The Internet Answers: What's The Best Life Lesson You've Learned?

"How old are you and what's the most recent major life lesson you've learned?"

That's the question that one inquisitive soul on Reddit pitched to sub group, AskReddit recently.

From the endearing quote by a 15-year-old sharing her sentiments on family and death, to the 29-year-old who should've measured the front door before buying that sofa.

The answers are eye-opening and hey, we've learned something new as well! Hopefully you can too...


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/13/life-lessons-learnt-quotes_n_6150396.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

Those are very good, some of them really funny as well.

These aren't necessarily lessons I learned recently, but they've served me well and made my life better:

Anticipate problems. Never expect something to go off without a hitch.

I picked this up as a newspaper editor whose most important (sadly enough) job is making sure there's no empty space on a page next to the ads. So I assign articles and photos to fill up that space.

I learned early on that not all those articles and photo assignments will pan out, so what you do is, have more than you need ready to go. Know what you're going to do if one or two articles don't make it in, or if they're smaller than you expected.

You can apply this to anything you attempt. No, you're not going to be able to anticipate every problem, but if you've anticipated three and end up having five, you're much better off than if you have to come up with an on-the-spot solution to all of them. Back-up plans are awesome, you'll need them.

Learn how to be self-critical without emotion, how to plan to improve and to follow through with your plans..

This helps you maintain humility AND confidence -- there's nothing like being able to trust yourself to do something -- and it's a great way to learn what your values really are. Anything you never change, that's part of who you really are.

When facing an unpleasant task, just do it now.

The longer you wait, the tougher it's going to be.

The best life lesson I have learned?

Most of the stuff you worry about actually never happens, and if it does, worrying ahead of time solves nothing.

Ben_Reilly wrote:Those are very good, some of them really funny as well.

These aren't necessarily lessons I learned recently, but they've served me well and made my life better:

Anticipate problems. Never expect something to go off without a hitch.

I picked this up as a newspaper editor whose most important (sadly enough) job is making sure there's no empty space on a page next to the ads. So I assign articles and photos to fill up that space.

I learned early on that not all those articles and photo assignments will pan out, so what you do is, have more than you need ready to go. Know what you're going to do if one or two articles don't make it in, or if they're smaller than you expected.

You can apply this to anything you attempt. No, you're not going to be able to anticipate every problem, but if you've anticipated three and end up having five, you're much better off than if you have to come up with an on-the-spot solution to all of them. Back-up plans are awesome, you'll need them.

Learn how to be self-critical without emotion, how to plan to improve and to follow through with your plans..

This helps you maintain humility AND confidence -- there's nothing like being able to trust yourself to do something -- and it's a great way to learn what your values really are. Anything you never change, that's part of who you really are.

When facing an unpleasant task, just do it now.

The longer you wait, the tougher it's going to be.

Those are good ones. Self-critical without emotion is xlnt.

Thanks, Quill -- I have a few people who are really close to me who I wish I could get to do that; able to confront the things they need to change without getting upset about it. For me, it helps to think of it like a scientific experiment or something -- if something doesn't work as expected, you just file that away, tweak what you're doing and take another shot at it.

Eddie, a corollary to that one that I've always liked -- things are rarely either as bad or as good as you've heard.

Ben_Reilly wrote:Thanks, Quill -- I have a few people who are really close to me who I wish I could get to do that; able to confront the things they need to change without getting upset about it. For me, it helps to think of it like a scientific experiment or something -- if something doesn't work as expected, you just file that away, tweak what you're doing and take another shot at it.

Eddie, a corollary to that one that I've always liked -- things are rarely either as bad or as good as you've heard.

I like,that!

When we asked my grandfather how he was that day he'd always reply either of two ways:
"Not so good"
Or
"Not so bad"


We knew that "not so good" was bad and "not so bad" was good

And he was a Sagittarius too

Ben_Reilly wrote:Thanks, Quill -- I have a few people who are really close to me who I wish I could get to do that; able to confront the things they need to change without getting upset about it. For me, it helps to think of it like a scientific experiment or something -- if something doesn't work as expected, you just file that away, tweak what you're doing and take another shot at it.

Eddie, a corollary to that one that I've always liked -- things are rarely either as bad or as good as you've heard.

The reason why it touches me as my work involves this kind of thing.

It helps me sometimes to completely divorce people from situations. I tell myself, there are no people involved, only circumstances and situations.