What advice would you give?

C

crispy

New Member
Location
Canada
Knowing what you know today, what advice would you give your younger self?

I would advise my younger self to go to college and university to study English and Philosophy.
 

Best advice I could tell myself.....listen & adhere to everything your mom said growing up. She was always right! It just took me too long to figure that out! (Funny thing, my daughter just told me the same thing about wishing she had taken more of my advice at an earlier age! Guess it happens to most of us!)

And, secondly, I'm with you, crispy....MORE EDUCATION!!!
 
Last edited:
Oh brother, I'd go back and find me in some Flea Market/Antique Mall when I was in my late 30's/early 40's and slap myself up side the head.

"Listen self, quit buying this crap, if you would have put as much effort into saving instead of "collecting" all these years, I'd already be retired."

Luckily a few years ago I did wake up and now all I collect is dust. I've had a few major garage sales and unloaded mountains of "crappola" and boy did it ever feel good.
 

Old Hipster said:
Oh brother, I'd go back and find me in some Flea Market/Antique Mall when I was in my late 30's/early 40's and slap myself up side the head.

"Listen self, quit buying this crap, if you would have put as much effort into saving instead of "collecting" all these years, I'd already be retired."

Luckily a few years ago I did wake up and now all I collect is dust. I've had a few major garage sales and unloaded mountains of "crappola" and boy did it ever feel good.
Click to expand...

LOL...been there and done that too. And on the motherly advice, my mother used to tell me all the time, "you'd better wear gloves"...when I was working in the yard, I think about that every time I look at these ugly age spots on my hands.
 
Katybug said:
Best advice I could tell myself.....listen & adhere to everything your mom said growing up. She was always right! It just took me too long to figure that out!
Click to expand...

The exact opposite of that!

Mine was absolutely clueless about how the world really worked and raised me by the rules of Jane Austen and the Marquess of Queensbury when she should have been teaching me to 'street fight'. ... And it took me far too long to figure that out too.

My advice would be to totally disregard 99% of the 'advice' and not to allow her outdated values, and preferences and personality to over-rule mine! None of the best advice I got through life came from her, she lived in a world that didn't exist any more.

She had far too much influence in my life for way too long and the very best thing I could have done would be to never have allowed her to do it. She forced me to live in 2 worlds, hers at home while learning the hard way how to cope with the real one.

We aren't all like our mothers, that's a fallacy. Mum and I were chalk and cheese on every level except stubbornness, we were equal on that one or she'd have driven me nuts decades ago.

Had she not been my Mother I wouldn't have had anything to do with her, nor her with me. We simply weren't each others' type of preferred company and never really had a bond.
So why did I live like that, with a woman who really was a stranger I didn't get along with all that well and who treated me like her servant for so long? I'll have to get back to you on that... still too busy kicking myself.

Short advice to me at 16?
Don't be hoodwinked by a sense of 'duty'. Mother doesn't know best except for herself. Harden up. Follow your own instincts, and Leave home!


Old Hipster
Oh brother, I'd go back and find me in some Flea Market/Antique Mall when I was in my late 30's/early 40's and slap myself up side the head.
Click to expand...

If I have the time then that one too!
 
I was watching a an old Columbo movie special the other night with Peter Falk as that dowdy yet lovable detective. His quarry was a psychologist who had killed his wife in order to hook up with his hot (but crazy) patient.

At one point Columbo and the Doc sit down in the Doc's office, have a drink and Columbo gets him talking about a theoretical murderer - why he would think the way he does, his motivations and methods, etc. The Doc plays the game and ends up giving an off-the-cuff psychological profile of Columbo that was spot-on. It brought to mind Sherlock Holmes' legendary ability to do the same thing.

And right after that segment I thought to myself, "If I had my life to do over, I would like to have been a psychologist". I mean, it would fit me to a T: plush office with neat little brain-games on the shelves, tons of books, hot and crazy patients, an equally hot secretary, tons of money coming in, get to wear a nice 3-piece suit (well, it WAS the '70's!) and make good use of my mind on a daily basis.
 
I've been indulging in the amateur version ever since I 'woke up' to the mind games my mother and I had played my whole life.
Things people do make a whole lot more sense when we begin to understand how the thinking processes work in general and in different personality types in particular. I only wish I'd understood a little of it earlier in life. Damn!

I wouldn't have been suited to it as a career though, not enough patience (no, I won't pun that) to listen to some of the drivel people kid themselves with.
 
I was a Psych / Philosophy dual-major up until I hit grad school, and I remember at the time having a sort of personal crisis trying to decide which way to go. I knew there was money in shrinking minds and I seemed to be temperamentally suited to it, but I ended up going with Metaphysics on the idea that I was going to be opening a sort of quasi-spiritual meditation-center thingie.

That I ended up running martial arts schools with only a small segment of the curriculum directly involved in spirituality is my own personal Hell. I know I have the patience I would have needed for psychiatry because, believe me, if you can teach a roomful of ADHD kids twice a week for a couple of years you have patience. I also have a private student who has been with me almost 13 years now and still claims he "isn't ready". If anything, he is the closest thing I have right now to a patient, so I can still get my practice in.

"Hmmmm ... that's very interesting. How do you feel about that?" ;)
 
"Hmmmm ... that's very interesting. How do you feel about that?"
wink.png
Click to expand...

You see, that's why it's not for me, I'm more the type who'd be telling them what to feel about it, not asking.
 
Old Hipster said:
Oh brother, I'd go back and find me in some Flea Market/Antique Mall when I was in my late 30's/early 40's and slap myself up side the head.

"Listen self, quit buying this crap, if you would have put as much effort into saving instead of "collecting" all these years, I'd already be retired."


Luckily a few years ago I did wake up and now all I collect is dust. I've had a few major garage sales and unloaded mountains of "crappola" and boy did it ever feel good.
Click to expand...

I can so relate, Old Hipster, and probably didn't spend nearly as much money as you and my mother did (God rest her soul) but one look in my closet and it's easy to see no one person needs 28 pocketbooks!!!! And I've gotten rid of a dozen or more, but I'm a fool for a designer bargain!
 
SifuPhil said:
I was a Psych / Philosophy dual-major up until I hit grad school, and I remember at the time having a sort of personal crisis trying to decide which way to go. I knew there was money in shrinking minds and I seemed to be temperamentally suited to it, but I ended up going with Metaphysics on the idea that I was going to be opening a sort of quasi-spiritual meditation-center thingie.

That I ended up running martial arts schools with only a small segment of the curriculum directly involved in spirituality is my own personal Hell. I know I have the patience I would have needed for psychiatry because, believe me, if you can teach a roomful of ADHD kids twice a week for a couple of years you have patience. I also have a private student who has been with me almost 13 years now and still claims he "isn't ready". If anything, he is the closest thing I have right now to a patient, so I can still get my practice in.

"Hmmmm ... that's very interesting. How do you feel about that?" ;)
Click to expand...

Darn it, Phil, you have to own some of my problems. Had you been able to pull off your dream, I could perhaps have pulled off mine with further education at your quasi-spiritual meditation-center thingie.
 
Jillaroo and Diwurdrin I think you might be my sisters!
I have, well had, mommy issues all my life, now anything she says to me just goes in one ear and out the other, I am not going to argue with a 85 years old lady about unimportant shit.

I was also a Psych major, seems like people with problems like the subject, I figured it would be easier to figure out my own problems that way.
 
Wouldn't change a thing, good or bad. Remember we only get one go down here so make the best of it.
At 73 I have a great life, My wife of 43 years, family, Grand children, food on the table & plenty of laughs.
Try playing UNO & Monopoly with the G/kids....always brings a smile & happiness.
Though the 4 year old can beat me in the pool!!!!!:thumbsup:
 
Well, if I had to do it over again, I would have never married either of my husbands. Yup, married twice and divorced twice - cost me a bloody fortune, started over from scratch twice. Only good thing that came from marriage is my children who I absolutely adore. When I look back, I think I was just afraid that I'd be alone. Funny thing is that now that I am, I love it! I make all the decisions and don't have to put up with the crap.

I'm happier now than I ever have been but during my married lives, was miserable. If I could, I wish I could erase those years or better yet, have never gone through them in the first place.

So the answer is that I would tell my younger self not to marry the idiots that I did!

And, if you ladies do lunch - I want to come!!!!!
 
Last edited:
You're more than welcome TICA, we'll let you know when it's organized.

I think maybe I did go back and tell myself not to marry. That was a bit of luck eh? Couldn't see the benefit in it to me, didn't want kids, never met a millionaire that wasn't already taken, and never met a man I needed enough to consider a lifetime of washing his undies a fair price to pay for his company so what was the point?

I used to watch the passing parade of workmates go through the new boyfriend/engagement/wedding frenzy/disillusionment/dramatics/divorce process and wondered where the Hell they kept their brains.
.
Some did okay, but so many couldn't see what deadbeats they were hooking up with. Maybe I was lucky I missed out getting the 'romance' gene or something.

I woke the household screaming one night when I was a young teen. I was having a nightmare that I was in a wedding dress and being dragged by a chain towards a 'groom' with no face. That's the only time I was ever 'in' a wedding dress and it was a pretty good indicator of my view of getting married. I still see it in much the same way. No idea why I had that dream, just the subconscious putting the pieces together from observations of the world around me I guess.

That fear of being alone is kind of amusing when applied to women. The odds are that the husbands will drop off the perch much sooner than them and they'll be alone anyway. They give up the freedom to enjoy their fit and healthy years and then when they get older, and need help and support the most the bloke they spent those years on is gooooorrrrrn.

An old lady neighbour once waxed lyrical about how much comfort her husband had been to her and she couldn't imagine what her life would have been without him. She'd been widowed for 20 years!!!
She should have had a pretty good idea of what it was like without him by then!

Yeah I know girls, some of you wouldn't swap 'em for the world, you must be the lucky ones.
I'm a cynic, I didn't even buy a ticket in that lottery.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top