A mentor’s best advice usually starts with “When I was your age, I got this wrong.” Listen hardest there.

Advice drawn from somebody’s successes tends to be cleaned up afterwards, with the luck edited out. The story of a mistake is different, because nobody polishes a failure, and it comes with the detail you need: what it looked like at the time, what seemed reasonable, what it cost. A person willing to tell you that is handing you something they paid for.

When an older person starts in on something they got wrong, stop planning your reply and ask what they would do differently. Ask what they believed at the time. Those two answers are usually worth more than any amount of general guidance.