Features Lounge

Take my advice....I don't use it anyway.
I like to pride myself on the fact that I can hand out some pretty okay advice when the situation calls for it. I certainly seem to be the kind of person that those close to me can trust to divulge their most personal problems to, which kind of suggests that they not only value my opinion, but also listen to it too.

So why oh why do I find it so impossible to listen to my own advice when it comes to my own problems? Instead I just seem to let them fester into nasty, all consuming headaches and I get enough of those from the cider thankyou very much!

Take for example, a situation I found myself in at the latter part of last year. I received a couple of rather harsh comments about my weight. Had one of my friends been at the receiving end of such nasty outbursts, I would have sat down with them and told them that they were beautiful just as they were, that they needed to look at the people that had made those comments and see them for what they really were - cruel and spiteful folk who boosted their own self esteems by making others feel bad about themselves. I would then have pointed out that as a size 12, they were well under the UK average size anyway, so what did they have to worry about? I'd probably have followed it up with a couple of examples of celebrities who look far better for ditching the size zero trend and instructions to not let themselves dwell on the words of people who simply didn't matter.

Could I do this with myself? Hell no! I spent the majority of last winter looking in the mirror, pinching my 'fat' and feeling physically sick at the way I looked, simply because I couldn't listen to my own advice to ignore the comments I'd received. By the time spring finally arrived, I positively hated myself - a very unhealthy emotion to harbour for anybody, particularly ones self.

Of course, in the past there have also been those odd occasions (okay not so very odd, but let's not dwell on that!) that I have handpicked from the bunch, a selection of very, very bad for me boys. I've let at least three unworthy frogs rip my heart apart because I couldn't take the advice that I would have given any friend asking and dumped their worthless butts right back under the rocks from which I found them.

It does however, comfort me to know that I'm not the only one. It's only when you start giving out advice that you realise you're not alone. I've heard so many friends and loved ones utter the words, " I know what you're saying is true, I knew not to listen/stay with that love rat/ invest all of my money in chocolate carrots from the very start, but I just couldn't take my own advice!"

When it comes down to it, the saying about 'doctors being the worst patients,' simply rings true in everyday life, with each and every one of us. We all know the path that we should take, but the walking it just aint that easy. Maybe it's time we all started listening to that little voice inside our heads instead of smothering it with six glasses of Pinot and sending that drunken text anyway!