5 Lessons I've Learnt in 25 Years


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So I've got a bit of time between my breakfast with my family (those of them here in Canberra anyway) and my birthday dinner, and thought I'd share a quick list of things I've learnt in my quarter century (Yes, I know I'm still a young'un, relatively speaking, but who damn it I'm doing this anyway).

1. You have to work to get where you want to be - I may not have gone to university, to the disgust of some of my friends who are still studying or working full time for far less cash, but I worked myself silly to get to the level I'm at now. A year and a half on a minimum wage traineeship, 5 years on two service desks, and a hell of a lot of voluntary extra work so I could earn my position.

2. Friends and family are two of the most important things in life - Material possessions are nice, but I value my family far more, along with my friends. Without them, I wouldn't have made it this far. You may lose contact with some of them, but they're still an important part of your life for the roles they played in the past.

3. Sometimes relationships don't work out, and that's okay - So I'm 25. Most people laugh when I talk about my "serious" relationships, saying I don't know what that is. Maybe that's the case, but a three year relationship where I was living with my partner and seriously considering proposing to her is serious enough for me. Obviously that, and my other relationships, didn't last, but I've come to accept that, look at them as learning experiences, and focus on the good times.

4. You need balance in your life - For me, this means not only keeping a good work life balance, but a balance in my downtime between passive activities (sitting around reading, playing games, writing etc.) and keeping physically active, which is why I spend so much time at the gym. I can zone out and listen to music while I tire myself out, and the exertion keeps me happier and makes it easy to sleep.

5. Being too strict with yourself is a good way to set yourself up for failure - Say you're on a diet. Don't let that rule your life. have a night off now and then. My diet runs on a two week cycle, one week I'm on it 7 days, the other 5. It gives me a night where I can have pizza with my gaming group, and a morning where I can mosey down to the local cafes and have a nice breakfast while I read a book and get some writing done. I feel better for eating something I really enjoy, and I'm still losing weight because I'm being good most of the time. Same goes for hobbies when you're trying to save money or pay off debts. Don't buy everything you want at once, but make sure you keep a little bit of cash aside for things to treat yourself with. I've got my Paizo subscriptions, and a monthly budget for buying games, CDs and DVDs with. That way I'm still enjoying myself, but I have a controlled expenditure.

Life may not always be fun or easy, and I've had my fair share of problems (in certain areas, more than my fair share), but the points above have always got me through in reasonable shape.

Feel free to throw out some general advice on life of your own. Always keen to see what others have figured out, and see if I can learn from it.

Silver Crusade

Here's my list.

1. Trust no-one, no matter how nice they are to you.
2. Don't think that everybody respects hard work.
3. Learn to keep your emotions in check, especially during an argument.
4. Learning to depend on yourself is very useful, for instance First Aid, foreign languages, and self defense.


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Your tongue will NOT stick to a cold metal flagpole.


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1. No matter how smart you think you are, there is always one person who will make you look like the village idiot by comparison.

2. You know how people say knowledge is power? You know how they say power corrupts? Yeah, it turns out that's a lot less of a joke and a lot more of a useful warning than you would think. Some things are best left uninvestigated.

3. Free will has an off switch. It's one of many ways nature has of telling you there are parts of your psyche you should not be poking around in.

4. People don't care that your awkwardness is because of extreme shyness and a near-crippling social paranoia. They just think you're creepy. If you want to survive in this world, you have to learn how to pretend to be someone else and how to keep people at a distance so they don't notice the lie.

5. Self-mockery keeps pride in check.


MagusJanus wrote:

1. No matter how smart you think you are, there is always one person who will make you look like the village idiot by comparison.

2. You know how people say knowledge is power? You know how they say power corrupts? Yeah, it turns out that's a lot less of a joke and a lot more of a useful warning than you would think. Some things are best left uninvestigated.

3. Free will has an off switch. It's one of many ways nature has of telling you there are parts of your psyche you should not be poking around in.

4. People don't care that your awkwardness is because of extreme shyness and a near-crippling social paranoia. They just think you're creepy. If you want to survive in this world, you have to learn how to pretend to be someone else and how to keep people at a distance so they don't notice the lie.

5. Self-mockery keeps pride in check.

Damn good list. Number 4 was an important lesson for me towards the end of high school.


Don't let them work you into the ground. They will sell you out to the glue factory at the first opportunity.


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I've only learned two things in the last 25 years:

1) Don't take any guff off these swine.

AND

2) F&$@ 'em if they can't take a joke.

Liberty's Edge

It's always darkest before the dawn.

Contributor

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1. Don't expect life to hand you opportunity on a silver platter; if you want an opportunity, you need to go looking for it.

2. You can learn more about a person in one hour playing a Roleplaying Game with then then you could in a month's worth of hanging out with them.

3. Sometimes the best course of action is to not act at all.

4. When aiming for perfection, accept the fact that you are human and will make mistakes. Those who aim for absolute perfection every time ultimately end up not aiming for anything at all.

5. Cards Against Humanity is a damn fun game.

Dark Archive

Sponsor an athlete with a mental disability. Who knows, he might just win something.

Spoiler:
Honest, I didn't know he would win a gold medal at the world championship. He just did...

Shadow Lodge

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Advice is worth the price you pay.


If you cant have cake, bread will do.


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I know its from a crazy source, but Shatner says he has had more pleasant experiences by saying yes more often than no to proposals. Try it. You might look foolish, but you will have a hell of a story for when you are old.

Throw a tiny bit of cash into a 401/457/whatever the f$*@ retirement when you first get full time work. You wont miss it and most companies match some of your funds.

Love, even if it sometimes ends in hurt.

TRAVEL! See as much of this world as you can before something irreversible happens to it.

Listen to music. DO NOT STAGNATE. Sure, keep a 'comfort zone' of music, but listen to new stuff, old stuff, weird stuff. evolve! Music and math are the only international languages...and nobody got time to learn new math theories...unless you do, then do that too!

and wear sunscreen

and theres no sex in the champagne room

and you are not your f~**ing khakis


Cardboard Hero wrote:

If you cant have cake, bread will do.

But neither cake nor bread are on my diet...

Sovereign Court

No good deed goes unpunished.

Silver Crusade

Never let your regrets outnumber your dreams


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"The best de-fence is a good o-ffence."
-Mel, the cook on "Alice".


MagusJanus wrote:

1. No matter how smart you think you are, there is always one person who will make you look like the village idiot by comparison.

2. You know how people say knowledge is power? You know how they say power corrupts? Yeah, it turns out that's a lot less of a joke and a lot more of a useful warning than you would think. Some things are best left uninvestigated.

3. Free will has an off switch. It's one of many ways nature has of telling you there are parts of your psyche you should not be poking around in.

4. People don't care that your awkwardness is because of extreme shyness and a near-crippling social paranoia. They just think you're creepy. If you want to survive in this world, you have to learn how to pretend to be someone else and how to keep people at a distance so they don't notice the lie.

5. Self-mockery keeps pride in check.

How does Free will have an off switch? and which parts of your psyche should you not be poking around in? What things are best left uninvestigated?


xavier c wrote:
MagusJanus wrote:

1. No matter how smart you think you are, there is always one person who will make you look like the village idiot by comparison.

2. You know how people say knowledge is power? You know how they say power corrupts? Yeah, it turns out that's a lot less of a joke and a lot more of a useful warning than you would think. Some things are best left uninvestigated.

3. Free will has an off switch. It's one of many ways nature has of telling you there are parts of your psyche you should not be poking around in.

4. People don't care that your awkwardness is because of extreme shyness and a near-crippling social paranoia. They just think you're creepy. If you want to survive in this world, you have to learn how to pretend to be someone else and how to keep people at a distance so they don't notice the lie.

5. Self-mockery keeps pride in check.

How does Free will have an off switch? and which parts of your psyche should you not be poking around in? What things are best left uninvestigated?

I do not believe the people who run this site would appreciate it if I got into an in-depth discussion of torture, human predation against other humans, or the other darker sides of human nature. And some might accuse my comments that spawned your questions to be part of a certain trope.

Edit: I do not claim to have done any of those things. But I will say it is best to be careful how hard you question yourself on certain things. Humans live on the surface of their mind. In the depths, there be monsters.


We should let ourselves put down the mental burdens of things that don't affect our life today. Even if they are ill past of us, we can be well past of them.


Xavier C wrote:
How does Free will have an off switch?

Blows to the head in my experience. I can remember a few times basically watching myself react with a calm internal monologue while playing basketball with someone's head on the pavement.

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