What is something someone has said that stuck with you?

"You suffer no fools and tolerate no bullshit. I respect that, but it'll piss everyone off above you constantly." - My first Director nearly 14 years ago.

I'd got into an argument in a boardroom where a councillor had looked at a report, made his assumptions and refused to accept he was wrong. It got heated and I told him to 'get his head out of his ass, this was about lives and not profits' and my Director interjected at that point,

In a debrief afterwards, those are the words he said. I remember it clear as day and felt awful until the second bit came out of his mouth. I get what he means, he and I worked on tact, diplomacy and attitude a lot in my three years working with him, he was great. I still struggle with not wanting to bludgeon folks when they're jackasses, but I'm better at it than I was back then.

That being said, I get a lot of praise from my teams and other areas of leadership for the zero-bullshit attitude I take to things. So, swings and roundabouts.

"The company won't take care of you, you need to take care of you."

That little thunderclap came when I was literally killing myself to keep a job that I used to love, and getting abused further in return for the effort. It was so, so, healthy and liberating to skedaddle out of there.

"Everyone is doing the best they can."

That was a chewy therapy nugget. It can take a continuous, conscious effort at empathy to fully understand what this means. But when I finally got the message, it made it much easier to move on from some fairly rough abuse at the hands of my parents, and stop viewing myself so consistently negatively.

Even the worst, most appalling behavior, the grossest malice, the people who seem like they should know how to do better... usually don't.

We often don't know enough to tell that we're ignorant, "Dunning-Kruger"-ing our way through life. I have no reliable model or information about other people's interior worlds and life experiences, the axioms they're operating on, without asking directly. [Which is another version of "We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviour."]

It's occasionally interesting to look at things like the r/"Am-I-the-Asshole" threads, because they're a rare example of both willingness to reflect on one's behavior in a public setting, and the distorting biases people use when they recall their own actions.

A coworker once said to me “I envy you, Maelstrom. You truely live in the moment.” A decade later I still don’t know what to take away from that, but I suspect I have ADHD and she noticed in her own way.

I also think the quote “We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviour” is very useful.

Someone hit me years ago when I was going through a long super depressed patch with "do you remember when you used to be fun?"

Not a suitable tactic for everyone but it was what I needed to hear. Sort of a compliment and a warning buried under a brutal joke. Was the key thing in changing my mental approach and getting back to "normal".

"It is better to start somewhere than nowhere"

Can be applied to big and small things in life. Cleaning up the kitchen. Finding a new job. Working on bigger projects at work. Getting more exercise.

Often it is better to just start doing something rather than planning and thinking forever. Not the same as doing things without preparation or thought, but at some point some experience is required that no more thinking or planning can help with.

Somebody explained Hanlon's Razor to me once and it did change how I view people's actions a lot. Sometimes people do stupid shit, not because they're assholes, but just because they're stupid.

"It won't be the same, but it will be OK."

My mother said this to me when I was eleven years old and she was separating from my father. When I am anxious about a change in my life, this is the little mantra I use to focus less on worrying uselessly and focus more on creating a good outcome.

"Don't say retarded, there are those around you with family that may be disabled and take that term offensively." I took that to heart as I never meant to mock the disabled. 7 years later, I had a child with Downs and Autism and that statement rang even truer. Now, I give the same reminder.

Later, in life I had a similar experience for saying "that's Gay." I have since struck that as well from my vocabulary.

I don't remember the exact details anymore. But it's the sentiment.

At my very first workplace, I was 19? I told my colleague I didn't like something because it was too popular. And she had this utter look of puzzlement on her face. "Why? That's dumb"

Those might not have been the exact words but it was something like that.

But it was indeed dumb. I questioned why I had to dislike something just because other people liked it. I questioned many things.

And now, I carefully like or dislike what I do because of my own tastes and not dependent on what other people do.

Having said that, it's really really really really hard to enjoy rick and morty these days because of other people. I'm trying very hard not to let that affect anything. But I'm not perfect and it is hard.

Not said directly to me, but something one of my friends wrote. It was with regards to a significant personal problem that they'd tried to solve. "It's ok if you don't have the solution today. Just know you will have the solution eventually." (They said it much more eloquently, I'm paraphrasing...) The idea there was, if you are trying hard to solve the problem but just haven't figured it out yet, don't beat yourself up. Keep trying and remember that you will eventually find the solution. This belief of the future can provide some sort of relief today. (To be clear, I realize there are problems which can't or won't be solved, but this was specifically the sort of thing that, you know you're gonna solve it one day if you try hard enough, but you don't necessarily know when it's going to happen; just don't lose site of that on the stressful days until then.) This has helped me a lot, and I've always been grateful for that advice!

Three quotes that have helped me in my current stage in life.

"Own it."

Meaning be authentic and don't doubt yourself.

"Perfection is the enemy of good" and "something worth doing, is worth doing poorly"

I take this as a slight improvement is a step in the right direction.

I'm not sure if I've ever had someone say exactly this to me, but "distinguish between family and relatives." At the end of the day, the people you're related to by blood are individuals in their own right, and there's no guarantee that you're going to get along with them. It's good to keep things peaceful but I don't believe it's necessary to be extremely close with all of ones relatives. Additionally, I've actually become much closer with people I'm not related to, more in line with the "found family" concept.

If others has differing perspectives or have found themselves in a similar mindset I'd be interested in talking about it.

When I was a child, my grandmother told me "Don't let anybody tell you these are your golden years. They're gold-plated."

As a kid, I really appreciated that; most people idolise childhood but there's plenty of struggle, confusion, and general lack of freedom. I think a lot of adults give themselves a hard time because children are simply not allowed the independence to e.g. take a break or decide they're too sick to work, and it can be hard to grow out of that mindset.

I'd been married <5 years and I was doing an inspection on a house for an energy company. It was occupied by an elderly fellow and his wife, who was in hospice, unresponsive and relegated to a bed as she waned away in her final days. For all the trouble it stirred in my heart, this old fellow patiently doting on his bedridden spouse was emblematic of true love. He expressed his grief with a stoic air, that if the roles were reversed he would hope he had the same love behind his care. It was sort of like Pippin when he finds Merry after the big battle in front of Gondor.

I cannot recall how many years he'd said they were married, but I'm fairly certain it was more than 50. I asked him what he thought was essential to an enduring marriage. With a wise nod, he said "patience, tolerance, and compromise."

I'll be the first to say love also helps, but now that I've been in that same marriage all this time, all I can say is he was right, because when anger flares and the love gets cast to the wayside in that heated moment, what he specified needs to be present in order for love to endure.

"You're my guardian angel."

I was driving through my hometown heading back to my mom's house after an errand, and saw an old lady had jumped her car over the curb and it was hung up on a concrete planter. She had gotten out of the car and was just staring astounded at the situation. I stopped and talked with her and stuck with her while I flagged down another driver (this was before mobile phones) and had them call police. I didn't do that much to be honest but just kept her company until the cops and the tow came and took over the situation. I told her good luck and she said that to me. I thought she was still a little goofy and shaken up and said something like "ohh that's nothing." The usual aw shucks stuff. I'm not religious, so --

And she said something like 'Who else but my guardian angel would help me like this?"

I said thanks and went home. But it stuck with me a long time. If there's a reason to be on this earth, it's to give help where you can. It may not mean that much to you but to the person being helped it can be everything.

This is a line from a song by the band Paramore called "Last Hope":

And the salt in my wounds
Isn't burning anymore than it used to.
It's not that I don't feel the pain
It's just I'm not afraid of hurting anymore.

I have struggled with depression all my life, and this speaks to me about that struggle. I have good days and bad days, and good weeks and bad weeks, but it's always there.

I'm in treatment with therapy and medication, and thing a have improved a lot. But part of my dealing with it is accepting that it's a part of me, and it might "get better" but it's never going to "get well," and that the struggle is always going to be there.

A's attract A's, Bs attract Cs and Ds.

if you're not best in class, then the people you attract won't be best in class either.

kinda toxic but it's been my motivation not to get stuck as a B worker.

Oddly enough "this too shall pass". I know it's the ultimate cliché platitude and I'm not even religious, but it works for me. It taught me to focus on how I feel once the shittiness has passed and there's that wave of relief that I've gotten through something. I focus on the feeling of accomplishment once that moments over.

Doesn't always work, but it has gotten me through quite a few social anxiety moments, rough patches at work, etc.

"People can die if you can't admit you don't know something."

This was said by an employee of a company that was attending my University's career fair while giving a presentation in one of my classes. Prior to switching my major, I was an engineering student at the time and professor had asked this individual for advice he could give us. It was especially relevant in the field of engineering where a failure of a calculation or just trusting authority too much has a very bloody history to back the notion that egos can cost lives. But even now while I am in a more tech-service oriented field, it's still highly applicable though not as grave. Instead refusing to admit you don't know something and "faking it" has a different cost for those who have to do the heavy lifting of making it a reality. It can be in the form of stress, crunch, and employee abuse which in turn can lead to some rather disastrous results like broken systems that are vulnerable to data leaks.

About people: "People don't remember you for what you did; they remember you for how you made them feel."

About the world: "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be believable."

About business: "If someone looks at what you made and thinks, "this is for me", you have succeeded."

While my college was closed I went to a weight lifting gym in another town.

A gym rat there gave me some advice. I started quibbling with him. He didn't say it flat out, but I picked up from him he was taking his time, doing me a favor, and getting a hassle for it.

I discovered that I had belief below the level of my self awareness that people would always go out of their way to give me advice.

They do not.

Giving strangers advice is often thankless.

From then on I would hear people out, not interrupt, not argue, thank them and quietly not use the advice if it didn't seem good to me.

It's eerie, but I'm 45 and I can't think of a single thing.

"I love you"

This wasn't from family, and wasn't from a partner.

This was in a completely platonic context, from a friend who makes it a point to make sure that people feel appreciated.

"There are some things one is glad to do, and some things one is glad to have done."

I often think on this one when doing something like exercise, or getting a dental cleaning, or mastering something difficult. When I'm in the middle of a hike up a steep hill, for example, I'll question why I ever decided to torture myself with the climb. But I know from experience that I'll feel fantastic once I've pushed through to the end, and I'll be glad then that I didn't wimp out.

"Too dumb to fail" or "too stupid to fool".

I learned this from a computer science professor I worked with in grad school who was a bit of an iconoclast. He was a huge fan of the KISS principle and liked to remind us not to over-engineer things; that fancy, clever techniques tend to be great right up until the moment they suddenly turn brittle and exhibit complex or tricky failure modes, whereas the stupid brute-force solutions will often blissfully keep trudging on. (Sort of a tortoise-and-the-hare thing.)

I had a very dear friend pass away when we were 13. Without going into specific detail, his death possibly could have been prevented if I’d taken action. I was torn open for years with regret that manifested in deep spiraling depression, a complete lack of self-care, and an absolute absence of hope, joy, or happiness at any given moment. I spoke with four different therapists and spent a cumulative two months in inpatient treatment for depression in the six years following his death. The providers helped pull me out of some of the surface-level sadness, but the core takeaway from the treatment didn’t touch the root cause of my regret; they told me I was too young to fully understand what was going on with my friend, but I knew that wasn’t the case. I was scared for him and realized the severity, but didn’t think it was possible that he would act. I remembered specific instances of teetering action vs. inaction, which meant I was capable of taking preventative steps but I chose not to.

I decided to try one more therapist who specialized in substance abuse because at this point I was deep in the throws of addiction; he said something that completely changed my outlook. He basically said “Yeah, maybe you could have done something, but you didn’t and that is a fact. But.. What if you made his life better in those last days? What if your friendship is what kept him around for longer than he otherwise would have? What if!?”

Nothing from the past was changed based on this question, but the therapist gave me a reason to find joy in the last hours, days, and weeks of the relationship with my friend. I became obsessed with this thought, and because of that, I was able to start to see the value of fostering close relationships again. I still struggle with profound regret, but that therapist was able to give me a sense of peace I’d never thought possible.

"No one is coming to save you."

A long time ago things were not going so well for me in life, and I was just stagnating waiting for things to get better. Kind of a juvenile attitude but I guess I was just waiting for something to trigger a change in me, like what happens in the movies. In fairness, I was half raised by TV. The quote sounds kind of pessimistic, but hearing this helped me to get on the path to taking more responsibility for my direction in life. That's not to say that people don't need help to succeed in life, but you have to at least be the project manager of yourself. If I want some part of my life to be better, chances are, it can be better if I do something about it. Wishing I had been born with more talent or a different upbringing or that some magical opportunity will fall into my lap isn't going to help me now.

"Every expert was at first a beginner. "

"A bad first decision is better than no decision."

Some time ago I read on a Reddit thread about food going to waste someone wrote "...Nothing matters. Take the food." and that stuck with me ever since, almost turning into a life motto. It helps remember how much thought we put into everything when, most of the time, just doing the right thing is easy and there's only fake restrictions to prevent us from doing what is right.

I have a few memorable quotes from older friends over the last few years. Not all good advice, but memorable.

I was sitting on my neighbors porch drinking my morning coffee when he pulled up. My neighbor is an old one eyed cowboy who's lived a very rough life. As he walked by me into the house he said, "world, don't ever get old. It's the worst. In fact, you should probably commit sucie by 50." I told this to some other aging friends who know him, and one of them responded with, "well, what's HE waiting for?"

Another one by the same friend who responded with contempt to my neighbors quote had a wonderful quip, "if communication was a gaping abyss, he would not fall in."

And last but not least, and probably actually helpful is my retired doctor friend saying, "everyone is just trying to have a navigable day."

The last one I really try to keep in mind.

I still remember the sentiment, if not the actual wording, of a character from an old Glen Ford western I caught on TV many years ago: the character was a successful Chicago businessman talking to Ford's cowboy character, and he said something along the lines of "People think I have a higher rate of success than most people, but that's not true - I just try many more things than most people, so I have more successes than most. But I also have more failures."

"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

Said by my college advisor when I was ready to go off into the world. Talking about how building some hypothetical amazing machine that would be a technical marvel, but would kill random people. Or stealing something from a store.

Kept me from getting in trouble and helped me start building my moral code.

"The most important step a person can take is always the next one"
It's a quote from book 3 of the Stormlight archive series by Brandon Sanderson.

I highly recommend Sanderson BTW. Fantastic author and world builder.

I'll paste the full context below, but it basically gets at the point that momentum, or "the next step" is far more important than the first step in a journey, because it's the one that continues to carry you to your goal.

Bigger quote:
"The most important words a man can say are, “I will do better.” These are not the most important words any man can say. I am a man, and they are what I needed to say.

The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says “journey before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.

But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination. To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one"

"Life is a buffet: Help yourself."