Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

A therapist once told me: Let your actions dictate your emotions. Don’t let your emotions dictate your actions.

Advice we should all follow more

Two things:

Once, when facing a great personal crisis, I found some wisdom that helped me reframe my worries and fears: "Why do you spend all your time worrying about the blizzard on top of the mountain? Go around the mountain."

Secondly, in grad school I was upset that other students appeared to be cheating during exams, to the point that I could hear messages pinging in the classroom. A friend told me, paraphrased: "You can't control what other people do. You'll just have to do well enough that it doesn't matter." I didn't want to hear it, but once it sunk in, he was right and accepting his advice was the best path forward.

You are right about the past not mattering, but I think that people sometimes discount their happiness now too much in favour of expected future happiness and rewards.

The fellas I knew invested their time in unhappy activities hoping for a reward in the future. They didn't get any of that reward; what they did was only rational if they could access some of the expected reward in their lives. They would have been better off if they had missed some paper deadlines and gone on a few more hiking trips or gone to a few more wild parties.

Sure - if working on something is what floats your boat... go for it! Sure - invest something in the future (at least!) because it's likely you are going to live to see 75 winters, but only likely.

With respect to comparing oneself with other people, "Better at, not better than" -- can't remember when this was given, want to say 8th grade from some counselor interviewing me for something or another (career guidance? I remember him asking me about a phrase I liked back then, "Through knowledge, power"). I don't really agree , but I mulled over it then and still remember it, and it's not terrible as far as generic advice goes, especially if it can help someone avoid a superiority complex, which I'm sure back then I looked like I might develop.

A HS teacher had "Pay yourself first", which I still like, and is especially useful for people who might otherwise help others too much at their own expense (and ability to help a lot more in the future).

I think the real lasting advice that I still think about and would like to more perfectly follow is ch 9 of the tao te ching. One translation goes:

    Fill your bowl to the brim
    and it will spill.
    Keep sharpening your knife
    and it will blunt.
    Chase after money and security
    and your heart will never unclench.
    Care about people's approval
    and you will be their prisoner.
    Do your work, then step back.
    The only path to serenity.

Another translation:

    Brim-fill the bowl,
    it’ll spill over.
    Keep sharpening the blade,
    you’ll soon blunt it.
    Nobody can protect
    a house full of gold and jade.
    Wealth, status, pride,
    are their own ruin.
    To do good, work well, and lie low
    is the way of the blessing.

fortune favors those prepared