I used to be really bad at taking advice from people I considered intelligent, experienced, or otherwise accomplished. I think this is a common problem for ambitious young people. When you look at people who have achieved what you want to achieve, you think that emulating their steps will lead you to where they are.
So, in the past, whenever I received advice from a trusted mentor or friend, I often took it without much further evaluation.
"This makes sense. It worked for them. Therefore it'll work for me," was the line of reasoning coursing through my mind.
In actuality, emulating a successful person's steps makes little sense. The steps that took them somewhere don't matter nearly as much as the intention and mindset behind what they did.
Recently, I've learned to combat my tendency to take advice blindly in a few ways.
The first is not asking for advice at all, and instead listening to my inner intuition. This required me to learn to trust myself deeply. This is a work in progress, and it's getting better every day.
The second is to run all advice and ideas I receive in a sandbox in my head first. I take into consideration the other person's limits, beliefs, and biases. I make a conscious effort to entertain the idea, sometimes for days, before rejecting or accepting it. Crucially, this also involves trusting myself to make the right call.
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