The Best Advice I Ever Received Was Not About Success
The best advice I ever received did not come in a boardroom, a leadership seminar, or from someone who had figured life out.
It came from the realization that nobody really has.
For years, I believed life was a problem to be solved. If I worked harder, planned better, made smarter choices, collected enough experience, and avoided enough mistakes, I would eventually reach that mythical place called “settled.”
The problem was that life kept changing the questions.
Every time I thought I had found the answer, life quietly changed the exam paper.
A career that looked secure could disappear overnight. A dream could become a burden. A relationship that felt like destiny could become a lesson. A decision that looked like a mistake could become the turning point you needed.
The advice that stayed with me was simple:
“You don’t have to get every decision right. You just have to keep making yourself available for the next chapter.”
It changed the way I looked at mistakes.
For a long time, I saw wrong turns as evidence that I had failed. The job that didn’t work out. The opportunities I missed. The people I trusted. The roads I took that eventually led nowhere.
But maybe life was never a straight road.
Maybe the potholes were part of the journey.
We spend so much of our lives trying to avoid uncertainty. We create five-year plans, career trajectories, financial goals, and carefully designed identities. But somewhere along the way, we forget that the most meaningful parts of our lives rarely arrive according to schedule.
The unexpected friendships.
The accidental discoveries.
The painful endings.
The moments when everything falls apart and forces us to meet ourselves again.
Looking back, many of my biggest transformations did not come from moments when everything went right. They came from moments when nothing made sense.
The layoffs. The transitions. The doubts. The uncomfortable periods where the old version of myself was slowly disappearing, but the new one had not yet arrived.
That messy middle is where most of life actually happens.
We celebrate beginnings and endings. We talk about the dream job, the big achievement, the final destination. But we rarely talk about the confusing years in between—the years where we are rebuilding, questioning, grieving, learning, and becoming.
Those years are not wasted.
They are where we become.
This is the idea behind my book, About Life Choices & Potholes.
It is not a book about having all the answers. It is a collection of reflections about the choices we make, the mistakes we survive, the people who shape us, and the unexpected paths that define us.
Because eventually, we all realize something:
Life is not a highway designed for smooth driving.
It is a road filled with turns, detours, breakdowns, beautiful views, and potholes.
The goal is not to avoid every pothole.
The goal is to learn how to keep driving.
And perhaps the best advice I ever received was this:
Be patient with yourself. You are not behind. You are simply becoming someone you have not met yet.
