Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you only take what is worth having. ~ The Richest Man in Babylon
NOTE: I received several responses this week and decided to include them all. Consequently, this post is a bit long; feel free to cherry-pick. Or read a few sections a day for a week. 😉
And so we begin, with blank yellow directional signs and advice to be careful. Heaven knows I have received plenty of direction in my lifetime, and I’ll share some of those nuggets with you. First, however, let’s look at some ideas from friends.
Don't quit
Never give up. If Thomas Edison had given up, we wouldn’t have light bulbs – not from him, anyway. He had over 1,000 failures before he determined the right type of filament to use. Your success may be just around the corner, and if it isn’t, you will have found one more mistake not to make. That’s the way Edison looked at it. Are you smarter than he was? Maybe. But isn’t his perspective more productive? (Did you see what I did there?)
Seriously, if you don’t keep trying, you’ll never know what might have come of just one more push.
The devil you know
The devil you know may not be as bad as the devil you don’t know. You may have also heard the short version, “Better the devil you know.” It reminds me of something I alluded to in another post – it’s what you don’t know that represents the biggest challenge. I’ll provide an example.
You might have a supervisor who isn’t the most organized, maybe not even the most knowledgeable. You think you might escape by applying for a different role. That’s going to be a gamble. Your current boss, good or not, is a known quantity. A new boss is a box of chocolates. There’s no way to know whether that manager’s style suits you without experiencing it yourself. You could ask a current employee, but the response will vary depending on whom you ask. There’s at least one malcontent on every team, and often there’s a fair-haired child. Either of them will give you a skewed perspective. I know this because I’ve been on both sides.
Swapping out roles because of a boss is a gamble. Do you enjoy your job duties? Do you work well with your team? Do you feel lucky?
Take the reins
Kill 'em with kindness
Always, always be kind. I will begin by saying this is great advice. I will also say that it’s easier for some to execute than it is for others. I’m one of the others. Sometimes. If an obnoxious person is being mean to someone who can’t fight back, forget it. I won’t even try to soften my response. Understand that I will always be polite, but there’s a wide chasm between being polite and being kind.
Do I know I should always be kind? Of course. I was taught that at a young age. Sadly–or not–I have a strong sense of fairness, and that usually prevails. But I’ll work on kindness. I promise.
Except for bullies.
Mother knows best
These are from someone else’s mom and one of them made me laugh. It was great advice, but it surprised me.
- Don’t handle raw onions before you go to work because the odor stays on your hands for hours. So, the recipient of this advice was a dental hygienist. Years ago they didn’t wear rubber gloves, and no, patients didn’t worry about it one bit.
- If you’ve been too busy to get an early start on dinner, just sauté onions just before your husband is due home. It will appear you’ve been hard at it. I can still use this one.
- The best is last. Give your burdens to the Lord, pray and trust in Him.
What are you good for, anyway?
One piece of advice came from a high school guidance counselor. He told one of my respondents that he was a good match for Industrial Engineering. It turned out to be a wildly well-suited pairing. I know the student well, and he likely would have been successful at whatever he put his mind to. Here’s the thing, if he had become a surgeon (oh, I can’t even think of that …), let’s say an architect, he may not have found as much job satisfaction as he did as an engineer. I don’t think he would have ever “phoned in” his tasks, but it’s ever so much better when people are fully engaged in what they are expected to accomplish.
Sometimes we don’t recognize our strengths as well as others might. Yes, you can take your own aptitude test. However, I imagine there’s an art to interpreting those correctly. Do what you are suited for and what will provide job satisfaction. And listen when wise people talk.
Can't have it all
Life is a series of trade-offs. If you are expecting to be able to pursue any interest you choose or any career you choose and also have a family life, you are destined to be disappointed. If your career requires years of training, you may not have time to bird-watch or hike the Appalachian Trail, or sail across the Atlantic. Just as you have to pick your battles, you have to pick your rewards.
While I am reluctant to quote a teacher I thoroughly disliked, I’m going to do it. All of us have only 24 hours a day. We decide how to allocate every minute and we cannot be in two places at once. We have a limited amount of time on earth, but that limit is unknown to us. Make sure the activities you have prioritized do, in fact, deserve their status.
Manage your expectations
From a grandma, “Always do your best. If you’re doing your best and it’s not perfect, that’s okay and good enough.” Some of us want to achieve perfection, and that’s an impossible goal. It creates unnecessary stress and makes a mockery of managing expectations. If you google “perfection is the,” you’ll see options for Enemy of …
- Completion
- Success
- Done and
- Perfectly adequate, to mention a few.
I’m not sure which is the least or most offensive, but for sure, perfection as a goal is problematic. Lest you misunderstand, I am not suggesting that you settle for mediocrity. At some point, though, you have call it good enough and let it go.
Happiness is good management of expectations and good management means making order and assembling the contingent elements of the “do’s'” and the “don’ts”, the “maybe yes'” and the “maybe not’s”. When we really want to live in agreement with ourselves and find peace with the surrounding world, good management is liberating. ~
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Think positively every day. Your mental attitude influences outcomes. For example, part of being a charismatic speaker is the level of confidence displayed. People who appear comfortable in their skin are more believable. It goes beyond that, though. I’ve conducted many classes and they were always better for me as well as the participants when I was prepared and relaxed. Thinking positively alone would not have guaranteed a good result. However, projecting failure would set me on a path from which I wouldn’t be able to recover.
Apart from every other possible scenario, it is likely you interact with people every day. If you are mentally prepared to be annoyed from the time the alarm clock wakes you from peaceful slumber, you will have a terrible, awful, very bad day. For sure.
Headlines, anyone?
Never put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want the whole world to read. Okay. This one gives me flashbacks. I have sent at least one chat to the wrong person (that is, sent it to the person I was complaining about). I have also released more than one email before I softened the message. You may have, too. There isn’t much you can do to remedy that kind of damage, besides falling on the sword. Of course, those situations do force communication, but still. Awkward. I got to the point where I’d type difficult communications on Word and paste them into an email after they were vitriol-free. We all need to vent occasionally, but communications that can’t be erased are not the mechanism.
How's the air up there?
Let your work speak for itself! Nobody likes braggadocio. If you’re a speaker, people who hear you will decide the quality of your presentation. If you’re a baker, people who love bread and those with a sweet tooth (or teeth) will judge your skills. There is no need to celebrate a first-place ribbon or a 3-point shot. The accomplishment is your badge. Or, as Lori McKenna suggests, always stay humble and kind. Yes, Tim McGraw sang it, but Lori wrote it.
In any case, sometimes it’s too early to pat yourself on the back. Steve Kemper wrote about the Segway, making people think it would eliminate gridlock, for one thing. Nope. And there was the electrified water invention that was supposed to cure hangovers. Nope. Anyway, who would fall for that? Wouldn’t it be easier to just drink less?
Your life, your responsibility
From a father to a son on his wedding day, “You and your bride are still part of our family, but you are your own family, too. Everyone else, wise or not, professional or not, will have their opinions, but you have to live with your decisions.” Especially in a culture where the personal accountability level has dropped a bit (see, I can be diplomatic), this is very wise advice. It doesn’t matter what somebody told you when you were five or fifteen, your actions as an adult are all yours. You can blame others if you choose, but the “others” know where the fault lies. And so do you, if you’re honest with yourself.
Speaking of, if you aren’t honest when you talk to yourself, why would you expect anyone else to trust you? You have one life on this earth and it takes decades of effort to create a solid reputation. Do you really want to waste that effort and simply flush it by taking bad advice you didn’t believe in to start with?
Waste of breath?
Here are the aforementioned nuggets. Some of them are advice and some are simply wise observations.
From Daddy – you can’t tell anybody anything; they have to learn for themselves. Too often true. Yes, for me, too. He also observed that he’d rather push his Dodge than drive a Ford. And he wasn’t alone. That is, people make excuses for products (and other people) they really like.
From Mother – start out like you can hold out. Don’t over-promise. Don’t over-commit. Also – if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. We’ve already established in this post and others that perhaps this lesson didn’t drop as far as one would hope.
From my first insurance boss – “Don’t try to remember everything; it’s going to change, anyway. Just know where to look for the answer.” I have used that one. Often.
From another insurance boss (there were more than 10, but I won’t quote them all), “Remember that your attitude impacts the whole team. You have more influence than you know.” Sounds nice now, but it was more of a warning at the time.
From a therapist who was generally unhelpful, but had at least one intelligent thing to say, “Don’t allow yourself to be flotsam in the river of your life.” Okay, that isn’t exactly what she said, but she should have. Take charge of your direction and be accountable for your own happiness.
That's all she wrote. For today.
This is but a sampling of advice I and others have heard in our lifetimes. These admonitions represent what stuck, though. I’ll be pondering this accumulated wisdom to determine if I can apply it more effectively.
You?
Nice blog, Gayle! I’m enjoying these.
So glad, since I value your opinion!