(vanity) Best Life Advice?

All y'all

[Choose Ye This Day]

To any and all, I have a question:

What is the single best piece of advice you have ever been given?

This could be anything (stock tip, parental wisdom, etc.), and may have been given to you by anyone--friend, spouse, parent, grandparent, child, etc. But what one piece of advice most strongly and positively affected you or your life?

Thanks ahead of time for sharing. (You could share worst advice, too, if you prefer.)

[Professional]

My father had some good ones, the best; "Getting to the top isn't the hardest part, staying there is".

[Choose Ye This Day]

That's a good one. Along the lines of "the people you pass on the way up are the one's you'll pass on your way down" or something like that.

Any others of your father's good ones you'd care to share?

[Professional]

Son, if you can't be good at everything, can't you at least be a master of a couple things? Master salesman, small business leader, pickle ball ace...

[EuroFrog]

My favorite advice to give is to ignore the advice of others.

[Keith in Iowa]

My dad always told me, "If you can't be good, be carefull. And if you're not carefull, don't name it after me."

[Sam Cree]

Take pride in everything you do.

[Sam Cree]

no matter how trivial

[cuz_it_aint_their_money]

From my Dad (after watching me try to put my granddaughter's new bike together):
"When all else fails, read the damn directions."

To which I replied: “Directions? We don’t need no stinkin’ directions!”

[Sam Cree]

Be cautious about giving advice.

[boris]

All I can offer is quotes:

"The heights by great men
Reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight--
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night."--Wordsworth

"Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning." -Hesiod, Works and Days

"The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it.

"This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring.

"But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it."--C.S. Lewis, The Inner Ring, 1942

"Problems worthy of attack
Prove their worth--by hitting back."--Piet Hein, Grooks

"You'll conquer the present suspiciously fast,
If you smell of the future, and stink of the past."--Piet Hein, Grooks II

[Khurkris]

Best advice..easy....."PAY ATTENTION."

[doubled]

"Just remember one word - plastics."

[Choose Ye This Day]

Great line from a great movie.

[dirtboy]

The best advice I ever got was to never take advice from anyone.

[Carlucci]

My very first boss I ever had gave me this gem:

"Those who ask for more, get more."

[boris]

"My very first boss I ever had gave me this gem"

Mine told me: "If you ever start to think you're indespensible, put your finger in a glass of water and then take it out and observe the hole."

[zoesmom]

best ever was from an uncle. he said to greet everyone you see politely. it costs nothing but you get tons of goodwill. you never know when you may see that person again.

[Auntie Mame]

Here are some gems from my mother:

You attract what you fear.

Every thought is like a request.

What others give you is what they want.

....and here's one from me:

If you don't ask, you don't get.

[natewill]

"My mama always told me that life is like a box of chocolates"