From my attending Pediatric Neurosurgeon back when I was a resident rotating thru our local Children’s Hospital, after I made a flip comment:
From my late best friend: “Be deliberate.”
Seems simple and obvious, but sometimes saying that to myself helps me make clear and firm decisions, rather than just accidenally falling into situations that I’d rather not be in.
I can’t remember this word for word, but the gist of what my grandmother use to tell my mom when she was getting ready for a big date, prom, etc, and what my mom told me: “You’ve spent the last few hours on yourself getting ready. Now you’re ready and you look great. Now go have fun, be yourself, and don’t think of how you look any more for the rest of the night.”
I remember my mom saying it much more elegantly though. Very good advice for having a good time and being confident instead of all wrapped up in appearances.
Put down the gun…NOW!!!..SLOWLY…now step away…
From a good friend during a rough patch in my marriage: Never turn against each other.
It’s served me well for a long time and is a great reminder of the team a marriage partnership is supposed to be.
From a tae kwon do instructor: “Don’t stop after screwing up. Find your next move, keep going, and finish what you started.” He was talking about what to do if you made a mistake doing a pattern at a belt promotion, but it pretty much applies to life in general.
From my high school biology teacher (after my boyfriend broke up with me): "Darlin’, there’s no sense worrying about something you can’t change. "
And he was right.
You’ve got the sentiment correct, but the quote is actually:
“Discretion is the better part of valor.” -Shakespeare 
Similarly from an employment counselor:
You can type 200 wpm, know every computer program in the world, do everything right the first time and be willing to work twice as hard for half as much, but nobody is going to want to be around you if you’re a jerk.
It’s not necessarily advice, but it’s a statement my boss use to make that really set a good frame of reference when things got screwed up.
“It was what it is.”
It’s a bit like “water under the bridge” but not as fatalist and passive. It always meant, “I won’t waste any more time trying to figure out who fucked up and how. Let’s assess the situation itself, and begin dealing with it.”
I dunno if sounds very profound just in the retelling. You might have to have been there.
People can’t give you the answer if you don’t ask the question.
Good manners cost nothing.
Things don’t really go wrong. They sometimes go differently.
Enjoy life. You’ll be a long time dead.
I failed to heed this advice last week.
It went something like: :eek: :rolleyes: :smack:
As did Ms. Silverman, here.
First pants, THEN your shoes.
My husband taught me a very similar thing, in Japanese:
Shikataganai.
I don’t know the exact translation, but it carries a similar connotation of “there’s nothing to be done about it now, so there’s no point in worrying about it”. For a worrywart like me, it’s become somewhat of a mantra…
About a year ago, I was fretting about trying to decide to go to school (I’m 30 at this time, with 3 kids). I wasn’t a good student in school, despite being able to correct most folks essay’s on their facts, and walking all over everyone (including, notably, my 9th grade Social Studies teacher) in anything related to History.
So I’m discussing it with one of my best friends, and his advice to me, given offhand in between sips of a drink was this:
“He who dares, wins.”
sip
“Go to school.”
Since then, I’ve taken the whole Daring and Winning thing to heart.
I’ll be moving this summer, something I would have been terrified to do before, but am now excited about. You can’t get anywhere in life if you’re not willing to take the occasional risk.
Not advice so much as a philosophical direction, but the older I get, the more relevant some of the basic tenets of Buddhism seem to be. I don’t believe in the religious aspects: reincarnation, karma, Nirvana, etc., but the following ideas seem to be very wise:[ul][li]Freedom from desire will facilitate contentment[/li][li]You will never be perfect at anything, but keep aiming - Zen again[/li][li]Life is a suffering sea, so delight and take pleasure where you can[/li]Everything is impermanent - Zen gardening that gets raked over every evening, Tibetan Buddhist mandala work that takes months to make and is then symbolically destroyed[/ul]These all seem much better ways of preparing oneself for life’s slings and arrows than the general ideas with which I was brought up.
Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to hear the answer.
My best friend gave me the following bit of advice on my wedding day:
“Never call her a bitch.”
I just realised that I reordered my bullet points so that “Zen again” makes no sense. “Always hit ‘Preview’” is a good one, then.
A friend of mine also said once: “For a good relationship, never start a discussion with the words ‘You always…’.”
I’ve also heard “If you don’t want to get hit, never start a sentence with the word ‘Pal…’.”
And “If hit, run away as fast as you can. If you can’t run, curl up into a ball.”
Cranberry pills will help prevent UTIs. I am forever grateful to the nurse who told me that.