Always take your vitamins, supplements, and medicine in gummy form, ‘cause even if it doesn’t work, hey, at least you got to eat a gummy.
Also, have you ever been to an all-you-can-eat buffet? They always put a dinky little bowl by the ice cream, don’t they? Screw that: Get in the other line, grab yourself a ginormous soup bowl, and go to town!
And… that’s pretty much all the advice I’ve got. (Seriously.)
Everything else is just me rewording someone else’s thoughts.
It’s funny: Raising children is one of our greatest responsibilities, and that necessarily includes giving advice. But nobody really teaches us how.
Because if you stop and think about ALL the advice you’ve received over the years, only a handful of it was helpful enough to commit to memory AND become part of your life.
Useful advice is exceptionally rare.
Maybe that’s why we’ll settle for crumbs. If we watch a movie, read a book, or scan a PJ Media column [wink], and get just one legitimately good piece of advice from it, we take it as a big win.
Why, we’d get so excited, we’d recommend that book/movie/column to our friends!
My dad gave me lots of advice. The two maxims I heard the most growing up were, “It’s okay to make a mess as long as you clean it up,” and “Even a fish wouldn’t get in trouble if it kept its mouth shut.” (Yeah, you can probably guess why.)
I learned a lot from my dad, but it wasn’t really his advice that left an imprint. It was more by watching how he lived his life — his values, morals, priorities, and ethics.
Advice consists of words. It’s especially true when you’re an impressionable young kid: Actions trump words a million times over, ‘cause we watched what you did more than we listened to what you said.
My friend Andrew is about five years my senior. (He’s like the older brother that I never really wanted.) When I was in college, he told me, “Always hit on the ugly girls first, because by the time the good-looking girls reject you, the ugly ones will be taken.” (Andrew was a realist.)
Advice of that kind will stick with you.
Linda Lael Miller is a bestselling romance novelist. I worked with her (briefly), and at a book signing, a young, aspiring author asked Miller how she dealt with rejection — all those agents and publishers who told her she wasn’t good enough — and what she did to stay positive.
A puzzled expression flashed across Miller’s face, but it was immediately erased with a sympathetic smile: “When they reject you, they’re not going to shoot you! So just keep writing.”
Maybe it’s because of my profession, but I found Miller’s advice spectacularly helpful.
Bill Parcells, the legendary ex-NFL head coach, was also one helluva good quote. He’d qualify for the Hall of Fame in both. My favorite advice from him: “You are what your record says you are.”
That means, if you’re 6-10, you’re 6-10. You’re not an 8-8 team that caught a few unlucky breaks in the fourth quarter. It doesn’t matter if the refs blew the call, your quarterback was injured, or your kicker botched an extra point. You’re 6-10.
“You are what your record says you are.” Good or bad, reality is what it is.
Accept it, learn from it, and act accordingly.
Because my wife is Dutch, she has lots of expressions I’ve never heard before. Some are wacky, others more straightforward. “You pay for [garbage], you get [garbage]” is advice that makes sense in any language. (“Walking and water are for the poor,” not as much.)
Twenty years ago, when there were real, actual, brick-and-mortar bookstores, there’d usually be at least one row of marketing books. I used to read ‘em religiously: Dozens and dozens of books by “experts.”
But the weird thing was, each book recommended a different strategy. Each had a different approach. Each prioritized different things.
As you can imagine, their advice differed dramatically, too.
Do you get rich in business by conforming to trends — or by taking big risks? By novelty and originality — or by treading the path with the most foot traffic? By careful planning or by reading and reacting?
Some books said the former, others the latter.
Oddly enough, they were both right: It always depends on the situation.
Most advice is that way, too. Very few things in life are absolutes.
(Except maybe ice cream and gummies.)
In one of his last HBO comedy specials, George Carlin said, “I’ll tell you a little secret about the blues [music]. It’s not enough to know which notes to play, you have to know why they needed to be played.”
Same goes for advice: Giving our kids advice is secondary. If we’re focusing all our energy on that, we’re failing them as a parent.
Teaching them when to follow the advice is more important than the advice itself.
