionate about many things in life, but especially about psychology, spirituality, dancing, cooking, marriage, family, friends, traveling, and learning. www.amysandermontanez.com