Sideways Advice

Have you ever heard someone giving advice that wasn't meant for you or your situation, but you used the advice anyway? This is what I call 'sideways advice' (actually, I just thought of that name this very minute, but I think it works). It's not eavesdropping. It's not stealing, because good advice is meant to be used. Sideways advice is capitalizing on a situation and also a sign of someone with a teachable spirit who is always willing to do some changing. 

I was in the car with my mom and another sibling, when, in the course of talking and instructing, my mom told my sibling that we all come to a point when it's time to put away childish things and become an adult. Now, this advice was not meant for me. My mom was in no way telling ME to grow up and mature. But it got me thinking, as some things do, and I couldn't get that thought out of my head. Maturity is putting away childish things. 

I've always considered myself to be pretty mature. As a little kid I was pretty quiet and somewhat intelligent, so I watched other kids and figured out what wasn't smart to do (5 yr old me KNEW that boys were not good role models. They were dumb.) and I watched older kids to figure out what was smart. I did that all through school and even gained some real maturity of my own. If you wanted to apply a phrase to me, it would probably be mature for her age. I'm 20. What do most people think is the stereotypical twenty-year-olds doing these days? Either someone who's hangin' in a basement playing video games, or a party kid at college. Most people don't seem to expect much from teens/young adults these days. So, yAy, I'm mature compared to that stereotype. Big stinkin' deal. All my ideas of my own maturity are being put under the telescope of what is real maturity. 

So maybe I am more mature than some of the other people around me, but that doesn't mean I've arrived. I wrote a list of things I want to weed out of my life. They aren't bad things. They're just childish. I'm trying to clear those things out of my life, just like I cleared all the toys out of my closet when I was eight. I don't need them anymore. My tendency to add a little bit of rhythm to my walk when I have a song in my head, the exorbitant amount of time I spend watching movies, my need to check my facebook notifications multiple times a day, my unnecessary sarcasm, my inability to be completely serious because I always want to say something funny, my random outbursts of emotion, and my recollection of all things relating to High School Musical. Whew. I add to the list whenever I think of something else. It's not always fun to be mature. But I can't stay stuck in childish things forever. At least maturity is a good goal. 

Sideways advice can change your life . . . I see it changing mine. 

m(r)