Top 3 things you've learned in the last 10 years.

In My Humble Opinion
1

If you’re under 10 years old, you’re banned from this thread.

Otherwise, have at it. I’ll post mine in my next post so as not to influence your thought process.

2

  1. Quitting a bad situation does not mean you’re a quitter in general. If you’re not learning anything in your shitty school, drop it and find a school less shitty. In other words, adapt the situation to yourself, not yourself to the situation.

  2. Don’t take crap from anyone who doesn’t have authority over you.

  3. When your wife says “Put the toilet seat down or I’m going to get violent,” she’s not kidding.

3

  1. That’s not chicken.

  2. That’s not guacamole.

  3. That’s not mayonnaise.

Ok seriously now:

  1. Love is all you need. Besides food, water, and shelter of course.

  2. Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Without the Star Wars part, I mean the world is not black and white. Context is key.

  3. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The world’s a strange place with an infinite multitude of variance.

4
  1. Quebec will never separate.
  2. Ozzie and Harriet isn’t the status quo.
  3. Employers don’t give a shit about you or the community at large.
5

  1. I’m their father, not their friend.

  2. Holding it all in breeds rot.

  3. Everything changes.
    Cartooniverse

6

Full disclosure: I was 15 ten years ago.

  1. Whether writing a thesis or buying a new computer, research is of the essence.

  2. Nothing on earth is more important than other people.

  3. My happiness is my responsibility. Your happiness is your responsibility.

7
  1. More opportunities are lost to indecision then to bad decisions.
  2. Start saving for your retirement yesterday. Compounding is your friend and you will never make up your losses the later you start in life.
  3. Your children learn from emulating what you do, not what you say.

bonus!
4. If you have a friend who is a downer, cut your losses. You will never bring them up, they will only bring you down.

8

  1. Tequila is only for mixed drinks. Straight tequila is only consumed by people within 6 months of their 21st birthday and recently divorced women who are looking for the wrong kind of trouble.

  2. Fuck Yoda, there is in fact something called try. And something called fail. Failing when you’ve really tried is a good thing in the long run.

  3. If you roll a dollar bill up the right way, you can use it to open a beer. Nobody has ever seen this one and you can win lots of free drinks this way.

9

Much of the same, but;

  1. Staying in a bad situation is worse than anything you can possibly imagine about leaving that situation. Make the move, make the break. It will not be worse than staying. It’s not death, it’s liberation.

  2. There will always be an endless line of people who will shit on your head if you let them. You are the only one who can decide how much of this to tolerate, and you’re not wrong if you set limits on what you’re willing to accept, even from those who are in authority over you. ESPECIALLY from those in authority over you. It probably means leaving, but see Rule #1.

  3. If you spend your life trying to tear out the parts of yourself that you don’t like, the only result is that you tear yourself apart. And it can take half a lifetime to put yourself back together.

Many of the things you don’t like about yourself aren’t really you, they’re what others think about you and have convinced you are true. See #1.

Many of the things you don’t like about yourself aren’t as bad as you have convinced yourself they are.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but sometimes accepting your personal flaws removes them a lot faster than fighting them or trying to change them.

10

  1. The people you work for and with are not your friends, your confidants and cannot be trusted in any way to watch your back. They work at the same place you do, for the same paycheck you get and all want to move up the ladder for increased status and money. I’ve lost count of how many co-workers I thought were more than just fellow employees, people I thought were straight shooters who have buried knives in my back because it helped them in some way-- my last “friend” at work got me fired.
    Nowdays I go to work, I am friendly, polite, get my job done and stay the hell out of the way of the guy who wants to “show you the ropes around here”

  2. You are not “part of a team” no matter what or how often the boss tells you so at meetings. You don’t “support each other, help each other whenever you can, and all work together to get the project done.” Cow Manure!! In every “Team” you have consists of the one who does as little as possible because they know others will cover for them, the one who does enough to get by (usually the same one who works on their own section of the job, doesen’t care about other facets of the project, and is just waiting to say “Look Mr. Boss, I’ve completed the Fimblebinder analysis and report on time–I’m not sure how the others are doing.”
    Then you have the poor whipping crew who work their butts off, coming in nights and weekends to get the project done,do most of the work, and get to sit at the next meeting suffering from severe coffee, sugar and ciggarette poisioning from working so hard–So Mr. Boss can congratulate the “Team” on what a great job they did "because we work Together!!!

I might sound a bit bitter about the working environment, but I’ve managed to harvest a lovely knife collection from my back in the last 20 years, lost count of how many “teams” I’ve been made to be part of, and collected a ton of stories about them all–as well as stories with the same results from my real friends, who work in different places, different fields and with different people. We have determined except for the company, job duties, co-workers and varied "team "lectures, we could be working in the same place.

  1. Half a fifth of cheap Scotch and 2 pints of Ben and Jerry’s is not going to bring her back to you–it ain’t gonna happen. It will however keep you busy enough hosing toxic waste from both ends so that you won’t think about her so much.
11

  1. I can’t expect to raise a disciplined kid if I don’t exhibit discipline myself and follow the same rules. That means that I can’t walk around eating my food, have to sit down when I drink something and need to eat healthfully I also can’t scream in the house, even when I’m mad. As easy as it would be to ignore all these rules because I’m the mom, I can’t because my actions have already proven to speak louder than my words.

  2. Be very careful what promises you make. If you don’t put a lot of forethought into them, you may find yourself breaking some. And the worst promises to break are those you make to yourself, especially when they’re stupid promises and you make them because you’re judging other people (you know, the “Look what they did! I’ll never do that/I’ll always do this, etc.”).

  3. The people you work with aren’t your friends. It doesn’t matter how friendly you are with them - they always have their own agenda, which will change if paid enough or if put in a situation where someone more important than you needs to be impressed. So, keep your head down, do your work, do it well enough you don’t have to do overtime (though sometimes that’s unavoidable) and go home and spend as much of your time as possible with the people who really matter.

12

  1. Avoid hanging out with or being an “outsider”. The people who never join any groups, participate in any activities or always seem like the bitter malcontent. Life consists of learning to get along with groups of people.

  2. I have yet to see any indication that getting older doesn’t suck in every way.

  3. It is up to you to define your life, which can be both a blessing and a curse

13

  1. You can’t help people who won’t help themselves.

  2. Don’t get into debt.

  3. Patience is one hell of an underrated virtue.

14

If your SO is female, her ass is not fat no matter what.

Never say anything even slightly bad about your step child.

If Cooking is not your Forte? Shut up. Ouch more times than I can remember.

15
  1. A person that says she loves you can still betray you and break your heart

… that’s all.

… it’s been 5 years and I’m still trying to get over that simple fact.

16

  1. Make the best out of what you’ve got.

  2. Having a significant other is not the be-all, end-all of life.

  3. Laugh.

17

  1. In the most fundamental of ways, you can’t help who you love.

  2. The secret to happiness is being grateful for what you have.

  3. There are three great healing forces in the Universe: time, love, and God.

18

  1. happiness is not being satisfied or content, but rather making progress. If you are not doing something, growing in some way, you are doomed to depression.

  2. kids imitate you. Don’t say “damn” when you break a glass dish, and DEFINITELY don’t say “titty sandwich” just because you think he’s too young to repeat it, or your son’s first words will indeed be “titty sandwich”.

  3. customer service jobs absolutely fucking suck. Nobody likes doing them, and people who have never done them have no idea what complete fucking assholes they are, so forgive them for their ignorance.

19

Very few people actually care. Don’t count on it.

You will do things you swore you’d never do. Both good and bad.

OTC cold medications do not work, and there’s no such thing as a quick hangover remedy.

20

Will it work with plastic money?