What life's words of wisdom did your parents give you that you heeded?

Dad died pretty young and Mom said they had been putting some big stuff off for the future. So her advice was the future is now. Don’t put off life waiting for it.

My other said something similar: do I save for my future, and I might just pass early? Or spend it now and maybe not have what I need later? The lesson was actually about balance.

She said something else that I valued: that young folks should work hard to consciously build early memories, fun things they did, some adventures or independent successes, so that later, when life challenges came, maybe times got tough or the marriage was tense, they would have that to look back on. She knew too many neighbor friends who hadn’t “lived,” before settling down. I encouraged both of my girls in the same way.

Treat others the way you want them to treat you.

Work hard.

Smile.

Love. Tell people you love that you love them.

Count your blessings.

This has never made sense to me. Why would you treat others the way you want to be treated? Wouldn’t it make more sense to treat them the way THEY want to be treated?

Don’t worry about things that can be solved with money.

“The world doesn’t revolve around you.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

You can lose a lot of material things but you can never lose your education. Never stop learning.

Marian–The original saying I read is “Do NOT do unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you.”

Which makes more sense.

Good cooking lasts, good looks don’t.

(yeah, yeah it was a long time ago)

^^^
In that same vein – I had brothers so in my younger years I never hesitated to do whatever they did. But as I got into my teenage years I was somewhat less sure of myself in circumstances where I would be the only or one of the few girls. My dad always used to tell me “Harvest, a beautiful woman is welcome anywhere.”

Probably not very politically correct but a real confidence booster!

"Everything happens for a reason. " “Family comes first.” “Don’t ever do something you are not comfortable with no matter what everyone else is doing.”

My parents were first gen Polish, and Dad always told me I was as good as anyone. And I believed him!

As a teen my parents were full of advice that I ignored…
The one thing that got seared into my brain…
My fourth grade teacher announced the highest scores after each test. (Yes, lawsuit territory today). He gave them as highest boy score and highest girl score. I came home and proudly announced that I had the highest girl score. My dad looked me in the eye and said “You are as smart as any boy.” It wasn’t a view that girls heard much at the time. I went on to major in a very “non traditional” field.
I’m pretty sure that if he had discouraged me from STEM type majors back when , I probably would have picked a different major.

Sorry if this is slightly off topic.

Hmm, there were some wise things my parents instilled in me, that I have found valuable

1)Obedience to authority simply because it is authority is not only idiotic, but dangerous, and questioning authority is not a bad thing. It is kind of funny, both my parents were of the WWII generation, not ‘hippies’, yet they didn’t swallow blind obedience to authority, whether it was teachers, government or religion. Likewise, don’t take anything at face value someone tells you, think it through for yourself.

2)A promise made is a debt unpaid, that when you promise someone something, you better be sure you can do it, and if in the end you can’t, you need to not only make sure the other person knows why you couldn’t keep your promise, you also need to find a way to make up for it. While life makes promises at times difficult to keep, the problem is people make promises far too often without knowing if they can keep them

3)If you are doing something, especially when other people are counting on you, you keep working hard to get it gone, because if you don’t you are letting others down. Whether it is employees of yours, or fellow workers, holding your end up is critical.

4)It doesn’t matter what someone does for a living, what matters is what they do with their mind and how they live their lives. I have people I am friends with that many would look down upon because of how they survive, yet they all teach me many things and have often been the truest of friends, whereas the people with ‘respectable’ careers or ‘highly achieve’ often are people who will fail when things need to be done or you need someone.

5)Treat someone with respect and dignity and if they are worth anything as people, they will respond in kind. If they don’t, then if you can get them out of your life, do so, and if you can’t, continue to treat them with respect and dignity, because in the end you will come out the better.

6)There are a lot of very different people in the world, and what other people think of them doesn’t matter, what matters is what kind of people they are. Likewise, don’t be afraid to be yourself and enjoy yourself as long as you are not hurting others, and if others don’t like it, that is their problem. Whether it is ‘middle class morality’, ‘suburban conformity’ or esoteric religious morality, life is too short to live life like others tell you to, and in the end they will die having not lived, whereas to quote Auntie Mame, you will have sampled from the banquet that is life and can die knowing you did.

From my surrogate parent, the therapist who saved my life, I learned a lot of things, but one of the wisest was on raising kids. She said as long as by the time they get to college they can tie their shoe laces and go to the bathroom by themselves, you have done a good job and don’t sweat the rest (she also showed me the way to look at life as you age, and it was definitely what Dylan Thomas said in his poem, to not go quietly into that dark night, and I guarantee you she didn’t!)

Better, but I’m still not comfortable with it.

The basis for this saying – in any of its forms – seems to be that everyone wants the same things. And that isn’t true.

^ I think the point is attempting to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

My father advised me not to believe everything I read; that just because it was in the newspaper or a book didn’t make it true.

eta: My parents advised me to have my babies before I turned 30 and I paid attention to that. (My mother had had potentially dangerous pregnancy/childbirth issues with my last sister which they believed age-related. Sis is just fine) I would never give that advice to my own kids.

My mother advised me that if you keep your house picked up, it’s takes a lot less time to clean it when necessary. I absolutely follow this advice. I pick up all day long. Now we call it tidying.

Just one more: My father always advised me that I could teach myself anything as long as I had library access.

My grandmother was a strict Irish Catholic who walked to mass every day and had 10 children but a rotten marraige… When my female cousins and I were in our teens she called us into her bedroom and whispered that the birth control pill was the best thing ever invented and gave us cash to get on it right away. She told us not not tell our parents and to see her if we needed more money for it. To say we were shocked would be putting it mildly.

From my Dad: Never, ever, EVER cross a picket line.

@alh - My father also told me that I could learn anything with library access and that I could always keep myself entertained with a good book. Whenever we moved, one of our very first stops was always the public library.

Also - with a map and a full tank of gas, you are never “lost.”

What to do when the book with the needed information hasn’t been written or is not available, the books in the library are all flat-out “wrong” regardless of the authors’ pedigrees (thinking specifically of the information available about autism at our local library, when my child was diagnosed), or if there is no map or the landmarks have changed? That is where he might have had more to say…

But, by example he showed me how even late in life he could be open to learning new skills and changing his mind about what he had been taught when new evidence came along.

Internet access has replaced library access in a lot of ways, but I completely agree with your father’s meaning.

@bone: That’s an amazing story about your grandmother!

frazzled2thecore: I am guessing you were trying to understand autism just before there was any decent research at all. It must have been extremely difficult, frightening and frustrating. Of course, I can’t imagine what your family has gone through with this, but I am so sorry.