Listen to it, and give it respectful consideration. You don’t have to take their advice, but you should at least consider it.

Austin Kleon believes all advice is autobiographical.

It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.

If this is true, in most cases, it’s likely that the advice you are getting is based on a very, very hard lesson that someone learned.

Experience is a brutal teacher. But you learn. My God, do you learn. – C. S. Lewis

Learning by experience might be extremely effective, but it is the hard way to learn. You may can save yourself some trouble by learning from someone else’s mistakes.

It is entirely possible to learn from other’s mistakes, just by encountering their story. They may not be giving you advice directly, but a careful examination of their story can help you avoid the same pitfalls that they had to fight their way through.

This principle is why Jesus used parables to teach, and why other philosophers created fables to explain moral principles. A compelling story invites us into the narrative, allowing us to have the experience by proxy, and possibly learn the principles of the experience without having to endure the same difficulties. This can work whether the story itself is a work of fiction or a retelling of a true-life ordeal.

Don’t treat advice as if someone is telling you what to do; they may actually be telling you what they wish they had done, or what they wished they had known when facing a similar situation. And always look for the moral of the story.

If the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence, chances are someone had to shovel a lot of manure to get it that way.

It is easy to get caught up in comparing our lives to other’s lives, and seething over how much better someone else seems to have things.

Sure, that person might have your dream job, but it wasn’t handed to them. They may have worked tirelessly for years to earn that opportunity. They might have a horrible boss, or terrible hours or an even worse working environment.

Another person might live in a nicer house or drive a better car than you have. But, you are not paying those bills, either.

It’s not healthy to engage in those comparisons. That is a waste of time and energy. It’s more productive to determine what you want to achieve and focus your efforts and energy to working towards those things.

Don’t want something just because someone else has it. There is no satisfaction in getting something out of that kind of desire.

Chances are, your life is not what you want it to be.

Negativity is easy because the things that are wrong are not hard to find. It almost seems more natural for your mind to search out and focus on those things that you don’t like about your life. It is rarely productive to think this way.

A continuing focus on the negative will sap your mental (and even your physical) energy and destroy your motivation. The end result will always be a mindset of despair. Eventually, you will have convinced yourself that there is nothing you can do to overcome the things that have brought you to that despair.

Despair is a very poor starting point for getting anything accomplished. It makes it extremely difficult to conjure any productive or creative thoughts and to find any energy to do anything. In this state, everything you do becomes a burden, making you further resent your current situation.

Then comes the disenchantment and the restlessness. The overwhelming desire to escape. The detachment from the present, when the focus turns to the should-have-beens and the never-will-bes. The temptations you would easily resist begin to become more attractive, since they seem to offer a change from what has become the ordinary and the mundane. Your negative attitude will affect the quality of your work and your relationships, and instead of working to solve problems, you’ll only be creating more.

From here, it will only get worse, unless you counteract the negative thinking pattern.

The number one thing you can do to begin to reverse the negative thought patterns is to actively and intentionally look for good things in your life, and when you find them, be grateful for them. Especially the things that you probably take for granted right now. Like the fact that your car started, or that you survived your commute into work.

Try starting a gratitude list. You can start with only one thing. Every day, read the entire list, and try to add at least one more thing .

Making gratitude a part of your life will do wonders to change your perspective. As your perspective changes, you may find that the life you have is not the life you thought you had.

Determine what is most important to you.

Align your priorities accordingly.

Do not spend more time and effort on a lower priority while neglecting higher ones.

Stop keeping score. Stop counting successes and failures, good events and bad events, as wins and losses.

Remember that everything that happens is an ingredient in the person you become.

Focus on being the best possible version of you. Keep striving for that outcome, regardless of the current circumstance.