In a similar vein, I have noticed people love to tell you what you should do with your life to make yourself feel fulfilled. I have also noticed that, suspiciously, what they tell you often has very little to do with you or what you like, but lots about them and what they want to do. Now when someone tells me what path I should choose (like: buy a house!; go to law school!; move to Seattle and start a PR firm with me and my buddies!) I think to myself, they are telling you something about themselves, albeit in a very poorly worded way. I have also concluded that when someone says, "You care too much about what other people think," what they really mean is "I want you to stop caring about this thing but I have no legitimate argument for why you shouldn't." Usually, that someone is trying to convince you to do something that you have reasonable objections to - but they don't want to care about your objections. Simultaneously, they have no real grounds for why your objections aren't valid, other than that they personally do not care about them. A couple people in relatively quick temporal succession tried that line on me. After a lot of thought, that is my conclusion - that, and it's a really fucking manipulative thing to say. It's very common to get lots of encouragement from people who have no stakes in your success.