If you go on listening to people you will become more and more confused; that's how you have become confused. Your confusion is this: that you have been listening to many kinds of people and they are all giving different advice.
And I am not saying that they are not well-wishers; they are well-wishers, but not very conscious well-wishers, otherwise they would not give you advice. They would give you an insight, not advice. They would not tell you what to do and what not to do. They would help you to become more aware so that you can see yourself what has to be done and what has not to be done.
The real friend is one who does not advise you, but helps you to become more alert, more aware, more conscious of life — its problems, its challenges, its mysteries, and helps you to go on your own voyage, gives you courage to experiment, gives you courage to seek and search, gives you courage to commit many mistakes… because one who is not ready to commit mistakes will never learn anything at all.
Commit as many mistakes as you can, but don't commit the same mistake twice because that makes you stupid. Commit new mistakes, invent new mistakes, and you will be learning all the time, and your intelligence will be growing all the time. Your intelligence needs sharpening.
The real friends help you to sharpen your intelligence. They don't give you fixed advice, because fixed advice is of no use. What is true today may not be true tomorrow, and what is right in one situation may be wrong in another. And situations are changing all the time, so what you need is not a fixed pattern of living but a way of seeing, so wherever you are, in whatsoever situation you find yourself, you know how to behave spontaneously, how to depend on your own being.
OSHO