Back in the good ol’ days—when the only screen in the house was a rusty Doordarshan box and people still had time to stare at walls without feeling guilty—everyone’s favourite pastime was dishing out advice.
Giving advice was our version of posting a Facebook status.
“Don’t wear wet clothes after a bath” = health tips post.
“Engineering is a safe career” = LinkedIn gyaan.
“Warm water with honey and lemon is the magic potion for a long life” = early YouTube influencer energy.
Why? Because people had free time. And when humans don’t know what to do with themselves, they either gossip about their relatives, offer unsolicited advice, or worse, create new WhatsApp groups.
But let’s be honest. Advice, especially the free kind, has always been a double-edged sword. It sounds exciting at first, like buy-one-get-one offers at a mall. But too much of even free becomes noise. And nothing is more annoying than someone telling you what to do when you didn’t ask in the first place.
Today, of course, things have changed. Everyone is too busy doom-scrolling, shooting reels, and pretending to be busy. Even the neighbourhood aunty who once confidently advised me to drink hot water for everything from weight loss to heartbreak—she’s now too glued to her YouTube Vlogs to notice if I exist. Peace.
But when advice does somehow sneak in—like that one shirt on the discount rack you didn’t plan to buy but now can’t stop staring at—you need a way to deal with it.
And here’s what I’ve learned: treat advice exactly like trial room clothes.
You know the drill. You’re at a store. You see a shirt on display. The lighting is perfect, the mannequin is slim, the collar is sharp—it’s almost flirting with you. So you try it on. And bam! You realize it was stitched for someone who does yoga for a living and hasn’t touched rice since 2012.
Same with advice. From the outside, it sounds brilliant. “Wake up at 5 AM and journal your gratitude.” Wow, sounds productive. Until you try it. And realise the only thing you feel at 5 AM is regret and resentment towards whoever invented mornings.
That’s the catch. Most advice is given from a personal lens. It’s coloured by someone else’s experiences, struggles, wins, or mid-life epiphanies. They mean well, sure. But what works for a monk in Rishikesh might not work for a freelance sound designer working nights in Hyderabad.
So here’s a little life hack: (Yeah.. I am also giving you Free advice)
See how it feels. Stretch a little. Bend. Check if it fits your lifestyle, your temperament, your current bandwidth for change. If it flatters you, keep it. Maybe even get it in two more colours. But if it pinches, chokes, or makes you feel like an imposter, just smile, hang it back, and walk out.
And don’t carry guilt while discarding it.
We’re under no obligation to obey every piece of advice just because it came from a bestselling author, a YouTube guru, or that uncle who once gave a TEDx talk in a Lions Club hall.
Think of advice as options, not obligations.
Just because something worked brilliantly for someone else doesn’t mean it’s your path too. We’re all playing life on different levels with different cheat codes.
Sometimes you’ll get advice that changes your life. Other times, you’ll get advice that makes you roll your eyes so hard your ancestors feel it.
Either way—try, don’t tie.
Advice is like clothing. You don’t keep wearing it once it stops fitting.
And hey, don’t forget to smile and nod while rejecting it. It keeps the peace. And saves you from a one-hour unsolicited podcast on the importance of lemon water.
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