Welcome to Dear Prudence, I'm your Prudence,

Janay Desmond Harris.

Today we'll be discussing letters about workplace dilemmas, what to do when you can't stop crying at the office, I've been there,

whether it makes sense to share an autism diagnosis with your person for these questions. She writes the Ask a Manager advice column where she

tackles readers questions on workplace issues. She is also the author of

Ask a Manager, How to Navigate Clueless colleagues, lunch stealing bosses, and the rest of your life at work.

Allison, thank you so much for being here.

Hi, I'm so glad to be here.

So before we get started, I want to give you the opportunity to give one piece of unsolicited advice

whether it's about work or just anything else you think people need to know.

Sure my whole career is about un-selessly advice. I think the big thing I always want people to know is that everything is easier in your life and in your career when you're really really honest with yourself and I say that because so

often people send me letters and I bet this is true for you too jeney where they're

avoiding taking a really honest look at what they want in a situation and sometimes

it's because they feel embarrassed about what matters to them the most or they feel like

they're supposed to want something different.

So my advice is to always be brutally honest with yourself,

even if it's mortifying, even if it's painful,

be honest with yourself about what matters to you and how much it matters and about what you can and can't change

both on your own side and in other people and I'm convinced that this has just an enormous payoff for your quality of life.

Such good advice because you can go and like try to imitate someone else's path or ask a million

people for advice, but you're the only one who knows what you really really care about and what you really want.

Yeah, and sometimes people are making decisions based on what they think they're supposed to want and then

...