80
votes
What is some life advice that has stuck with you throughout the years?
There's tons and tons of life advice quotes and phrases out there, but I'm curious to hear which ones in particular have been actually impactful for ya'll.
Something that comes to mind for me is some advice I've heard in regard to social life and friendship:
If someone invites you to something, just say yes. Even if it's not something that I may be initially interested or I feel like having a lazy day, just regularly giving myself the push to do something has helped tremendously with my social life and making friends. It broadened my horizons and strengthened friendships. (Obviously you don't have to say yes to EVERYTHING, but generally if your work colleague / fellow student invites you to play tennis, grab drinks later, just go)
Making friends is hard work and you need to put in the effort. Things won't just come to you by themselves. This is especially true as one gets older. If you have a feeling that you get along with someone you actually have to put in the effort to ask someone for their socials/phone number and suggest concrete days to hang out.
In college, my art teacher asked the class if they would be interested in having a party at his place at the end ot the semester. Everyone gave noncommittal answers.
Guess what? He and his wife had a beautiful spread for the few that showed up.
Well, the only one from the class, me, and my friend I dragged with. We ended up having a good time, but I felt so angry at my classmates. Kent, you are a great guy and those assholes didn't deserve you as a teacher.
In those situation I like to show up really early before it gets too lively and loud (or REALLY late) so that I can get to have a chill chat with the host or get to know the new people slowly as they trickle in.
This is my methodology, as well. I'm a socially anxious person, so I always dread going into these situations and would always avoid them at all costs. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized i have excellent social skills and can really make use of them, but it still helps calm my anxiety when I can arrive early and there are much fewer people to deal with.
You know what, you talked me into it. I think I will go for that heist after all, who am I to say 'no' to an old friend getting the gang together for just one more score?
I follow point 1 as well. Last night, I gave bowling a try despite my initial discomfort at the activity (I am BAD at it); I was just going to watch others play but I brought socks "just in case." I was able to bond with other not-great-at-bowling people and even grew brave enough to ask for pointers! I was pretty nervous, but it was a good group that understood. Overall I had a great time trying something new.
As an addendum, my advice to fellow socially awkward people is to always take the initiative in planning. It's basically a great way to 1) be part of the social fabric without being too hands-on and 2) create circumstances that work for your brand of introversion. Like, invite everyone to brunch if you say no to a crowded bar situation.
One that I keep coming back to is:
"A relationship is supposed to make you happy. If it isn't, something needs to change."
Sometimes you have to think long and hard about what it is that needs to change, it could be you and your behaviours, your partner or their behaviours, etc. but the end message is don't accept an unhappy relationship try and fix it, and if that doesn't work, end it.
I'm slowly learning this applies to any relationship in life. Not just with romantic partners, but friends and family, work, your routine, and most importantly, yourself.
Doesn't mean you have to abandon all of those relationships if they don't work out; but you deserve a shot at a calmer, safer life.
This is a good one. And because it's always good to balance any guiding ideas, there is the flip side, a quote from Iron Mike Tyson: “Everyone that you fight is not your enemy and everyone who helps you is not your friend.” I read this as being less about sticking with someone who is difficult, and more about realizing that a good feeling relationship is not always in your best interests.
I recently got out of a 5.5 year relationship where over 3 years was unhappy. We tried working on it, but after so long I had already fallen out of love with her and by the time we broke up I didn't even miss her.
Her biggest argument was "don't throw away the last 5 years". But I didn't want to throw away the next 5 continually trying to salvage it.
"It's not meant to be a strife. It's not meant to be a struggle uphill."
Bjork's "Undo" from one of my favorite albums, Vespertine.
“Don’t rock the boat until you know how it floats.” Meaning, don’t go changing things before you understand how they work and why they’re done the way they are. It was meant as leadership advice at the time, but I’ve found it applicable in a surprising variety of ways.
“Stay curious.” Just a small thing someone said to me once in passing, but it stuck. I always try to be inquisitive, especially if I encounter something new.
Finally, there are many variations, but basically…”To be wise is to know that you know very little.” For whatever reason, “being wise” always struck me as a commendable goal. I’m sure everyone has heard some version of this. Still, even if it’s a bit cliche, I think it rings true and I think it has at least kept me mindful of my own limitations. I think (or at least hope) it has helped me maintain a level of humility.
This is pretty much Chesterton's Fence:
One of the advices that I find relevant and helpful in my life is "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. " I often tend to wait for or create that "perfect" scenario for me before doing or starting most of my work which ironically backfires and I am usually left with little to no productivity at the end of the day. So I always remind myself of this advice to avoid procrastination.
I've also heard "Perfect is the opposite of done."
At my first real professional job an older colleague told me “Done is good!” As in, it is better to be done with something than nothing. If you’ve done something, either it can be improved or accepted entirely as it is. If you’ve done nothing, neither of those things will occur. Her advice has stuck with me over almost 30 years.
Another later boss told me to always WAIT before saying something - ask yourself Why Am I Talking? Think what you are trying to say, to whom, and why. This advice has helped me keep my mouth shut, often to my benefit.
My mantra is “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” Because, if it’s important and the choice is between not doing it because it won’t be perfect and doing it shittily, then I should definitely at least do it to what caliber I can.
My mantra is:
There's no point in starting to make something efficient from the beginning or to use the utmost care of making it elegant unless you're sure it'll actually, you know, work. That's why we start with that. Make it work end-to-end and then do multiple passes to make it pretty/generic/elegant/maintainable. Then you spend time benchmarking and see if step 3 is even necessary.
I very rarely need to get to step 3, most projects stop after step 1 =)
"If at first you don't succeed lower your standards."
I would rather do it and get it working then start getting better at it and making it pretty.
The idea is to quickly make an end to end solution to see that the happy path works, then you iterate on step 2 and maybe 3 until it's good enough and/or you run out of time.
I've seen too many people go 3-2-1 or 2-3-1 and they've ended up with a beautifully elegant and highly optimised solution that doesn't work or implements only part of the path.
I try to put this into practice all the time at work. On so many projects I've worked on, I'll see stuff just languish around while people talk themselves in circles and they can talk themselves into and out of almost any position depending on the most persuasive/persistent/loudest voice in the room. Sometimes you just need to do something, anything, just get a first draft out the door to really get the ball rolling. You don't know how bad or good an idea is until you've just thrown something together and you have something in front of you to actually evaluate. Too often it feels like people are waiting for a "magic bullet", some sort of perfect solution that solves everyone's issues all at once, when usually you're never going to see that, you can usually solve some of the issues, but there's going to be tradeoffs, it's just a matter of deciding what things you're willing to trade away to get closest to what you want.
"Do what you fear and the fear will disappear." - Toilet wall
I like this one.
Did the toilet wall say anything else?
Love me a good toilet stall etched with the scribblings of dozens of people who came before me peeing and pooping.
Also love this Silver Jews lyric sung by David Berman:
I know that a lot of what I say has been lifted off of men's room walls
Maybe I've crossed the wrong rivers and walked down all the wrong halls
"Perfect is the enemy of good," which has evolved to "'Better than it was' is an acceptable goal."
I grew up as a perfectionist due to tough environment, imposter syndrome, and some other third thing to round out this sentence. But I feel like I'm finally relaxing away from that mindset in the last few years-- especially during COVID, when I was stressed and didn't have time for perfection. It also helps me to do just enough and not feel guilty of things I just don't have energy for.
Yeah but we also say "measure twice before you cut" here. I think the idea is that if something can be improved later on, don't worry and do it badly. But pay attention when laying the foundations so that you don't have to rip them out too soon.
+1
I have also suffered from this issue, like from rewinding lectures and documentaries (even movies often) again and again to fully understand them in one go to trying to devise that "perfect" plan before starting anything new.
I've personally found Hanlon's Razor to be helpful in smoothing tensions (I'm in law school, and the legal field is all about potential conflicts): Never attribute to malice that which is easily explained by incompetence or ignorance.
In a similar vein (as a way of gauging intent to prevent from being taken advantage of by the above razor): Once is an aberration, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. (This is subject to conditions and actual observations, i.e., if a person makes it clear they're acting maliciously then this does not apply, but I've found actual malice to be rather rare, online or in person.)
I remember a time when I would be on my commute to and from work, and noticing that everyone had the air of having a lot of money and sophistication. Everyone out and about had on really expensive looking clothes and accessories, were dining at pricey restaurants, hopping in and out of cabs and towncars. People I knew casually were living in nice apartments, going on fancy trips, and eating out daily. It made me feel poor and deprived in comparison. It also seemed so strange - how can everyone have more money than I do?
A friend told me that you can't assume that everyone is loaded - she pointed out a person dressed quite shabbily walking nearby, saying that he could be the heir to a great fortune. That everyone I'm seeing might be in debt or relying on family money with strings attached or spending every last dime to look the part. My friend herself owned a three bedroom coop off of Park Avenue in the 80s, and she dressed quite modestly with zero flash.
It was a variation of "you can't judge a book by its cover" with a touch of "dont keep up with the Joneses " but it really sunk in. It made me feel a lot less insecure. (This was before a million similarly themed blog posts and articles on Social Media.) It also tempered any impulse to spend more on expensive stuff just to impress other people and actually helped me save enough to be secure and get out of debt. And that led to more self discipline in spending and other areas of my life. It was a fantastic reality check.
My father gave me a simplified version of this when I was a kid, as I was always pointing out fancy cars and quipping that the driver must be rich. He said, "Never judge a person's wealth on the vehicle they drive. Anyone can make a car payment." And while advice from my father was generally pretty terrible, this one has stuck with me over the years and been proven right time and time again.
"Wherever you go, there you are"
It's not that deep, but I have a tendency to want to move or make otherwise drastic changes to my life to feel like I'm not stagnating, but at the end of the day, I'm still just me. Nothing ever changes all that much and my baggage comes with me no matter where I go.
Completely unrelated, but once, in an airport bathroom stall, I saw scratched into the stainless steel toilet paper dispenser "If you took a shit, go put it back". I think about that one from time to time.
Oof yeah. This resonates so hard with me. I was a travel nurse for 5 years, moving from place to place constantly. Met my husband that way and we continued to travel together. I think it fed into my desire to want to just pack up and gtfo as soon as things got uncomfortable. Now that we’re parents, homeowners, and permanent staff workers, I still get that urge to run as far away and as fast as possible. But yeah, wherever I go, there I’ll be.
Also unrelated in a bathroom I one saw graffiti saying “you’re beautiful” and someone responded “NOT EVERYONE IS BEAUTIFUL SOME PPL UGLY AF.” I also think about that one from time to time.
Buckaroo Banzai
Sorry for the big dump but I have a note that I collect these in. These all resonate with me and it feels very uplifting to reread them in hard times.
Words to live by
Make mistakes, that's how you learn.
We are all made of cosmic dust. We are all one.
Nothing worthwhile in life comes easily.
Never, ever give up!
If you don't believe in yourself, who is going to?
True happiness comes from within, it does not depend on anything or anyone else.
What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
To achieve great things you need plans and not enough time.
Don't be afraid of failure, be afraid of not trying.
Fear is not real. It is created in the mind.
Look for solutions to problems where nobody else is looking.
When we need to talk the most, we hide the most.
Love yourself and live the life that you love.
You are as stressed as you think you are.
Name your fear, so you can then conquer it.
Once fired, the bullet cannot question it's trajectory.
Question the tape or stories that you keep telling yourself about yourself.
Don't put it (anything) on a pedestal.
The consequences of being too cautious are much worse than the consequences of mistakes.
Always ensure that your locus of control is internal, not external: You are in control of your own life!
Our thoughts shape our reality.
Be assertive and believe in your own success.
When feeling the pressure, take the focus off of yourself.
Admire the beauty in everyday things.
Sit back and reflect on what choices you do have.
Treat everyone as your friend and ally, and they might just become one.
Thoughts are just thoughts. They are not reality. They are just random synapses firing - Ignore the bad ones.
Always be sure of yourself. Nobody wants or appreciates your uncertainty.
Don't live driven by the fear of failure but by the urge to succeed.
Inaction breeds doubt. Action breeds confidence.
Anything is possible with courage and determination. Take the leap and act now!
Fake it until you become it.
Life is as serious as you make it.
Stop thinking it's all about you.
How would the person I'd like to be do the things I need to do?
Every set-back you are one step closer to success (if you keep going).
What reasons do you have to not be happy? Simply choose to be happy.
Whether you think that you can, or think that you can't, you are right. Be aware of your thinking.
Greatness is a lot of small things done right, day after day, after day.
Life is a celebration of itself.
One's personality is malleable, not set in stone. It changes over time.
What is possible is what you tell yourself is possible. Don't place limits on yourself.
My ultimate career goal is getting paid to play.
Look in the mirror. That’s your competition. Not anyone else.
Stop saying I Wish. Start saying I Will.
Do it now. Sometimes later becomes never.
Congratulate yourself on the small wins.
Take pride in what you do, no matter what you do.
In life, always follow your passions.
Each day we wake up is another chance at getting it right.
Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination.
Ideas are worthless until you get them out of your head and see what they can do.
The self is an illusion - let it go, in order to be free.
The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them.
Everything you want is on the other side of fear.
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
You cannot please everyone in life.
The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.
Anything is possible with calmness and perseverance.
See your future as your parents hoped and wished for you when you were born, free of negativity and doubts.
Art is allowing the perceiver to fill in the blanks with themselves.
Today is the tomorrow that I've been waiting for.
A winner is just a loser that kept trying.
Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.
Remember the days that you wished for the things you have now. Be grateful!
A think of a lot of the advice that stuck helped me understand my own priorities, and develop and maintain a growth mindset.
"If something is a priority, you will make time for it"
A coworker told me this, and it had a profound impact on the way I view prioritization. Not only does the phrase work forwards, the opposite helps with reframing. If you think something is a priority, but you don't make time for it, it causes you stress and anxiety stemming from that discrepancy. Either you make a change, and make it a priority, or you acknowledge it's not as far up in the list as you originally thought it needed to be.
"What's the Estimated Value (EV) of this?"
This is not a statement that's strictly regarding money. I use the term Value in a broadest sense. You want to do things that add value to your life, and minimize the things that don't.
This doesn't mean I'm always on the hustle, or even that I'm Kaizen every day all day. I have plenty of days where the only goal is 'exist' and that's ok. You value chart can plateau or even dip for a little while (a day, a week), but when you expand it out (6 months, a year), you want to be better than you were before.
EDIT I wanted to add one more thing.
"Have a Plan"
A plan helps mitigate negative consequences and prepare for them. There are situations where the plan can be, "Fuck it, YOLO" but living your whole life this way is recipe for disaster. Plans don't have to be robust, it's better that they are general, and get you to your next milestone. From there develop a new plan, or adjust the current one. For gamers, think of it as marking the next objective and getting there.
"What other people think of you is none of your business."
Shit is true, and important.
Yes! This one has been important to me lately. I used to not have a big problem with worrying about what others thought of me but then two things happened.
I came out as non-binary, asexual, and started dressing femme publicly. As happy and proud that I came out as I am, I have problems with self-hate, and I project that on to others. I've gotten better though and not personally interested in the concept of "passing". I have to remind myself that I like what I see in the mirror, and that's what counts.
I made a lot of new female friends. They have been lovely, support, gracious, thoughtful, kind and more. They're incredible. But I still can't help but think "Am I a burden?", "Are they embarassed to be around me?", and more bullshit along those lines. Mind you, nothing they've done has warranted these questions. It's me having these own thoughts about myself, also unwarranted, and then assuming that if I'm thinking it, surely they must be.
If I can adapt the mindset " what others think of me is none of my business", I think it would go a long way in improving my mental health.
I had a professor in college that had worked in the adhesives industry for years (likely decades) before becoming a teacher. He introduced me to the concept of the Iron Triangle - also called the Project Management Triangle:
It may be oversimplified, but the concept works well for a lot of things. If you want something done well and quickly, it will probably be expensive. If something is done quickly and on the cheap, it probably won't be very good.
However, this old professor further expanded it into his view on one's life and its commitments:
At one point in my life, I was trying to juggle all three. I was early on into a career, I was in a steady long-term relationship, and I was an overly-enthusiastic online gamer - absorbed, like so many others, in World of Warcraft. I was laid off during my first once-in-a-lifetime global recession, and events in the game had me reconsider my time expenditure in it. I realized that the time I put into the game could have been better spent investing in my career and my relationship with my partner, and as time has gone on it's only become more clear how good a choice that was.
Now, as someone who is over a decade into their career with a spouse and kids, I haven't the time for that level of commitment. And that's okay. If I were trying to juggle these responsibilities with another hobby that occupies tens of hours per week, something would end up giving out - and I wouldn't want it to be the career or my family.
Oof. This rings true but I'm still trying to fight it
Same here :(
It's easy. You can borrow against your ongoing health by just sleeping less.
I had a similar realization with the same game. But it was with college.
But this is pretty true. I'm lucky if I get 5-10 hours a month to game.
When I was younger and afraid I'd be perpetually alone I was told "Everyone has an ex"/"Somebody, somewhere is sick of that person's crap" which helped me avoid becoming smitten at the idea of that person. It also helped me avoid relationships built solely on not wanting to be alone.
Now that I'm older I'm finding that "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" to be valuable as others have said.
The number of people I know that are in a stable relationship but don't have an ex would suggest that they are more than just an exception
There's a popular essay called The Fox and the Hedgehog by Isaiah Berlin. It's just an intellectual game where personalities are labeled foxes or hedgehogs. Hedgehogs view the world through one lens that they are extremely adept as employing, foxes don't specialize but incorporate experiences and resist simplifying their world into a handful of big ideas. Neither is better or worst.
What stuck with me is a friend telling me: "be a fox, not a hedgehog." The situation was innocuous enough, we were looking for a parking spot at the ski mountain. I suggested that parking lots are always full closer up so we might as well park in something suitable and get hiking. He wanted to go further down. Sure enough it was jam packed at the bottom except for one solitary spot several meters from our lift.
It stuck with me and it's kind of an internal motto. A reminder to test accepted expectations if the alternative yields a payoff.
"Expectations are the seeds of resentment "
"Don't take advice from people you don't want to be like"
On its surface it seems pretty obvious, but what it really means to me is, if you don't respect the way someone lives their life, don't worry about them thinking you're doing something wrong. Mainly this was a coming-of-age realization with regard to my relationship with my parents. Once I realized they were both selfish, lonely people who only valued financial security at the cost of their souls, I stopped caring when they told me I was doing things wrong.
It can also apply to bosses, teachers, mentors, etc. And it can be applied selectively to certain areas of people's opinions. Like maybe you take financial advice from someone who lives financially like you want to, but ignore their advice on relationships knowing they cheat on their spouse or ignore their parenting advice because their kids suck.
Advice for the internet age that I think over the last decade+ has been forgotten by most;
Dont feed the trolls.
I was just playing a game and someone was posting obvious rage-bait. Nobody acknowledged it and the guy eventually just quit the game and we were able to get back to normal conversations.
Abraham Lincoln responding to a troll, or rather a man who accused him of corruption: "You were in an ill-humor when you wrote that letter, and, no doubt, intended that I should be thrown in one also; which, however, I respectfully decline being done."
Source: Steve Inskeep of NPR who wrote a book about part of Lincoln's life.
Like if you're moving a project car with no valid insurance or registration from your house to your dad's garage, don't run any red lights, dive recklessly or draw any attention to yourself.
Also applies to less ethical cases like drunk driving, but I don't endorse any of that.
My girlfriend and I were watching some police program. After a few episodes, this theme became so recurrent... people would be checked for a broken light on their bike or whatever and what came out of their pockets was ten bags of cocaine, that sort of thing. We'd say it to each other often, and by the end of the series all we needed was a look.
Don't commit more than one crime at a time, kids!
"It is better to be an hour early than to be 5 minutes late"
If you show up an hour early to my place, I'll be much more annoyed than if you're 5 minutes late
I've heard, and would sooner subscribe to, "To be on time is to be five minutes early", though
I'm always early for friends and family, but I'm always late for work.
"Just get started."
It's a low-stakes way of beginning something without fully committing to it. I find Nike's "Just Do It" a bit much. Just getting started is something anyone can do even if you're not in the mood. If after a few minutes you're still not feeling it, then do something else, but chances are you'll get sucked in and find some flow.
Philip Seymour Hoffman's speech at the end of Charlie Wilson's War.
I travel a lot and this advice helps me maintain a positive (or at least actively non-negative) outlook.
"Calm seas don't make good sailors." (Or "smooth seas don't make skilled sailors.") Based on an FDR quote. Helps when going through adversity and everyday struggles.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." (FDR again, man was a wordsmith.) Helps with my feelings of anxiety.
"If it smells like shit everywhere you go, check under your own shoe." More for noticing when others are complaining non-stop about everything in their lives every time I talk to them, it's probably not everything in their lives, but their perspective of it. It helps me think about perspective.
"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools." Reminds me to be well-rounded, well-read, respectful, courageous, and brave.
You can't change people, they have to choose to change themselves. Life got a lot easier when I fully realized and internalized this notion. I can only change myself. I now focus on energy on improving myself instead of fruitlessly trying to improve others. Quotes relevant to this are "put on your own oxygen mask before helping others," and "don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm."
"We control less than we think and more than we know." Somewhat relevant to the notion of being unable to change others, but also about the self and working within our physical reality and our physical self. Acknowledging our limitations and carrying on with life anyway to the best of our ability. Accepting we don't know everything, and that's okay.
There's probably more I can't think of at the moment, I love quotes and such.
It’s you and your partner vs the problem, not vs each other. If you’re arguing about who left the door unlocked, who didn’t do dishes, or who isn’t making enough money to support your life, you won’t be helped by attempting to deflect blame and pin it on the other person.
Sometimes there is no bad guy or loser, just a problem that needs a solution. Most of the time the truth is in between anyways. So instead of trying to place blame, recognize you’re fighting FOR your relationship and agree that “This is a problem.” Now you can work together to fix it, because both of you are trying to make a life together. Look for solutions that aren’t centralized around one of you and instead apply to both.
Example:
“The dishes are sitting in the sink and we are getting flies and it smells.”
Solution:
“Let’s make a rule that no dishes can sit in the sink, no matter what. They go immediately into the dish washer.”
It’s not centralized on anyone. Also, if you are struggling with things being lopsided, you can shift stuff. Maybe only one of you, who doesn’t mind dishes, does them. But the other, who doesn’t mind laundry, does that.
Maybe you need to get a good bearing on how accurate both your perspectives are. Add a little calendar sheet next to the sink and when one of you washes something, check. Then you can see how the work load is being distributed.
Good relationships are attained or maintained by creatively helping your partner become a better person without being critical of them. There are many roads to achieve that.
There are two things, both from my dad at different times, which have hit me in hard moments
The first, had to do with options. You've always got one. It might be a difficult one, it might seem genuinely impossible to pull off, but you always can make a different choice in what you're doing.
The second, had to do with confidence. When you make your choice, the question isn't really about whether it's something you can or can't do. It's about whether you accept what's possible after making that choice. If you accept the possible consequences, then you can make your choice with confidence, and maneuver with a clearer sense of purpose.
Obviously it's not stuff intended for every situation, but of all the life advice I've gotten (and folks sure did love to give me some), these two have come back to me the most often.
Agreed! One way I put it is by asking "what's the worst case scenario if you do this?". If you're OK with these consequences, the choice becomes less scary.
Heavily vibe with the first one, it's what I came to share. I think it's just the plain truth. Yes, we're in a sticky spot, yes we're having a hard time enacting the ideal solution, yes seemingly every solution comes with downsides, but we do have solutions. Along with this ideal, I also remember that for most problems that end up having poor solutions, the penalty is usually just being yelled at, fussed at, etc.
To quote Brad Pitt's character in Inglorious Basterds:
Col. Hans Landa : You'll be shot for this!
Lt. Aldo Raine : Nah, I don't think so. More like chewed out. I've been chewed out before.
If you're on the clock, slow down. Don't hurry for more work.
If visiting a place, learn at least a few words of the indigenous language. It makes the trip more meaningful to you and is touching to anyone who hears your effort.
First you make your habits, then your habits make you
It's a variation of you are what you repeatedly do and has helped me to identify and address some seemingly innocuous but actually quite unhelpful behaviours. I also find that purposefully building a foundation of simple routines and habits helps me get through the difficult days on autopilot so that when I emerge from the low again I haven't slipped so far backwards as I once did.
The grass isn't greener on the other side. It's greener where you water it.
"Baby boy, you only as funky as your last cut".
This Andre 3000 line burrowed into my heart. You are what you do. Skills you're no longer actively developing or using don't just fade in time, they fade from relevance. And that's ok. Let them. Do the fuck out of whatever you're doing now
It's a call to action, but it's also permission to let go. I used to stress that I considered myself a songwriter, but I haven't composed anything worth a damn in years. Anxiously waiting on that muse to return is doing nothing for me. The muse was willingness to write a lot of shit songs, discard most and iterate on the few I loved enough to nurture.
"Baby boy, you only as funky as your last cut".
If I'm not willing to do the work anymore, that's ok. It's only the label I put on myself giving me grief. Nobody's forcing that on me.
I wrote some code today that I thought was pretty slick. I'm only an amateur, but I'm putting the work in. Be defined by what you're doing in the moment and live that
A family friend was dying of pancreatic cancer. I was in my twenties, he was in his early sixties. He had always been the kind if person who made everyone feel like he was really glad to spend his time with uthem, that the things you thought and said and did were interesting and important. He always had a genuine smile everyone. It mystified me, and sometimes miffed ne. As he was dying, and in so much pain, he was just the same, absorbed and delighted with the people who visited. I finally asked him, how can you be so nice to everyone? Don't you just want to scream sometimes? His answer was, this cancer is taking so much from me, and its not not done yet. But it can"t stop me from being kind. Thats the power I have that it can't touch. I thought about that much later when I got really sick and realized it wasn't just words. That one thing, the power to choose to be kind, may not save your life but it can save your humanity. I really miss him. He was a teacher and literally over a hundred former students went to the wake.
The lovely butch that does operations at my company once said something at a company off-site that was along the lines of "if you notice something makes you feel wistful, chase that feeling"
I've thought about that a lot ever since.
Out of curiosity, does it hit harder because of who said it?
Don't over-commit to any one version of yourself.
This is has been my motto lately. It reminds me that people around me each have a version of me in their heads based on how they perceive me, and I'm not obliged to stay consistent that. And that I also have a version of "how I should be" in my head, and I don't have to stay consistent with that either.
Being true to myself doesn't mean "never change".
"The only thing you can truly give to another person is time."
No matter what you do, or what you give, it all boils down to time.
Work to earn money, buy a present and gift it = time
Craft something for someone = time
Steal something for someone = time
Just sit, listen and enjoy the time you have with someone = time.
"Never, never, never give up."
This is a common misquote of a Winston Churchill speech, October 29, 1941, at the school he attended as a boy, Harrow School, just outside of Central London. The original quote is "... never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense."
See https://www.quora.com/Why-did-winston-churchill-say-never-never-never-give-up but be aware this site has gone to the AI dogs.
"Never, never, never give up" has guided me well and truly for many years.
Just say to yourself: "this is not how this story ends".
“To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it occurs.”
– Epictetus
Probably the most important tip I'd give anyone, anytime. Control what you can control, not what you can't.
A couple of things come to mind:
Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life. Try new things, you never know what you'll enjoy!
Very little is about you-- Don't take it personally.
“Good people can disagree.”
We shouldn’t be clones of one another, it’s ok to differ on things, small or large. Someone simply not agreeing with you doesn’t make them a bad person. Likewise, someone simply agreeing with you does not make them a good person. Be kind and forget the nonsense.
"It is better to start somewhere than nowhere"
I was given this advice at work and of course it applies well to many projects at work. But can easily be applied to everyday life if something feels overwhelming or impossible. Just do something will get things going.
"You have to just play the game."
Something a friend once told me when I was bitching about college administration. Not even sure what I was complaining about, but probably the bureaucracy around everything in college.
It really stuck with me and something I live by these days. It doesn't work to be stubborn and want to do things your own way, most of the time you just have to play the game.
It just reminds me that in order to get what I want, I need to do what's asked and it doesn't fundamentally change me as a person, but does get me further towards where I want to be.
I'm heavily paraphrasing what has been said to me, but essentially:
Don't waste your time worrying about things you can't act on immediately.
It really helps me take a step back whenever I feel too anxious about something, and helps me evaluate the situation. Can I do something about it? If so, I should do it. If I can't, then that energy is better spent doing something else, or planning on what to do when the time to act does come around.
Obviously, this doesn't mean that I'm completely worry-free in life, but it does help me a lot in managing my worries.
An older Canadian lady started chatting with me at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London, asking about me and why I was there (I was the youngest in a quilting exhibit by about 3 decades and a minority to boot) and we were just chatting. I mentioned that I studied Engineering in college and she was a retired engineer. She said she was happy to see that I was there, because "The best engineers love the arts and engineering." I think about that quote a lot, and it's inspired me to be more well rounded and love things that aren't "conventional" in my circles.
These have become mantras for me:
When you wrestle with a pig, you get dirty and the pig loves it.
Nobody in the room owns the idea.
You'll meet the same people on your way down the ladder you met on the way up.