Most Repeated Advice

Over at the Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner asks his readers, "what is the best advice you ever got"? His own response to the question involves a fishing story from his childhood. He caught a small fish, but was forced to throw it back in and they moved to another spot. In the deep water they didn't catch any fish, but he did learn an important lesson:

Even though we returned home empty-handed, we went for the big fish. In the short run, this kind of thinking might not be as much fun. But it’s the long run you should be thinking about — the big goals, the ones that require a lot of failure along the way. They might be worth it (of course, they might not be, too). It’s a lesson in opportunity cost: if you spend all your time catching the little fish, you won’t have time — or develop the technique, or the patience — to ever catch the big ones.

Like many of the commenters I had a hard time coming up with the "best" advice ever. So instead I went with my most often repeated. It's certainly not as life changing, but it sure has helped me navigate otherwise awkward situations:

If someone offers you something and you want it, take it. They either really want you to have it or need to learn to stop offering things they don’t want people to take.

Here are some other interesting answers:

Your brain works very hard to fool you into believing that you are smart, wise, and that you always make good decisions. Your brain is very skilled at this.

So whenever you are trying to make a difficult decision or solve a difficult problem and the evidence points to a conclusion that pleases you, be especially skeptical.

As an educator and an economist, I appreciated this one:

Invest in your mind, no on can take it away from you.

This one gave me quite an emotional response, though I'm not sure if I agree:

Just because someone doesn’t love you the way that you want them to doesn’t mean that they don’t love you with all that they have

I wish more people followed this one:

No use complaining about things you can’t control.

and here's one from the character Dwight Schrute:

Whenever I am about to do something, I stop and ask myself: ‘Would an idiot do this?’ If the answer is ‘yes,’ I don’t do it.

Of course I'd love to know what your best or most often repeated advice is.