Confidence and being sure you are right are not quite the same. When you have enough confidence, you can even accept being mistaken. There is not always one way, beloveds. Even when you are right, you can be wrong. You can be wrong to press even the right way on someone, yet this is something you do. And who can say with certainty that this is right or wrong?

You don't always know when to bite your tongue or when to speak. And even sometimes when you do know to keep quiet, you give your appraisal just the same.

Well, life is like this. It is not a perfect science. Mistakes will be made. Yet, at the same time, perhaps two mistakes cancel out each other. You spoke up out of turn, and it wasn't heard anyway!

Certainly, don't be rash. Certainly, don't hesitate. It is hard to know when it is right to speak up or right to be silent. Beloveds, I do know you want to do the right thing. Yet it is all right to make a mistake. Perhaps consider that you did the right thing even when your words were not well-received. We do not know with certainty that giving advice that is well-received is really the right thing. How can you know? And is the measure of your advice in how it is received?

Advice has merit, yet you do not always have to give it. And you do not always have to not give it.

Well, beloveds, you do not always take your own advice.

Not everyone listens to Me, beloveds, so why are you surprised when not everyone listens to you?

Perhaps you are meant to make what you call mistakes. In terms of the long-range universe, you may never know what was error. And so, beloveds, you throw your words out to the winds and let them land as they will.

More important than words is the state of your heart. Perhaps you can be silent and give your heartfelt advice as well. Your thoughts can be more powerful than your words. Perhaps you can think your advice, and your advice will land on fertile soil. In this way, you can speak up and bite your tongue at the same time!

Let's reverse the subject. How open-minded are you when you are advised? Let's face it, you, as well as others, prefer to do things your own way. Is that not so? Whether it is a little issue like how to wash dishes or a big issue like which man or woman to marry, by and large, you go by your own antenna, sometimes to your great joy and sometimes to your great dismay.

It is not really surprising that people like to go by their own sensors, by what they think is their own reasoning, even when their own reasoning is really other people's reasoning that they have ascribed to. They may think the decision they make is their own, yet their decision is something they picked up somewhere or bought somewhere. Mostly, My children don't really know where their decisions come from.

But, again, with life, My children have to make choices, and choices they make.

Sometimes choices can wait for great deliberation, yet that does not always work out either. As a rule of thumb, it is better to make a choice than not to make a choice. Of course, then you might say that no choice is a choice.

So what I say is to take what you say with a grain of salt and do not regret. Of course, a lesson learned in one situation may not apply to another situation. Life is an uncharted territory, and you have to play it by ear.