Advice on Advice?

You should really consider…

Have you thought about…

What you need to do is…

I read somewhere that…

The trick is…

Whatever you do, don’t…

You should buy...

You’d be crazy not to…

Why don’t you just…

If I were you I would...

When a sentence begins with any of the phrases above, you can almost predict what’s coming next… advice.

What is advice, really? It’s guidance (invited or unsolicited) about a future action. For better or worse, it’s offered generously and often. Have you received any advice today? Most likely. It can come from a partner, family member, friend, colleague, mentor, or even a stranger. But no matter who it comes from, the choice of what the hell to do with it is ours.

The better question becomes: how do you filter it? What do you accept, what do you decline, and what do you save for later?

This is something I’ve often struggled with, but then I was introduced to the Celery Test. Have you heard of it before? If not, stick with me. I’m about to offer a little advice on how to take advice.

I can’t take credit for the Celery Test; that belongs to Simon Sinek, but I’m happily borrowing it for my own life and now sharing it with you.

Simon recently revisited the Celery Test as a guest on the Aspire podcast with Emma Grede, or, if you’d prefer to time-travel back to 2015, you can read about it on his blog.

Here is my interpretation of the celery test.

The Celery Test is a metaphor for what to do with advice. Cue “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash. But in this context, the real question isn’t about you, it’s about the advice. Should it stay, or should it go?

As I mentioned earlier, we are constantly given advice, but the problem is knowing which advice to follow.

The Celery Test is a metaphor for filtering advice through your WHY. He explains the metaphor by setting a scene that goes something like this: Imagine you go to a dinner party, and everyone gives you advice on what to buy at the grocery store on your next trip. “You need M&Ms.” “Rice milk is the move.” “You must add Kit Kats to your list.” “Adding celery to your diet is a game-changer.” So you head to the store and buy everything. The process costs you precious time and money. Then you find yourself standing in the checkout line, arms full of random products. Now imagine someone steps up behind you and tries to guess what you believe in. Could they tell? Probably not. Why? Because your arms are full of random products that lack purpose.

Then Simon encourages us to imagine the scenario again.

This time, imagine you’re crystal clear on your WHY. Let’s say your WHY is to be healthy and protect your body. Suddenly, the decision becomes simple. You buy the celery and the rice milk. You skip the rest. You spend less time and less money, and when you’re standing in line, people can see exactly what you stand for: health.

Now you might be thinking, Okay, this is great… but what if I don’t actually know my WHY?

I’m right there with you. I’m currently re-reading Start With Why by Simon Sinek (highly recommend if you haven’t picked it up), and one of the first exercises he challenges readers to do is surprisingly simple: ask a friend why they’re friends with you. The trick here is that you shouldn't ask your partner or a family member; you have to ask a friend. Why? The beauty of friendship is that friends don’t have to choose you. They choose to. Which means the reasons they stick around say a lot about the value you consistently bring into the world.

So here’s your move: Call/text two or three friends this week and ask, “Why are you friends with me?” Then look for patterns in their responses. What themes show up? What words repeat? What do they come to you for?

That’s data you can use to begin identifying your WHY.

And once you know your WHY, the celery decisions get a whole lot easier.

Here is a link to the full friends exercise from Simon. Try it!

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Find one thing that brings you joy today.