The Advice You’re Looking For

“I’m in love with my coworker and it’s ruining my life,” someone said to me recently. It became a point of discussion for a few days amongst a group of us. Do you date your coworker?

I have friends who have dated their coworkers and come to massively regret it. I have friends who have married their coworkers. 

Which brings me to the point of this blog—you will always be able to find the advice you are looking for. 

The end of the year is filled with well-meaning advice (heck, that’s like 90% of this blog year round). There will be reflections and lists and personal understandings of the best and worst ways to live, to work, to play, to dream. And it feels like a responsibility (as someone writing on these topics) to add the disclaimer that my own mind can change on any given Tuesday.

If you’re contemplating quitting your job and traveling the world, I almost certainly have a blog for that. Hell, I quit my job in 2018 and spent 3 months traveling the United States with The Smile Project. (Long live #SmileProjectRoadTrip!) But I also have blogs about how much I love my very standard 9 – 5, my routines, my “expecteds.” And I’m just one writer.

Amplify that by the internet. 

There will always be a blogger, a how-to guide, a community, an influencer that is saying the things that you want to hear. We live in echo chambers of our own biases. 

If you’re seeking the opinions of others (personal connections or the floodgates of online), the smartest thing to do is to make sure you are really right with how you feel. (“But I’m not right with it, that’s why I’m asking Reddit if I should date my coworker!”) 

Then at least read both. Read the thread about the person who fell in love and had 3 kids and never regretted any of it for a moment. And read about the person who eventually broke up and felt they had to find a new job to handle the heartbreak. 

If it’s true that you will always be able to find the advice you are looking for, then it follows that you will also always be able to justify what you want to do. And if you can justify it because of a social media post, an anecdote from a friend, or a newspaper article, then make sure you can also justify it to yourself. Make sure your decision aligns with who you are at the core. Guide your decisions not by a well timed video but by what you know and live every day as your personal values.

Of course, you don’t have to take this advice. After all, it’s only mine. And tomorrow, I may feel differently. 

But if I’m guiding what I’m writing by values of kindness and inclusion and adventure and joy. Of learning and gratitude and patience and growth. If I’m grounded in acceptance and balance and nurturing and care. If I’m focused on challenging myself and reaching for more. If I know who I am and what I want on a deep soul level. If I can learn to not just listen but to sincerely trust? 

Then let my actions be my advice. Let the way I live be my testimony. Let the love I share be even a fraction of that which I have always received so abundantly. 

And let us know that we already have the answer we are looking for.