To ask what the best advice you've ever been given is?

[Champagneformyrealfriends]

Just that really. Following on from the "worst advice on Mumsnet" thread-what is the best advice you've ever been given (real life or Mumsnet)?

"If you can't be good, be careful" is a favourite of mine

Also "if you can't get over it, go round it." Paraphrasing a good friend, after I had had a shit couple of years and was feeling pretty hopeless. It helped me look at things from a different angle and see the light at the end of a tunnel.

"Eat that frog" - given by an old boss. Basically if the worst thing you have to do today is eat a frog, then do it first!".

Stopped me avoiding many many things and just getting them over with which always feels better.

My second one was an old Aunties saying "Never trouble trouble 'til trouble troubles you. It only doubles trouble and troubles others too".

Someone told me once that if you think your be even 1% happier without the significant other in your life

The you should move on

My mum always said "If they can talk bad about someone to you I guarantee they'll talk bad about you to someone else"
"Never tell a man everything about you"
"If they don't put bread on your table their opinion doesn't matter"
"Actions speak louder than words"

"If you can do something about it, don't worry.
If you can't do something about it, don't worry."

I suffer from anxiety. I am very fond of this piece of advice. Though I'm open to it being pulled apart (I love to worry, see).

LTB! From mumsneters I did and am now with a lovely guy married and expecting first baby :)

"You wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you knew just how seldom they did."

I try to live by this. Try being the operative word.

I thought this thread was going to be stuff like "my dad told me to become an accountant rather than a lawyer and he was right" or "The guy at the apple store said the iPad Mini was better than the iPad" or whatever

We are here for a good time, not a long time.

1: if it walks like a duck...(it probably is)
2:macro/micro - works equally well in business issues as sorting laundry :)

'You're a long time dead'.
I.e. seize the moment and don't keep putting stuff off. I try and remember that often.

"Feel sorry for people who are mean and bitchy about you. It says far more about them than it does about you." I love that.

Don't worry about what you can't control.

Essentially, to not hate another person, except in exceptional circumstances. To hate specific things that a person or people have done without hating them as a human being.

Similarly, lifelong respect for all people. The sort-of antithesis of snobbery. It is incredibly rare for me to lose respect for somebody, and when I do, it is typically temporary. The correspond with a sort-of enduring self-respect, which makes me incredibly difficult to persuade or walk all over. It also makes me impossible to tell what to do, which does not always go down well with people who believe themself to be in a position of power over me, but I'll take the hit.

Both of these I attribute to my parents, who did not get everything right by a long shot but who did gift me with a sort of enduring tolerance for other people and their fuck-ups. I am working on the forgiving of self bit. Perhaps that is the coming decade's project.

*This corresponds with

Lelly-I love that one too. Definitely want to teach my DD that when she's older.

Hobnails "Eat the frog"

Choose your battles. Specifically in terms of parenting.

So true and has reaped rewards for me
As a
Mummy

My Dad always says that in life you're always waiting for something - that house move, kids to start school, job promotion - and that never stops, no matter how old you get and before you know it, you're older, so instead of waiting for x y or z to improve yr life, enjoy here and now.

I wish I vould actually heed his advice though!

My Grandma used to say "it's all the same a hundred years from now" when I was stressing about something ridiculously unimportant, which I took to mean that my decision wasn't going to be so cataclysmic that it would change the events of history!

My Nan used to say 'it will pass'

I try to live by 'don't sweat the small stuff' as I suffer from anxiety.

Always.think for yourself!
This was from my nan and I pass this advice on to the teenagers I work with.

My mum tells me 'his too shall pass'and it's something I have clung to over the last few years, and has always been true.

I can't remember where I saw/heard it, but 'everyone has a story,' j try to remember that before I judge anyone.

My teaching assistant at school says to us all, every Friday -

Be good Miss X! If you can't be good, be careful and if you can't be careful, remember the date!

My parents went through a very acrimonious divorce when I was thirty and hadn't been married long myself. They both tried to drag me into it and it all became very upsetting and stressful and affected Dh and I. My lovely aunt said 'put your own relationship first' and I've never forgotten that. Thirty years married now!

A mothers place is in the wrong - someone said this on MN years ago. I took it to mean that no matter what you do, someone somewhere will think you are doing it wrong, so you might as well do it the way that works for you, and feck what they think.

Made my life as a new mother much less stressy.

My granny used to say...

'Cream always rises to the top'

Meaning if you do well, work hard and be a good person you'll go far and be rewarded.
When I go through low self esteem episodes I always think about this and it reminds me to keep my head down and get on with it