Ask Lemmy

the grass is greener where you water it

Maya Angelou: 'When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.'

When someone gives you a compliment, just accept it.

"If they are willing to cheat with you, they are willing to cheat on you."

"Slow is smooth and smooth is fast"

This has helped me learn nearly every physical skill I know.

Paraphrasing from Terrence McKenna.

"The one thing that seems constant through all the years is that... nothing lasts. Nothing lasts. Which is good news for some but will bum out others. Your happiness is slowly turning into something else, while your sadness will also become something else."

You choose which emotions to empower and which to discourage. I think Buddha said it?

Basically, you really can choose to focus on the good parts of life/an event and you don't have to let the negatives consume you.

Never hold onto anything so tightly that you can't let go.

In regards to having children. "You're going to fuck them up in some way no matter what you do, just try to minimize it"

"if you have a problem, you can either solve it or you can't. If you can fix it, no problem! If you can't, no point in worrying about it!" -from a cartoon sheep from Garfield and Friends, turns out this is writing a bodhisattva.

I'm shit at implementing this wisdom but it's still pretty good.

Expanding on the second point: we are what we focus on. if you are practicing to be the type of person who believes people are bad you look for the evidence of bad in people. “Everyone lets me down”. To do this requires discounting and avoiding and ignoring the good that people do.

This means if you do this sort of thing you’re also not that great of a person.

Just imagine being on the other side of it: think of all the nice things you might do for such a person and got overlooked because they focus on complaining about all the bad people in their life all just to prove people are bad.

Being is better then having and having is better then seeming.

Ps: If you are reading this share your 2 cents about the above. Came up with it myself!

That startrek quote about making no mistakes and still losing

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.

Be a good person, not a nice person.

Two TV quotes go through my head every day.

Bill Nye: Everyone you'll ever meet knows something you don't.

Doctor Who: Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.

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.

From others in general - Always invest in the things that separate you from the ground; shoes, tires, and your mattress.

From a coach I knew - Every so often sit down and make sure your actions fit with your goals. It's easier to get off course than you think.

From my father - The Hassle Factor. A job can give you three things, enough money to make up for the time you don't have, enough time to make up for the money you don't have, and a sense of satisfaction. If you aren't getting at least two of the three, the job isn't worth the hassle.

Don't commit more than one crime at a time

Two from the same guy.

Remember, you're not sick in traffic, you are traffic.

If you don't have time to do it correctly now, how are you going to have time to fix it later?

I got told something along the lines of: If I undersell my work, it's like pissing on my own work when I sold it bellow market rates.

I got told this by an old junkie guy who got a DUI and disappeared one day.

Don't apologize for being yourself.

(Unless you're a narcissist. Then you probably should apologize.)

I tend to look for wisdom in films/shows the most. Here are some of my fav quotes.

1. "Everybody needs help sometimes, Peter. Even Spider-Man"- MJ (Spiderman 3)

2. "I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble. And finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want most—even our dreams." - Aunt May (Spiderman 2)

3. "You gotta let go of that stuff from the past, 'cause it just doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you choose to be now"- Po (Kung Fu Panda 2)

Sex is like air. It's not a big deal unless you're not getting any.

More of a famous quote I guess, but:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Since I first heard it, I've been far less annoyed / paranoid about other peoples actions, at work in particular.

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.

I work in an environment that can have some tight timeline, high stress moments. People often deal with this with a kind of controlled panic- "Hi. This thing is not working." "Fuck, this is not working, quick, try that thing! Argh! Not working either! Oh no, shits fucked. Shit... Ok, try the other thing! Fuck, call Gary, they might know what to do!"

Then I worked with a person who had this totally different approach. When shit hit the fan, they just super calmly looked around, and said "That's a bit boring." Just that phrase shifted my whole perspective on the industry. Just treat the problem as a minor annoyance, and you'll see that it's rarely worth getting panicked about.

The other thing they taught me- no matter how urgent it is, never run. Running makes it look like we fucked up. And we don't fuck up, we just have the next thing that needs to be fixed.

In general terms, people as individuals = good. People in groups = bad.

Poop on company time.

"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.