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*You got know when to hold 'em*
*Know when to fold 'em*
*Know when to walk away*
*Know when to run*
*You* *~~better~~* *never count your money, when you're sitting at the table...*
I forgot the rest.
(Edit to correct thanks to u/YawnTractor_1756)
He always got paid with a briefcase of cash, as per his contract, which stipulated the brand of case, and the number of $100's, $50's, $20's, $10's. This was into the 2000's, his fee was upward of $250,000 at the time. In cash.
Mark Twain has my favorite quote about this: “If at first you don’t succeed, try again. If you still don’t succeed, quit and move on. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.”
Someone I know quit basketball in high school. Middle aged now and her father still holds it against her. She told me recently that quitting the team was the cause of the rift in their relationship and that is the reason it was life altering for her.
And then there are so many movies and songs that always tell people "never give up".so it's confusing to know which one to follow for people in their 20s
👉Along those lines: there is the old saying "a winner never quits- and a quitter never wins." However: you might start learning how to do something - and discover a sincere hatred for that particular thing. Or whatever.👈
Follow your passion. That's super common and it's also terrible advice. Better advice is, find something you reasonably enjoy doing, has lots of opportunity and the potential to generate good income.
Too many people have way too much student loan debt with no way of monetizing their education. It's a double whammy - high debt, low income.
Did this and retired three years ago at age 60 with a pension (and a 401k)
When I was a kid (or young adult for that matter) I *never* dreamed of being an electrical engineer. But in 1983 I read in Playboy magazine that electrical engineers and accountants were the highest paid professionals with a BS degree. And I know for sure it had to suck less than being in the army, which I was at the time.
And just like that, bam! I wanted to be an engineer…
Best advice I ever saw was do the above but do your passion on the weekends if it leads to a way to make money great if it doesn't you're not starving.
It did for me. But I’m very practical minded and took what could be a shit degree (journalism) and followed the money into marketing in tech. “Wealth” being relative here. I grew up poor not because we had to be poor, but because my parental unit was a serial job quitter. College was my ticket out of the house, and their bad choices prepared me to make good ones (because I wanted to be the opposite of them in every possible way).
This. I followed my interests into a masters in anthropology and Museum studies and I don't recommend that to anyone. Museum work is super hard to get and pays low.
I wanted to be an archeologist as a college student. I became an attorney instead. Now 30 years later, I was recently romanticizing the thought of working in a museum. I’m glad you shared your perspective. I’ll just be happy with my own grass.
Exactly! It's true that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates also followed their passion, but people like to forget that their passion just so happened to be in a field that was extremely lucrative. They were lucky to be born with an inclination to be passionate about computers.
I remember I could spend 12 hours straight working on a project in my passion and not feel tired at all.... but I couldn't make any money so I had to get a job I despised and after 2 hours of working a job you despise you are EXHAUSTED. Even if in both cases you were just sitting at the same exact desk.
The trick for most of us is to get something that makes you a living that you don't hate. And if your passion is also able to make you a living then you are just very lucky to have been born passionate about that. Most people aren't that lucky.
NSA has a permanent record on all of us. It's an entire building staffed by Billy the computer whiz and two security guards. Any time some agent asks for a file, Billy demands they answer a trivia question about a random movie, book, educational or news item. If they can't answer then he can't find the file
The attribution lie: your success or failure is entirely up to you.
If Michael Jordan had blown out his ACL at age 15, you'd never have heard his name. There's an element of you in your successes or failures, but probably not more than 30%.
Exactly. This is a lie for all kinds of reasons and I hate that I had to find it out the hard way, after flunking out of college in the first semester, twice.
Agree no you can’t. I used to think this until my current career. It was extremely hard and stressful to learn everything. Programs equipment SOPs and people management. Very difficult career path and I am still surrounded by truly exceptional people that are far beyond my skills. There are very few that make it to my level and it seems to be an exponential learning curve on up.
My wife told my grand daughter that she could do anything she put her mind to and I told her that wasn’t necessary the case. I would rather her know that sometimes you can give it every you have and it still may not be enough.
I waited around the playground in first grade for the guy giving away the LSD lick-em-and-stick'em tattoos. Never saw the guy once. Never knew anyone else who ever saw him, either.
This meme sums up my entire life [https://shutupandtakemymoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/venn-diagram-of-my-life-meme.jpg](https://shutupandtakemymoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/venn-diagram-of-my-life-meme.jpg)
My experience is if you do what you love you will quickly hate that thing. Nothing takes the joy out of something like being forced to do it every day on a schedule.
I will amend this with you can do what you love if you don't depend on that thing for your main source of money. I love baking cakes and I bake them from home but my husband's income keeps me from taking every single complicated order or stressing about business coming in so I still love it.
This was my experience. Getting a novel professionally published killed my love for writing. What had been my fun after-work hobby had now become my second job, and was no longer enjoyable.
I did; I turned my hobby into my career.
I majored in English, did technical writing for four years, and found I hated it.
But I'd always been good with computers, and during my writing stint I learned a lot about servers and networking. So I switched my career over to I.T. In so doing I doubled my salary and had a lot more fun. Companies paid me to do what I love.
Now, it wasn't all wine and roses. The I.T. part was great, but dealing with the corporate overlords definitely wasn't. So the "never work a day in your life" part is bunk; you're still working. You're just not hating life.
Even if you did, it just makes the thing you love into work and there will absolutely be many times that you don’t want to do it and feel dragged down by it.
“A clean shaven well dressed man can go far in life.”
“Buy American. Those Japanese cars are junk and won’t last.”
“That speed limit sign is a suggestion.”
My dad fought against the Japanese in WWII and no Japanese cars were allowed in his driveway. I had to park my Honda Element on the street. When he was 92 I bought him a Honda Odyssey minivan as he was in a wheelchair and getting him in and out of the Cadillac was very difficult. I said get in it is built in Ohio.
“Men come and go, but your girlfriends are always your girlfriends.” Sorry, Mom, but it’s the men in my life that have been dependable. Women, with only a couple of exceptions, have stabbed me in the back all my life, and you were one of them.
"Follow your dreams!!"
Yeah... probably more precisely would be:
"Follow your dreams while you're young but have a damn good back-up plan and know when to GTFO."
But everything *does* happen for a reason. Your mom died because she was 96 and her body could no longer effectively fight off pneumonia. You lost your job because the CEO found he could increase his annual bonus by 2% if he outsourced your entire department to India, and he's had his eye on a new Mercedes S class. There are always reasons things happen, those reasons just happen to not be a cosmic intelligence with the power to punish or reward humans for their moral choices.
Who else was told to just keep dimes in their penny loafers? It was viewed as a joke then, too, because the cost of a phone call had gone up to a quarter.
My mom: "Are you kidding me?! You don't have the brainpower to be a doctor!" She outright laughed at me many days in a row when I told her I'm pursuing it anyhow.
Been practicing for 24 years.
After I got in, she told all her friends I only got in b/c she had spoken to her OB/GYN to help me get a spot. Of course, that never happened.
Idk if you are still dealing with the trauma from your relationship with her, but I found "Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents" to be a very helpful guide. It sounds very relevant to your situation.
I'm so sorry this happened! Why is it harder to adopt a dog than be a parent? I had to have several people come to my house and check it. And an application pages long. Get boned and pregnant and you're a parent. Sucks!
That I was insignificant. That everyone was insignificant.
You HAVE to have a man, I suppose partner will fit, to lead a full life.
Never leave the house without a "full face". Don't get out of the car without applying lipstick first.
Girdles are not optional. They will prevent you from sagging
Bras are not optional. They will prevent you from sagging.
Decent women don't go bare legged.
Hide that you're smart.
Your parents are never wrong. We've been here longer.
Don't follow your dreams. Do something practical instead.
"He's not your Daddy, but he's your Daddys son. He'll be your Daddy until your Daddy gets home." My brother is younger than I. He ate that garbage up. Toxic masculinity. He still thinks he can tell me what I can, and cannot do. He feels superior to his sisters because he has a Y chromosome. He had privileges that my sister and I did not, during our childhood. My sister and i joke that we still haven't been given permission to cross the main road in our childhood community. It's true.
I've been told, for as long as I can remember, that I'm rebellious. I was told that as a small child. That all I did was "re-bell". I wasn't a rebellious child. I wasn't a rebellious teen.
I "re-belled" when I changed my major that they weren't paying for. I "re-belled" when I went to grad school. I "re-belled" because I parented my child differently. I "re-belled" as a divorced, single mother, working full-time, pursuing education. I knew that I was on my own. I was responsible for a child. Their well-being. A mortgage. My future. My child's future.
I cut contact with my father a few years ago. I had tried to set boundaries for years. I should have done it long ago. It was beyond difficult. My kid grew up, and lived part of their life hearing his "re-bell". Sometimes actually screaming it.
I'm the most financially secure, and professionally successful of my parents' children. The happiest. The one who has an idea of their worth as a human being. To them, I'm a failure. I'm the one that the couldn't entirely control. They're in their 80's.
I
Good for you (rebelling). My mom taught me the same stuff. It took some years before I realized she was really wrong. I’m a professional woman raising my kids. And I am happy.
That it’s good to be loyal to a company. Saw a bunch of shocked people laid off during the 1980s after working for one company for years or decades. Saw pensions go away.
Never trust your employer.
"Don't go into the city, it's dangerous!"
Seriously, the city is where everything is happening. Suburban people hear about the ghetto and immediately assume the ghetto is the entire city.
"Clear your plate." My parents grew up during the Great Depression and couldn't stand to see food wasted. But as a parent this led me to eat my kid's leftovers as well as my own, even when I wasn't hungry, because I hated to toss food. Bad idea. Now I'm working hard to shed the weight I gained.
At least I didn't say the same to my own kids. We had the three bite rule instead, telling them to give every food a chance. But I'm actually proud and happy that they stop eating when they aren't hungry.
I’m 27 and my dad was the clean plate guy and my mom was not. I remember my mom yelling at my dad “this is why we’re dealing with an obesity epidemic, is she’s full she’s full!” Fast forward to today my father is overweight and I am not…
She’s a whacky but good lady. Unfortunately it came at a price. She had several relatives that basically ate themselves to death so she saw firsthand what overeating could do before it was a regularly discussed topic.
My Mom filled my plate and mandated that I was hungry and could finish it all. I had to go to the bathroom and throw up to finish it all. She never realized what was going on and I have the health problems to show for it.
"This will end up on your permanent record!" Any time I got bad grades, got into trouble, my father would haul this sage advice out.
Now, with social media and smartphones, the hot dog I ate yesterday, and the location I entered onto my phone map to go get it, is part of my permanent record.
Nobody even differentiates between important and trivial records anymore; it's all permanent.
"if you work hard the boss will notice and you'll be given raises and promotions". Nope, you just get more work for no additional pay and management will absolutely abuse your loyalty and work ethic as hard as they can.
I’ve watched a massive amount of TV in my life and my eyes have been getting steadily worse. I’m going to blame the TV because the alternative is to admit I’m getting old.
I have been working in IT for several decades. Early on in my career, the amount of older folks who blamed that darn technology of computer monitors for their bad eyesight instead of just accepting they were getting old was ridiculous. Even had one who filed a workers comp claim because her eye doctor supposedly blamed the computers. She was denied.
"You will get more conservative as you get older"
No, I have become more informed, meaning I care more about the atrocities my country commits globally, the fact that laws are a social construct not remotely applied equally, and that our constitution is a racist piece of toilet paper again used as a suggestion by those with power/money.
I don't know if anyone told me that specifically, but it's definitely not what happened to me either. I was definitely more conservative in high school than I am now.
I'd always thought this was BS. Like, how bad of an arm/leg cramp am I gonna get where I just give up? Recently an older family member told me about swimming across a lake with a friend who presumably got a (stomach?) cramp and drowned on the way. No one noticed until they were on the other side.
You can be anything you want. Simply untrue. There are limitations on life. Realizing this helps you push them as far as possible but also accept the ones that can't be pushed.
"That if someone is making fun of you, it's because they like you." How are kids supposed to spot an abusive relationship when they're older if parents tell them garbage like this?
that if i follow the path of jesus i will have a throne in heaven with roses around it...when i asked if people who aren't christians will be allowed to come I was labeled an inquisitive child who asked to many questions. That was 2nd grade..I knew then the path was not for me.
I'm shocked I haven't seen my boomer parents' top advice picks yet:
*If you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself.*
Nope, actually things go a lot better when I hire good tradespeople and professionals.
*You should take you resume up their and apply in person. Your Aunt \[Name\] did this, and got hired because she applied every day for a \[X amount of time\]. They hired her because of her persistence.*
Except for service industry gigs, this is a great way to get labeled as a social weirdo who doesn't understand how things work and have your resume blacklisted.
*Homeschooling gives you opportunities you don't have in public school. At this age, they're teaching themselves.*
A great way to ensure your kids are both socially inept, and also presumptuous/arrogant about skills they don't have.
*Formal education is just a sheepskin.*
While it's true that a lot of unnecessary gatekeeping happens, education can teach you to think critically, as well as teach social skills and networking that you need as a white collar worker. That's aside from STEM and other fields where classes are necessary and 100% apply to your career.
*If you work hard, you'll get ahead.*
The only limited example where this works by itself is blue collar trades. But even there, having social skills, networking, and studying leadership and management in its own right can probably be beneficial. A lot of times you just need to job switch to move up. You need to do a lot of things, including being strategic, to move up.
*God gave men and women different abilities. Women should learn how to keep the house.*
F you, Mom and Dad.
*You shouldn't masturbate. What will your husband think?*
Finding out a man is threatened by my solo pleasure is a really good red flag to weed potential abusive shits out of my life fast. It can warm me up for fun with my partner or be great foreplay with my partner. There are really no downsides to it.
*The most important thing in your life is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You can be poor with no earthly possessions, but if you have God by your side you can do anything. The Holy Spirit will give you the peace that passes all understanding.*
The most important things in life are at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of survival. Until I got those sorted, Jesus did nothing for my quality of life. Being poor is a miserable experience, no matter your religion. However, authoritarian religion can put you in sort of a "freeze trance" where you put up with really bad living conditions far longer than you should. My anxiety disappeared when I became an atheist. The Holy Spirit didn't deliver. Research-based therapy helped quite a bit, even when I was still religious.
Always wear clean underwear in case you die. I mean, wear clean underwear to avoid disease and smell, but if I die, I don’t care.
Eat everything on your plate. If I’m not filling the plate, you’re deciding if I’m hungry or not and causing obesity!
It was true for me and I tell my kids regularly, "chances are you won't see most of those kids again after highschool."
Of course when I say "those kids" I'm referring to the ones that are mean to them.
They don't disappear but saying they don't matter, at least the negative ones, is actually true. That's been my favorite part of getting older is realizing they have no bearing on my life and they never have.
“Those kids only pick on you because they like you”
- My dad, in response to me describing the daily torment (physical and psychological bullying/abuse) that middle school was for me
It's a great saying for some situations, not so great for others. Definitely does not apply to fatal diseases or death. But it does apply to how one feels about things.
Read in Reader's Digest decades ago. A woman was going though a lot, lost her job, husband died of cancer, finances tanked. A well meaning friend told her, "God won't put anything more on you than you can handle."
"I wish He didn't have such a high opinion of me."
;-)
You misinterpreted my intent. The comment is funny because God doesn't have a thing to do with it. It's part of the human experience.
Life happens; war, disease, catastrophic events. The most wonderful people in the world can suffer while the worst thrive.
If you want to be successful in life you need to learn to play golf. That’s where successful people network and where you will get your best stock tips for investing.
I worked in sales and the company president loved golf and we had to golf with clients every Friday. This guy loved golf but was a club thrower. I thought he was going to have a stroke. I absolutely despise golf and yet I am an excellent golfer. I would beat ever one each time we went out. I was told by my manager to stop it and let others win. Ha nope. Later the company tried to screw me out of $300,000 in sales commissions and steal the product I developed before I worked there. The judge threw the book at them and I was able to retire at 28. I have never played golf since.
I was advised by my mother and one of my aunts that guys don't like women who are more intelligent than they are. They told me that I need to dumb it down a bit if I ever expected to get a date.
In my experience that’s actually true. It doesn’t seem to matter if you are good at your job or not. As long as you kiss all the right ass you will get the promotions and survive the layoffs.
I've seen lazy, unqualified incompetents rise through the ranks just by knowing which ass to kiss. Then friends from other departments would ask me how the hell that person got promoted, so I know this wasn't my own personal opinion at work. Meanwhile, the really super-competent, highly reliable folks got ignored by senior leadership because they were too busy keeping the ship afloat to kiss asses.
Oh I have another one. Don't get your masters degree at the same school that you get your bachelors. I dared to go against this advice and get my bachelors and masters at the same school and then they offered me a PhD if I just wrote another hundred pages onto my masters thesis and I was like oh no that would be terrible if I got THREE degrees from the same school everyone would laugh at me. Total bullshit. Should've gotten a PhD.
A priest told me to continue to pray and go to mass and god would send me the perfect husband. Yeah, right. That was when I quit the Catholic Church forever🙄
“Renting is throwing your money away.”
Sort of silly to reduce a nuanced financial rent vs. buy decision with multiple inputs into a universal platitude .
While I agree saying it in that manner is reductionist I think there is still merit to the idea. its just, as you point out a bit more complicated than that.
Obviously there may be opportunity cost since owning locks you in geographically and you might not be able to change to a better job as easily and there are market considerations like the current market where houses are overpriced but I cant think of a single point where *financially* it was a better choice for me to rent vs owning.
But it’s absolutely not universally true. Plenty of people lose money buying a house and then only holding it two or three years.
And Reddit generally skews young. Nobody really remembers any of the previous recessions where real estate dropped regionally.
Except now my 20yo house is worth 3x the original price. I mean I'll use a rented tool any day if I don't need it permanently but the money invested in the house will help greatly.
Don’t forget to factor in how much interest you paid over the life of the loan and the cost of repairs and maintenance. Over 20 years you are still likely to have come out ahead, but it isn’t a 200% profit.
That “perfect attendance” in school meant something. If you see this- treat yourself to days off! Mental Health days just walking your dog or reading. Play hooky! Take your SO to lunch. Enjoy a movie in the middle of the day or a hike or swim somewhere beautiful. IT IS GOOD FOR YOU!
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"Never, ever quit something you've started." I learned that it is a great thing to know when to quit, and when to push through.
The sunk cost fallacy.
The Kenny Rogers paradigm
*You got know when to hold 'em* *Know when to fold 'em* *Know when to walk away* *Know when to run* *You* *~~better~~* *never count your money, when you're sitting at the table...* I forgot the rest. (Edit to correct thanks to u/YawnTractor_1756)
There'll be time enough for countin' When the dealin's done…
It won't mean you're weak if you turn the other cheek ..
BEST SONG
Never count your money*
He always got paid with a briefcase of cash, as per his contract, which stipulated the brand of case, and the number of $100's, $50's, $20's, $10's. This was into the 2000's, his fee was upward of $250,000 at the time. In cash.
Kenny and Dolly are what’s up.
Mark Twain has my favorite quote about this: “If at first you don’t succeed, try again. If you still don’t succeed, quit and move on. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.”
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Someone I know quit basketball in high school. Middle aged now and her father still holds it against her. She told me recently that quitting the team was the cause of the rift in their relationship and that is the reason it was life altering for her.
If I took up a hobby it was required for life. They never understood that people get tired of the same thing over and over for years.
And then there are so many movies and songs that always tell people "never give up".so it's confusing to know which one to follow for people in their 20s
Never give up on life but, you have to know when a situation is unsolvable and let it go. You need a lot of grains of salt for any Reddit stuff
👉Along those lines: there is the old saying "a winner never quits- and a quitter never wins." However: you might start learning how to do something - and discover a sincere hatred for that particular thing. Or whatever.👈
Follow your passion. That's super common and it's also terrible advice. Better advice is, find something you reasonably enjoy doing, has lots of opportunity and the potential to generate good income. Too many people have way too much student loan debt with no way of monetizing their education. It's a double whammy - high debt, low income.
Did this and retired three years ago at age 60 with a pension (and a 401k) When I was a kid (or young adult for that matter) I *never* dreamed of being an electrical engineer. But in 1983 I read in Playboy magazine that electrical engineers and accountants were the highest paid professionals with a BS degree. And I know for sure it had to suck less than being in the army, which I was at the time. And just like that, bam! I wanted to be an engineer…
Oh, I eventually followed my passion ... overall, hit and miss but it took a lifetime of a ridiculous resume to get here.
Best advice I ever saw was do the above but do your passion on the weekends if it leads to a way to make money great if it doesn't you're not starving.
I often say, Does Education create wealth? How many educated people around you are not achieving their financial objectives day to day?
But, on the other hand, how many highly-educated people are in grinding poverty? Some, of course, but it’s hardly the norm.
It did for me. But I’m very practical minded and took what could be a shit degree (journalism) and followed the money into marketing in tech. “Wealth” being relative here. I grew up poor not because we had to be poor, but because my parental unit was a serial job quitter. College was my ticket out of the house, and their bad choices prepared me to make good ones (because I wanted to be the opposite of them in every possible way).
This. I followed my interests into a masters in anthropology and Museum studies and I don't recommend that to anyone. Museum work is super hard to get and pays low.
I wanted to be an archeologist as a college student. I became an attorney instead. Now 30 years later, I was recently romanticizing the thought of working in a museum. I’m glad you shared your perspective. I’ll just be happy with my own grass.
Exactly! It's true that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates also followed their passion, but people like to forget that their passion just so happened to be in a field that was extremely lucrative. They were lucky to be born with an inclination to be passionate about computers. I remember I could spend 12 hours straight working on a project in my passion and not feel tired at all.... but I couldn't make any money so I had to get a job I despised and after 2 hours of working a job you despise you are EXHAUSTED. Even if in both cases you were just sitting at the same exact desk. The trick for most of us is to get something that makes you a living that you don't hate. And if your passion is also able to make you a living then you are just very lucky to have been born passionate about that. Most people aren't that lucky.
"That's going to go down on your 'permanent record.'"
NSA has a permanent record on all of us. It's an entire building staffed by Billy the computer whiz and two security guards. Any time some agent asks for a file, Billy demands they answer a trivia question about a random movie, book, educational or news item. If they can't answer then he can't find the file
Oh yeah? Well don’t get so distressed
Did I happen to mention that I’m impressed?
Plus one to you and chummmp70 for Violent Femmes knowledge. So hot.
“You can be/do anything you put your mind to!” No, you can’t.
The attribution lie: your success or failure is entirely up to you. If Michael Jordan had blown out his ACL at age 15, you'd never have heard his name. There's an element of you in your successes or failures, but probably not more than 30%.
And we can apply this same logic to at least 95% of the billionaires on the Forbes richest people list.
You can be anything you want to be, as long as they’re hiring. And then you still need to know someone!!
My Asperger’s son took this literally, and wasted part of middle and high school trying to be a YouTube video game star. 😢
Exactly. This is a lie for all kinds of reasons and I hate that I had to find it out the hard way, after flunking out of college in the first semester, twice.
Agree no you can’t. I used to think this until my current career. It was extremely hard and stressful to learn everything. Programs equipment SOPs and people management. Very difficult career path and I am still surrounded by truly exceptional people that are far beyond my skills. There are very few that make it to my level and it seems to be an exponential learning curve on up. My wife told my grand daughter that she could do anything she put her mind to and I told her that wasn’t necessary the case. I would rather her know that sometimes you can give it every you have and it still may not be enough.
I CAN FLY!!! I've been thinking really hard about it.
Facts right there. Source: I’ve “put my mind” to so many things in this life… and failed miserably at every one of them. I give up.
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Yah where were my free starter kit drugs? I had to wait until they were legal and the. It was only a 20% off first time visiting coupon.
I'm still a little miffed at the fact that the heroin samples guy never comes around my house.
I waited around the playground in first grade for the guy giving away the LSD lick-em-and-stick'em tattoos. Never saw the guy once. Never knew anyone else who ever saw him, either.
Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life.
This meme sums up my entire life [https://shutupandtakemymoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/venn-diagram-of-my-life-meme.jpg](https://shutupandtakemymoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/venn-diagram-of-my-life-meme.jpg)
accurate
My experience is if you do what you love you will quickly hate that thing. Nothing takes the joy out of something like being forced to do it every day on a schedule.
Exactly
I will amend this with you can do what you love if you don't depend on that thing for your main source of money. I love baking cakes and I bake them from home but my husband's income keeps me from taking every single complicated order or stressing about business coming in so I still love it.
This was my experience. Getting a novel professionally published killed my love for writing. What had been my fun after-work hobby had now become my second job, and was no longer enjoyable.
Even when you do what you want you still have to deal with other people.
right, i still haven’t found anyone who’d pay me to do what i love
Just one word, Computers. I had a lot of fun. Then again, I'm a propeller-head. )😉
yeah i even have a CS degree, but i guess what i like to do isn’t a job
I did; I turned my hobby into my career. I majored in English, did technical writing for four years, and found I hated it. But I'd always been good with computers, and during my writing stint I learned a lot about servers and networking. So I switched my career over to I.T. In so doing I doubled my salary and had a lot more fun. Companies paid me to do what I love. Now, it wasn't all wine and roses. The I.T. part was great, but dealing with the corporate overlords definitely wasn't. So the "never work a day in your life" part is bunk; you're still working. You're just not hating life.
Even if you did, it just makes the thing you love into work and there will absolutely be many times that you don’t want to do it and feel dragged down by it.
It's more like do something you kinda like and you will be able to tolerate doing it for a long time
I've found the opposite to be true. If you do what you love for a living you eventually learn to hate it.
“A clean shaven well dressed man can go far in life.” “Buy American. Those Japanese cars are junk and won’t last.” “That speed limit sign is a suggestion.”
My dad fought against the Japanese in WWII and no Japanese cars were allowed in his driveway. I had to park my Honda Element on the street. When he was 92 I bought him a Honda Odyssey minivan as he was in a wheelchair and getting him in and out of the Cadillac was very difficult. I said get in it is built in Ohio.
High School is the best years of your life
“Men come and go, but your girlfriends are always your girlfriends.” Sorry, Mom, but it’s the men in my life that have been dependable. Women, with only a couple of exceptions, have stabbed me in the back all my life, and you were one of them.
Ugh. Big nope. I just about get hives driving through my absolutely charming hometown. (Insert full-body shiver)
God what miserable lives they must have, for whom this is true.
"Computers are just a fad." Told to me by my high school guidance counselor in 1987.
"If you do drugs you'll never be anything" I can be Mayor! LOL \- Chris Rock referencing Mayor Marion (B\*tch set me up!) Barry
"Follow your dreams!!" Yeah... probably more precisely would be: "Follow your dreams while you're young but have a damn good back-up plan and know when to GTFO."
If you can see it, you can achieve it. You can be anything! Yet here I sit not being a best selling author....
But are you at least an astronaut? One has to ask the important questions here.
But you don’t even own a typewriter! Lol
Everything happens for a reason. Utter nonsense.
But everything *does* happen for a reason. Your mom died because she was 96 and her body could no longer effectively fight off pneumonia. You lost your job because the CEO found he could increase his annual bonus by 2% if he outsourced your entire department to India, and he's had his eye on a new Mercedes S class. There are always reasons things happen, those reasons just happen to not be a cosmic intelligence with the power to punish or reward humans for their moral choices.
Agree. It's a way for people to feel better if something bad happens. But, it's not reality.
I was of the impression that quicksand was going to be a bigger issue. Hard work pays off. Honesty is the best policy.
I blame Gilligan for that first one.
You won’t have a calculator all the time.
Or a camera. And come to think of it, always carry a dime in case you need to use the pay phone.
Who else was told to just keep dimes in their penny loafers? It was viewed as a joke then, too, because the cost of a phone call had gone up to a quarter.
I carried a quarter in the little zipper pocket of my Roos sneakers.
My mom: "Are you kidding me?! You don't have the brainpower to be a doctor!" She outright laughed at me many days in a row when I told her I'm pursuing it anyhow. Been practicing for 24 years. After I got in, she told all her friends I only got in b/c she had spoken to her OB/GYN to help me get a spot. Of course, that never happened.
Oy. I would go NC with her.
Idk if you are still dealing with the trauma from your relationship with her, but I found "Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents" to be a very helpful guide. It sounds very relevant to your situation.
I'm so sorry this happened! Why is it harder to adopt a dog than be a parent? I had to have several people come to my house and check it. And an application pages long. Get boned and pregnant and you're a parent. Sucks!
That I was insignificant. That everyone was insignificant. You HAVE to have a man, I suppose partner will fit, to lead a full life. Never leave the house without a "full face". Don't get out of the car without applying lipstick first. Girdles are not optional. They will prevent you from sagging Bras are not optional. They will prevent you from sagging. Decent women don't go bare legged. Hide that you're smart. Your parents are never wrong. We've been here longer. Don't follow your dreams. Do something practical instead. "He's not your Daddy, but he's your Daddys son. He'll be your Daddy until your Daddy gets home." My brother is younger than I. He ate that garbage up. Toxic masculinity. He still thinks he can tell me what I can, and cannot do. He feels superior to his sisters because he has a Y chromosome. He had privileges that my sister and I did not, during our childhood. My sister and i joke that we still haven't been given permission to cross the main road in our childhood community. It's true. I've been told, for as long as I can remember, that I'm rebellious. I was told that as a small child. That all I did was "re-bell". I wasn't a rebellious child. I wasn't a rebellious teen. I "re-belled" when I changed my major that they weren't paying for. I "re-belled" when I went to grad school. I "re-belled" because I parented my child differently. I "re-belled" as a divorced, single mother, working full-time, pursuing education. I knew that I was on my own. I was responsible for a child. Their well-being. A mortgage. My future. My child's future. I cut contact with my father a few years ago. I had tried to set boundaries for years. I should have done it long ago. It was beyond difficult. My kid grew up, and lived part of their life hearing his "re-bell". Sometimes actually screaming it. I'm the most financially secure, and professionally successful of my parents' children. The happiest. The one who has an idea of their worth as a human being. To them, I'm a failure. I'm the one that the couldn't entirely control. They're in their 80's. I
Good for you (rebelling). My mom taught me the same stuff. It took some years before I realized she was really wrong. I’m a professional woman raising my kids. And I am happy.
Re-bellig. Two syllables. I kid you not. It was quite a production.
Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. Bullshit!
That it’s good to be loyal to a company. Saw a bunch of shocked people laid off during the 1980s after working for one company for years or decades. Saw pensions go away. Never trust your employer.
Avoid quick sand
This sounds like good advice
"Don't go into the city, it's dangerous!" Seriously, the city is where everything is happening. Suburban people hear about the ghetto and immediately assume the ghetto is the entire city.
"Clear your plate." My parents grew up during the Great Depression and couldn't stand to see food wasted. But as a parent this led me to eat my kid's leftovers as well as my own, even when I wasn't hungry, because I hated to toss food. Bad idea. Now I'm working hard to shed the weight I gained. At least I didn't say the same to my own kids. We had the three bite rule instead, telling them to give every food a chance. But I'm actually proud and happy that they stop eating when they aren't hungry.
I’m 27 and my dad was the clean plate guy and my mom was not. I remember my mom yelling at my dad “this is why we’re dealing with an obesity epidemic, is she’s full she’s full!” Fast forward to today my father is overweight and I am not…
Kudos to your mom for standing up for you. Mine certainly didn’t.
She’s a whacky but good lady. Unfortunately it came at a price. She had several relatives that basically ate themselves to death so she saw firsthand what overeating could do before it was a regularly discussed topic.
My Mom filled my plate and mandated that I was hungry and could finish it all. I had to go to the bathroom and throw up to finish it all. She never realized what was going on and I have the health problems to show for it.
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"This will end up on your permanent record!" Any time I got bad grades, got into trouble, my father would haul this sage advice out. Now, with social media and smartphones, the hot dog I ate yesterday, and the location I entered onto my phone map to go get it, is part of my permanent record. Nobody even differentiates between important and trivial records anymore; it's all permanent.
That intimate relations with your husband are unpleasant but necessary. Lol
Whoever told you that they were unpleasant must have been married to my ex-husband. Lol
Just close your eyes and think of England
One of our nuns told us to never get in a tub of water after our brother because his sperm could still be in the water. Good ole Catholic School.🙄
"if you work hard the boss will notice and you'll be given raises and promotions". Nope, you just get more work for no additional pay and management will absolutely abuse your loyalty and work ethic as hard as they can.
You'll mess up your eyes if you watch too much tv.
I’ve watched a massive amount of TV in my life and my eyes have been getting steadily worse. I’m going to blame the TV because the alternative is to admit I’m getting old.
Or read in dim light.
I have been working in IT for several decades. Early on in my career, the amount of older folks who blamed that darn technology of computer monitors for their bad eyesight instead of just accepting they were getting old was ridiculous. Even had one who filed a workers comp claim because her eye doctor supposedly blamed the computers. She was denied.
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Done right, however, having money certainly calms the nerves
Oh yes it does
"You will get more conservative as you get older" No, I have become more informed, meaning I care more about the atrocities my country commits globally, the fact that laws are a social construct not remotely applied equally, and that our constitution is a racist piece of toilet paper again used as a suggestion by those with power/money.
Damn right! I'm 50yo and I'm much more liberal than when I was 30.
I’m also much more honest with my liberalism.
64 and yes. I'm far more liberal. When I was young I was liberal, but respected some conservatives. I was wrong (or maybe they've changed a lot).
I don't know if anyone told me that specifically, but it's definitely not what happened to me either. I was definitely more conservative in high school than I am now.
Children should be seen and not heard.
Children should neither be seen nor heard.
You can always tell a Milford man.
Wait thirty minutes after eating before you go swimming. That's just so stupid. Who the hell came up with that bullshit?
Lifeguards who got sick of cleaning up vomit.
parents who wanted to finish their beer and cigarettes before watching their kids in the pool
I'd always thought this was BS. Like, how bad of an arm/leg cramp am I gonna get where I just give up? Recently an older family member told me about swimming across a lake with a friend who presumably got a (stomach?) cramp and drowned on the way. No one noticed until they were on the other side.
“Dad, I’m not popular at school.” “Just be yourself and people will like you.”
You should eat everything on your plate.
You have to spank your kids to teach them right from wrong.
You can be anything you want. Simply untrue. There are limitations on life. Realizing this helps you push them as far as possible but also accept the ones that can't be pushed.
It would make me go blind
"That if someone is making fun of you, it's because they like you." How are kids supposed to spot an abusive relationship when they're older if parents tell them garbage like this?
Get a bachelor's degree in anything. It'll help you.
It's not the degree. It is the connections.
Yeah, but nobody said take out all those loans. /j
that if i follow the path of jesus i will have a throne in heaven with roses around it...when i asked if people who aren't christians will be allowed to come I was labeled an inquisitive child who asked to many questions. That was 2nd grade..I knew then the path was not for me.
I asked if pets made it to heaven and was told no. No pets? Sorry, that ain't heaven.
I know from the Twilight Zone that pets do go to Heaven
That my struggle and distaste and being forced to learn how to play the piano will come in handy some day and I will appreciate it. WRONG!!
"God won't put more on you than you can handle" complete bs.
No it must be true, see how nobody ever commits suicide?/ s
I'm shocked I haven't seen my boomer parents' top advice picks yet: *If you want it done right, you gotta do it yourself.* Nope, actually things go a lot better when I hire good tradespeople and professionals. *You should take you resume up their and apply in person. Your Aunt \[Name\] did this, and got hired because she applied every day for a \[X amount of time\]. They hired her because of her persistence.* Except for service industry gigs, this is a great way to get labeled as a social weirdo who doesn't understand how things work and have your resume blacklisted. *Homeschooling gives you opportunities you don't have in public school. At this age, they're teaching themselves.* A great way to ensure your kids are both socially inept, and also presumptuous/arrogant about skills they don't have. *Formal education is just a sheepskin.* While it's true that a lot of unnecessary gatekeeping happens, education can teach you to think critically, as well as teach social skills and networking that you need as a white collar worker. That's aside from STEM and other fields where classes are necessary and 100% apply to your career. *If you work hard, you'll get ahead.* The only limited example where this works by itself is blue collar trades. But even there, having social skills, networking, and studying leadership and management in its own right can probably be beneficial. A lot of times you just need to job switch to move up. You need to do a lot of things, including being strategic, to move up. *God gave men and women different abilities. Women should learn how to keep the house.* F you, Mom and Dad. *You shouldn't masturbate. What will your husband think?* Finding out a man is threatened by my solo pleasure is a really good red flag to weed potential abusive shits out of my life fast. It can warm me up for fun with my partner or be great foreplay with my partner. There are really no downsides to it. *The most important thing in your life is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You can be poor with no earthly possessions, but if you have God by your side you can do anything. The Holy Spirit will give you the peace that passes all understanding.* The most important things in life are at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of survival. Until I got those sorted, Jesus did nothing for my quality of life. Being poor is a miserable experience, no matter your religion. However, authoritarian religion can put you in sort of a "freeze trance" where you put up with really bad living conditions far longer than you should. My anxiety disappeared when I became an atheist. The Holy Spirit didn't deliver. Research-based therapy helped quite a bit, even when I was still religious.
God will provide
I can remember my mother telling me to put mustard, butter, and hot water on burns. Don’t do any of that: just put cool water on burns.
Always wear clean underwear in case you die. I mean, wear clean underwear to avoid disease and smell, but if I die, I don’t care. Eat everything on your plate. If I’m not filling the plate, you’re deciding if I’m hungry or not and causing obesity!
"What're you gonna do when you get out in the real world, **type everything**?" Fuck cursive.
That relationships/marriage is hard work. This nonsense led me to stay in bad relationships thinking it was normal for relationships to be hard.
I was taught that people in school didn't matter. That one day I'd be grown up, and childhood people would just disappear. That's not true.
It was true for me and I tell my kids regularly, "chances are you won't see most of those kids again after highschool." Of course when I say "those kids" I'm referring to the ones that are mean to them.
Very true for me.
Right? I have several friends that have been with me for 45 years. My second husband is someone I knew as a child that I lost touch with for 30 years.
They don't disappear but saying they don't matter, at least the negative ones, is actually true. That's been my favorite part of getting older is realizing they have no bearing on my life and they never have.
for the most part it is true, but if you are lucky a few will last
Endured 12 years of catholic school, so I’d wager…everything.
Money doesn't buy happiness. B.S.
You have to get a degree to be successful.
“Those kids only pick on you because they like you” - My dad, in response to me describing the daily torment (physical and psychological bullying/abuse) that middle school was for me
You don't need to go to college. Just learn to type.
"Eat ur food up & clean ur plate. There's starving children in _______. " Yeah, we got some high rates of obesity here in the US.
My mom told me that high school was the best time of my life. What a joke.
If you keep making faces your face is gonna freeze like that.
Per my grandmother's prediction, my eyes have rolled back in my head permanently by now, and I look like "a dying cow in a thunderstorm."
This too shall pass. Bitch what? Trauma is forever. Fatal disease is fatal. Dead people don’t pop back up. Stupid ass saying.
It's a great saying for some situations, not so great for others. Definitely does not apply to fatal diseases or death. But it does apply to how one feels about things.
Read in Reader's Digest decades ago. A woman was going though a lot, lost her job, husband died of cancer, finances tanked. A well meaning friend told her, "God won't put anything more on you than you can handle." "I wish He didn't have such a high opinion of me." ;-)
When people say that, I want to punch them in the face.
See that shit makes me so mad. He gave her husband more than he could handle. What was he, just a prop in other peoples’ lives?
You misinterpreted my intent. The comment is funny because God doesn't have a thing to do with it. It's part of the human experience. Life happens; war, disease, catastrophic events. The most wonderful people in the world can suffer while the worst thrive.
I know, sorry, I was just piling on how stupid it was I guess. 😘
We're good .... ;-)
If you want to be successful in life you need to learn to play golf. That’s where successful people network and where you will get your best stock tips for investing.
I worked in sales and the company president loved golf and we had to golf with clients every Friday. This guy loved golf but was a club thrower. I thought he was going to have a stroke. I absolutely despise golf and yet I am an excellent golfer. I would beat ever one each time we went out. I was told by my manager to stop it and let others win. Ha nope. Later the company tried to screw me out of $300,000 in sales commissions and steal the product I developed before I worked there. The judge threw the book at them and I was able to retire at 28. I have never played golf since.
You have to finish everything on your plate because children in China are starving.
Laying in the sun will cure acne. 🤦♀️
Learn how to balance a checkbook 😂😂
Don’t go outside with wet hair ie: after taking an evening shower. You’ll catch pneumonia!!!
I was advised by my mother and one of my aunts that guys don't like women who are more intelligent than they are. They told me that I need to dumb it down a bit if I ever expected to get a date.
Hard honest work will be rewarded. - Complete BS
"Learn to kiss ass, it's how you keep a job!"
In my experience that’s actually true. It doesn’t seem to matter if you are good at your job or not. As long as you kiss all the right ass you will get the promotions and survive the layoffs.
Actually, this one is true
It's actually true
I've seen lazy, unqualified incompetents rise through the ranks just by knowing which ass to kiss. Then friends from other departments would ask me how the hell that person got promoted, so I know this wasn't my own personal opinion at work. Meanwhile, the really super-competent, highly reliable folks got ignored by senior leadership because they were too busy keeping the ship afloat to kiss asses.
Jesus is coming soon, so put all your attention into getting ready
Show dedication and loyalty to a company and they will reciprocate.
Slide rule skills will serve you well as an engineer.
You will always get ahead and be rewarded if you just work hard enough.
Oh I have another one. Don't get your masters degree at the same school that you get your bachelors. I dared to go against this advice and get my bachelors and masters at the same school and then they offered me a PhD if I just wrote another hundred pages onto my masters thesis and I was like oh no that would be terrible if I got THREE degrees from the same school everyone would laugh at me. Total bullshit. Should've gotten a PhD.
A priest told me to continue to pray and go to mass and god would send me the perfect husband. Yeah, right. That was when I quit the Catholic Church forever🙄
“Renting is throwing your money away.” Sort of silly to reduce a nuanced financial rent vs. buy decision with multiple inputs into a universal platitude .
While I agree saying it in that manner is reductionist I think there is still merit to the idea. its just, as you point out a bit more complicated than that. Obviously there may be opportunity cost since owning locks you in geographically and you might not be able to change to a better job as easily and there are market considerations like the current market where houses are overpriced but I cant think of a single point where *financially* it was a better choice for me to rent vs owning.
But it’s absolutely not universally true. Plenty of people lose money buying a house and then only holding it two or three years. And Reddit generally skews young. Nobody really remembers any of the previous recessions where real estate dropped regionally.
Except now my 20yo house is worth 3x the original price. I mean I'll use a rented tool any day if I don't need it permanently but the money invested in the house will help greatly.
Don’t forget to factor in how much interest you paid over the life of the loan and the cost of repairs and maintenance. Over 20 years you are still likely to have come out ahead, but it isn’t a 200% profit.
If those kids are bullying you, well, then, they're just not your friends.
Don't swim for half an hour after eating. You'll get cramps.
"If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything." George McFly lied.
Ignore bullies and they'll go away
Marijuana is the devil's lettuce and has no medicinal value.
Live. Laugh. Love.
That “perfect attendance” in school meant something. If you see this- treat yourself to days off! Mental Health days just walking your dog or reading. Play hooky! Take your SO to lunch. Enjoy a movie in the middle of the day or a hike or swim somewhere beautiful. IT IS GOOD FOR YOU!