Getting to Know You - Important Advice

A few years ago, Catherine did some "Getting to Know You" e-mails. She has begun this practise again. Here is the second of this week's questions which I have underlined.

Tell us about an important piece of advice you have learned. Who did you learn it from? 

I was told, "If it can’t be done with love, it can’t be done."

I learned this from a talk given by a mission president when I was in Grande Prairie. I can no longer remember his name. I do remember the advice and think of it often

I read, "Always try to say yes to your children".

I learned this from a parenting book. This advice changed the way I parented my teen-agers.When I began to practice this, I was surprised to find out how many times I was saying “no” to them. I learned to say “yes and I will help you do that if I can”.  Sometimes I thought the words were going to choke me.

My father told me, "You can’t give advice to your children until they are ready to hear it".

I wondered about his advice so I asked,“how long will that take".  He said, “you may have to wait two or three years”.

My Computer Science 200 professor told me "Stop doing programming (and by extension, doing electronics) a couple of hours before you go to bed".

She told me this when I asked her how to stop C++ programming from going on in my dreams.

Thanks for letting me think about this question, Catherine.  I don't think important pieces of advice that are good for me, might be good for others.   But I would love to hear important pieces of advice that others have received.  Especially advice you have received.  I might get this one wrong, but you did tell me not to let noxious, or even obnoxious people rent space in my mind.  Not bad advice.

Arta