Best Advice You've Ever Been Given

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

No wonder foreign language teaching used to have such a terrible reputation!

It still does.

[jean]

For different reasons, surely?

[gradus]

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.

[jayne lee wilson]

Time to tap into the collective wisdom of Forum members to see what the best advice is that you've ever had. It could be from parents, the Bible, Shakespeare, something you've read or something from a completely unexpected source.

I'm tempted to say the best I've had is from my mother who said simply: 'Never get married'. At a couple of months away from 60 I haven't got a grey hair on me and having seen so much married stress elsewhere I'm glad I heeded the advice.

However, the one that really sticks in my mind came from, of all people, Clare Balding who said: 'If you show them you don't care, they can't touch you'. Just wish I'd heard it years ago and I might have had a better working life.

What's the best advice you've ever had?

I often feel that when you "take advice" and act on it, you're choosing your own path really; it just helps to feel that an "external agent" has directed you, confirming your unconscious choice or predilection. Bit easier than facing the huge, cold empty universe on your own.

So Petrushka found some contentment in the path he followed or chose - but it helped to hear his Mother confirming or "approving" it, unconventional as it may have seemed.

If I ever was given "good advice" I must have bloody-mindedly ignored it - I only ever learned anything by making stupid, often wilful, mistakes. I don't expect that to change much.

Clare Balding - I wish I hadn't cared as much, then they wouldn't have hurt so much.

[ardcarp]

A interesting take on the retrospective nature of advice. It occurs to me that there are two sorts of advice, one to do something and the other not to do something. I'm pretty much guilty of ignoring the latter.

[amateur51]

A friend frequently asserts philosophically that

" you can't live other people's lives for them" ,

and

"good advice is neither needed nor heeded"

[gamba]

What a silly remark, cloughie - which I fail to understand anyway.

[Hornspieler]

Some of the best advice was given me by my old friend Francis Bradley, who was still playing Principal Horn at Covent Garden when he was in his seventies.

He said "If you try to play everything that's written in the part, you won't last five minutes in this business, but you've got to know what you can afford to leave out."

Well, it worked for him, didn't it?

HS (and for me on more than one occasion!)

[gurnemanz]

"Don't smile before Christmas" is good advice I was given embarking on a career as a school teacher.

Lenin: Trust is good. Control is better.

Don't keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

[Barbirollians]

Avoid Neville Marriner records

[EdgeleyRob]

Avoid Neville Marriner records

Harsh.

[Hornspieler]

If you're at your old school reunion and everyone starts gossiping, don't be the first person to leave

[Barbirollians]

Harsh.

But true!

[MrGongGong]

[Beef Oven!]