Some advice for the ladies… and men I suppose… is something I just learned on my own in reguards to bouncing from relationship to relationship.
“When you are broken hearted, don’t try to fall in love with someone else. Fall in love with something else.”
ie; your career, reaching your dreams, or a nice new hobby.
Not advice, exactly, but I’ve found it to be true:
“If you take in a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.” –Mark Twain
One of my old bosses. I was sick. I had things to do at work. She said “go home,” I said “but I have all this stuff.”
“If the stuff you are doing was that important, we’d pay you a lot more.”
I now try and give a little more value than I get - I want to be kept around. But I’m not going to put in VP hours when I’m not a VP. And if I can’t get the job done in the hours I’m willing to give it, that is a problem that needs to be solved by someone making more money than me.
From my Grandad:
“It’s not so much that it takes all kinds, it’s that there ARE all kinds.”
(So get used to it.)
My father always says: “When riding a dead horse, generally the best strategy is to dismount.” (It’s a Sioux proverb, I think)
Not really advice, I suppose, but I try to think of the last thing my grandfather said to me before he died: “Love is the most important thing. Everything comes from love.” I took it as a form of advice and I try to incorporate it into my life.
My mother says: “I don’t want my obituary to read ‘she kept a clean house’”, which it certainly won’t.
The best advice that somebody actually gave me was:
“When all else fails, do it the right way.”
“Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way.” (Daniele Vare)
My Dad told me ever since I was a little kid to “conduct yourself in a manner that is above reproach at all times.” He said that’s what they told him in the army.
My fifth grade teacher explained this to the class:
Being an adult is different from being a grownup. Being a grownup only requires time, and doesn’t say anything about your maturity level; being an adult means thinking ahead and doing what is the right thing even if it results in less immediate gratification.
Similarly, there is a difference between being childish and being childlike. Being childlike means keeping your sense of wonder at the world, and not allowing yourself to be bitter and cynical. Being childish means thinking only about what is good NOW for YOU and to heck with everything else.
She encouraged all of us to, as we grew up, work toward becoming more adult and less childish, but also to keep within us a part which was childlike.
I’m not putting it into words well, but it had a profound effect on me.
Or:
Don’t assume they support your professional success just because they’re women. An evil woman will stab you in the back just as fast as an evil man will. There is no secret sister society in the business world. There should be one, but there isn’t.
I once had a lengthy (and pointless) debate with someone. It wasn’t for a long time that I figured out that they were only using the literal definition of “maturity,” and so, to them, “growing up” and “being mature” meant the same thing.
Once I did figure this out, I walked away from the debate. I thought about a parting shot, “Oh, grow up!” but…decided against it.
I’d bet that everyone here knows a handful of twelve year old kids who are fully mature enough to vote responsibly…and a handful of people in their thirties or forties or fifties who are so immature that the idea of their voting is entirely disturbing!
From my mom when I was worried about going back to school at age 40: “Well, you’ll still be 40 whether you go or not.”
I read this on the Dope a long time ago, and it’s stuck with me - “Don’t forget that the person you’re arguing with on the internet is probably a 12 years old.” Good advice.
I don’t remember where I picked this up, but it’s almost always true - “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
“Shut up and play yer guitar some more” by unk Frank.
I try to stick by that one. It surprises me how many people think there’s a way around it. It kind of explains the lack of quality in a lot of modern products.
If you are going to carry a weapon make it a chocolate one because someone out there is going to make you eat it.
Just do it. A corollary to Mangetout’s “Since you have to do it anyway, do it now.”
You can do anything for 15 minutes. (Thanks to Flylady, I think.)
Do the distasteful stuff first and then reward yourself.
From the attending neurosurgeon during my residency training about 30 years ago, after I’d made some flip comment: “Qadgop, nobody likes a smartass”.
Words to live by. One needs also to be kind if one is trying to be clever and funny.
Measure twice, cut once. And it’s real-life companion: cut it large and beat it into place.
“Money isn’t everything. But it sure helps.”