Never take advice from anybody

I’m sure that, when I was a teenager, I yawned and rolled my eyes whenever an adult said, ‘when I was your age’. I can vaguely remember how it felt to be on the receiving end of advice and here I am now, the worst offender in the history of the world on a personal level at least.

Getting older is a mysterious process, you never think it will happen to you. It’s a trade-off between wisdom and flexibility. Some niggling health concerns aside, I am happy to be my age, it feels right.

I’m not missing out on anything I haven’t already got tired of, and I have learnt to keep my gob shut when it doesn’t concern me.

I don’t like grime and I don’t want to go to Five Guys.

Some years ago I did a contract job and noticed that the younger members of the team weren’t asking me to go on their big nights out. I was almost the same age as their dads. Anyway, I didn’t want to drink half a bottle of cheap vodka, smoke a dozen fags and get up for work in the morning.

I am a reformed character in that respect- I was once physically sick in an alleyway en-route to a job interview, but I’ll leave that story where it belongs, in 1998.

A friend of mine told me a few years ago that she felt irrelevant after her 40th birthday and invisible after her 50th. People don’t look at you the same way, people don’t go out of their way to make conversation in case you start talking about rationing or Mr Churchill.

It must be frustrating to be overlooked when you have so much to contribute. The job market is even worse.

People under the age of 21 are (whilst often being totally marvellous too) narcissistic. I could blame social media and the pressures of modern life, but I think it has always been this way.

It’s okay, I tell myself, they’ll grow out of it, but the worry is that they will still be self-obsessed in to middle age. Look around you, we all know a few people who got stuck being 15.

Nobody wants to hear advice and that’s why I don’t give my clients any. It’s not my job as a hypnotherapist to tell people what to do, instead I help them to find their own solutions. Advice is like mushrooms. The wrong kind is fatal.

In my personal life, I am a different animal, tiresomely trotting out advice to the kids. I should stop.

Even though teenagers are obsessed with gossip and listening to any passing idiot, they will never embrace my opinions. Quite right too.

Getting older is getting wiser, learning to only seek the wisdom of people you respect. To sum up I’ll give you the same advice as I give my family and friends whenever they ask: never take advice from anybody and never trust anyone who says ‘trust me’.