Two for me:

  1. The moment you feel tipsy it’s time to ease down. You have a stomach full of booze that’s going to make you more drunk even if you stop immediately.

  2. If you think people are good, you’re probably right and if you think people are bad, you’re probably right.

People are good IMO.

  • Andy@slrpnk.net
    38·
    1 day ago

    Get ready, because this is kind of cheesy stuff, but these two pieces of sports advice, taken together, have guided me for years.

    First: a mentor of mine who was a pool shark taught me that when you’re playing pool, there is always a best shot to take. Sometimes, when you’ve got no good options in front of you you want to just do nothing or quit. But no matter what, billiards offers a finite set of options of where to try and aim the cue, and if you rank them from best to worst, there is always a best. When you’re in a bad situation, you find it and you take the best option. Often, that’s either a harm reduction strategy, a long-shot that feels impossible, or a combo of both. But if you always do this you’ll usually suffer far less harm in the aggregate, and if you take enough long shots you’ll occasionally achieve a few incredibly improbable wins.

    Second: A kayaking instructor taught me – and this I’m told is true in many similar sports – you go where your focus is, so to evade a problem, focus on the way past. If you see a rock, don’t stare it it, you’ll hit it. It doesn’t matter if your brain is thinking “I gotta go anywhere except that rock!” If you’re looking at, you’re heading into it. If you don’t want to hit the rock, instead you have to look at wherever it is you DO want to go. It takes a bit of practice, because your brain sees “rock!” more easily than “smooth water flowing between two rocks”. But that’s how you get down a river, and it’s also how you work through almost any other problems in life that are rushing at you: don’t focus ON them, focus on whatever is the preferred alternative. This is especially useful if the alternative is sort of a non-thing, like an empty gap between two problems. And it often is.

    Taken together, you get the basic approach that has steered my problem solving throughout adulthood. And it really works.

    • Mike D@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      I’ve played in pool leagues. The advice is solid. Go for your best shot. Sometimes that best shot is making sure the other person has no best shot either.

    • Mr Fish@lemmy.world
      10·
      1 day ago

      I like that your first one doesn’t imply that you always need to find a good option, you only need to look for the best. Sometimes all of your options are bad, and in any other situation you’d never go for them.

    • nikosey@lemmy.world
      14·
      1 day ago

      i took a motorcycle class where they also taught us that second one too: focus on where you want to go, not on what you want to avoid.

      i hadn’t considered it in a broader context until your post, but you’re right it works

  • FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 day ago

    If you think people are good, you’re probably right and if you think people are bad, you’re probably right.

    I’m not sure if it’s objectively right, but I do totally support this because I think it’s right “for you” - as in, if you think someone’s a bad person they won’t be right for you. If you think someone’s a good person, they’ll be right for you. (This isn’t on a first impression basis though)

    • khannie@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      I agree with that 100%.

      The context I was given it in was more about how you view the world. So if you think that people are good you’ll invariably find the good and vice versa.

  • knight_alva@lemmy.world
    18·
    1 day ago

    Idk who said them first but I’ll never forget the men who gave me these two things:

    • You are never out of options until you choose to stop looking for them.

    And

    • Money comes and money goes but it is never worth fighting about. (The guy who gave me this one was going through an awful divorce and had a lot of regrets about how he handled things. I think that context matters here.)
  • rice_nine@lemmy.world
    8·
    5 hours ago

    When someone shows you who they are, believe it the first time.

    Also, if everyone you meet is nice, it’s because you’re a nice person. Conversely, if you think everyone’s an asshole, you’re the asshole.

    • khannie@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      Your second one ties right into my second one in the OP :)

      The first one, I have a rule: I don’t mind if you’re a cunt to me occasionally. We’re all a cunt occasionally. As long as you come back to me and apologise it shows me that you’ve considered your behaviour and who knows what caused it.

      If you don’t, I’ll cut you out of my life like the fat off a pork chop.

  • Today@lemmy.world
    151·
    1 day ago

    Two from my mom-

    I cut; you chose.

    If a boy will cheat with you he will cheat on you.

  • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
    5·
    9 hours ago

    “Go to the bathroom when you don’t have to go so you don’t have to go when you have to go”

    Or, er, use the bathroom when one is available so you don’t need one and there isn’t one there. I can now use the restroom on demand even if it’s not much just so I’m not desperate later and can find a better location.

    • khannie@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      5·
      8 hours ago

      I call that the preemptive strike :) Very fond of it as someone with a bladder the size of a five year old.

  • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
    7·
    9 hours ago

    “Like your job. Love your wife.” - Dell from Trains, Planes, and Automobiles. You can generalize that to say, your job is just a means to an end. Don’t work a job you hate, but look elsewhere for true fulfillment in life.

  • Tonava@sopuli.xyz
    51·
    14 hours ago

    Mine’s “never run after a bus”. It’s pointless; you won’t make it, just wait for the next one. Things go shitty because of that? Well, that’s life, just deal with it. Running after things just makes you out of breath and desperate instead of learning planning and patience

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
    14·
    19 hours ago

    “I shouldn’t have saved so much”. Said a friend a generation older than me. He retired when he realized he didnt need to work any more and that he wasn’t going to burn through all of his money. He said he would have rather spent it while he was younger and enjoy it.

  • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1221·
    1 day ago

    I grew up in a racist town, and was indoctrinated on racism in my youth. It never sat right with me, but even so, I still struggled with racist thoughts that would jump in to my head when I encountered indigenous folk.

    Someone said to me though that it’s not the first thought that jumps in to your head that matters, because that’s what you’ve been trained to think. What matters is what you do after that thought has appeared.

    And that’s stuck with me. It helped me be aware of the impact of indoctrinated hate, whilst also not getting tied up with guilt over my inability to completely purge myself of the indoctrinated bullshit.

    It allowed me to retrain myself, and to make sure the shit I was raised with doesn’t get passed on to my own kid.

    • Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world
      9·
      1 day ago

      Those are words of wisdom that have always stuck with me too. The fact that your first thought can just be a hair trigger gross thing. But who you are is the reaction to that thought, and the actions you take then.

      I was raised by racists and generally not-good people and I learned from an early age to lie lie lie. So recently when a friend was offering me money for something, my trigger thought was to ask for a few hundred dollars more. And just. Gosh, ew, no, no, that’s awful. I still feel bad about the fact that my initial thought was that, but the reaction that follows are where my morals actually lie.

      Not an easy lesson to learn, but a very important one, IMO

    • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
      27·
      1 day ago

      Thank you for sharing your perspective on this. I think we could heal if more people felt they could openly discuss how they grapple with it.

    • Andy@slrpnk.net
      19·
      1 day ago

      This is really deep.

      I also gotta say: I reserve more respect for anyone who changed their attitudes to something I admire than someone who always held them. Me? I’m pretty progressive. But it’s not like I can take credit. I share similar views to most people with my upbringing. Holding these beliefs is about impressive as a ball rolling down a hill.

      Questioning your beliefs and going somewhere else? That’s an achievement.

      • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        10·
        7 hours ago

        To be clear, I’ve always been progressive. I was never overtly racist in the way so many of my peers were growing up. But their overt racism impacted me and filled me with assumptions and unchallenged beliefs that it took years to identify and challenge.

        I was born in Moree (the destination of the Freedom Ride (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Ride_(Australia)), and racism still shapes the town today. I don’t think it would be possible to grow up in that town without being shaped by racism in some way.

        • flubba86@lemmy.world
          1·
          14 hours ago

          Wait… I thought the significantly higher than average percentage of Aboriginal people in Moree would cause the population to be less racist in general. Your experience implies that is not the case.

          • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
            6·
            10 hours ago

            There’s diversity, where you have a lot of different types of people, and then there’s places with a high concentration of a minority group

            The first one makes people less bigoted, because you can’t avoid dealing with people when they’re everywhere. Your not going to last long in NYC if you don’t want your food touched by them. Either you deal with it and get used to it, or you’ll find it hard to eat

            The second one doesn’t force those normal human interactions. Instead, you have exposure. You see them around, but don’t have to treat them like people. You might not interact at all.

            So every time you see them, it reinforces the racism

            You see it all over the American South, people around the black communities aren’t less racist, they’re giga-racist

    • Canopyflyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      I’ve heard of this one, but a little differently…

      Don’t sweat the petty things, pet the sweaty things.