Full text here.1) One of the two things I heard over and over when people talked about the original list with older people was some variation of, "I wish I had spent a lot less money on frivolous things and saved a lot more money when I was a teenager."
2) The other recurring theme from older people was, "I didn't know nearly as much at 18 as I thought I did and my parents were right about things a lot more than I thought they were."
3) If you are cutting something, whether it be with scissors, a knife, a box cutter, anything sharp, make sure you are pulling the blade away from your body, not towards it. It may save you a trip to the hospital.
4) If you get pulled over by the police, don't mouth off, keep your hands where the officer can see them, and don't make any sudden movements. It might keep you from getting shot or arrested.
5) "Things every person should have in his car: a car jack and spare tire, jumper cables, flash light, & a first aid kit." -- mightysamurai
6) Write an advance medical directive, a will, and plan for your funeral. Your family will be eternally grateful if something happens. -- Anonymous
7) If you're going to be drinking, have a designated driver. Additionally, if you're female and go to a party, always make sure you have at least one person who will look out for you if you're going to get drunk.
8) Here's the best way to get organized: make a list of things you need to do with the toughest things at the top. Do the toughest things first and work your way down.
9) Hopefully, it'll never come to this for you, but it is better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
10) It's generally a very good idea to avoid writing email, letters, blog posts, or even having conversations with people when you are upset or very emotional. If you do anyway, usually, once you've cooled off, you'll wish you had handled things differently.
11) "You are more like your parents than you would like to admit." -- Major-General. The same could be said of the person you're dating. If the family either of you came from is dysfunctional, don't be surprised to see the traits that made it that way crop up in your relationship.
12) "If you want to know what a woman will be like as a wife, it helps to meet her mother. If you want to know how a man will treat you in the years ahead, notice how he treats his mother now. If it isn't with deep respect and courtesy, beware. That's probably the treatment he'll be giving you down the road when you don't wear a halo anymore." -- Dexter Yeager
13) It may seem counter-intuitive, but a couple that lives together before marriage is LESS LIKELY to get married and LESS LIKELY to stay married than a couple that doesn't live together before marriage.
14) Your body language, posture, grooming, the way you dress, and the way you carry yourself are much more important than most people realize. That first impression you make on people, based on those non-verbal characteristics, will often define how they see and react to you forever more unless they really get to know you well.
15) Don't put anything on Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, etc. that you would be uncomfortable with the whole world seeing.
16) The stories of people who have been fired after some jerk on the net contacted their job are legion. So, don't give out where you work or your work email on the net.
17) There is a lot to that old saying, "It's not what you know, it's who know." Use that to your advantage when you can. A handshake and a hello at the office, a quick introduction at church, or a short conversation before dinner can get you more jobs, help, and good advice than you ever thought possible.
18) "Never assume your loyalty to a company will be reciprocated" -- Joe
19) Whether your money or time is being spent, never ignore opportunity costs: "The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action."
20) In a business deal, be very sure of the terms of a partnership and the person you are partnering with because partnerships go sour more often than they hold together, especially if things aren't going well.
21) You can never pick more than two from this list: fast, cheap or good. -- CavalierX
22) When it comes to money, your attitude should be: "If I can't afford it, I don't deserve it."
23) There is no such thing as a free lunch. If it seems free, you may want to ask who's paying for it and why before you take it.
24) When a financial deal looks too good to be true, three good questions to ask are: how much risk is there, how sure are you that the deal is legit, and how is it that such a fantastic deal hasn't already been snapped up by someone richer than you?
25) If you have trouble telling people "no" or are dealing with a persistent salesman, the broken record technique comes in very handy.
"When the other person repeats their request to you, simply repeat the same words of refusal. You may have to do this a number of times, but eventually they will get the message."
26) "I was blown away when I read a December 2004 study in the journal Science reporting that the quality of our sleep has a greater influence on our ability to enjoy our day than household income or marital status. Who knew that snoozing trumps salaries and spouses?" -- Marcy Shimoff
27) The best way to deal with temptation isn't to fight it; it's to avoid it entirely.
28) If you want to know what a person really believes, what they do tells you much more than what they say.
29) "When you have a choice to make and don't make it, that is in itself a choice." -- William James
30) "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." -- George Patton
31) "In life, never spend more than 10% of your time on the problem and spend at least 90% of your time on the solution." -- Tony Robbins
32) "Losers find excuses, winners find solutions." -- Anonymous
33) "Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history." -- Thomas Sowell
34) "Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself - and be lenient to everybody else." -- Henry Ward Beecher
35) "To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." -- Elbert Hubbard
36) "...Consider the possibility that man is to God as a dog is to man, and a dog is to man as a flea is to a dog; i.e., the man, the dog, and the flea, who are merely tagging along for the ride, have neither the faintest idea as to why their masters do what they do nor the means to ever understand why.
The question then becomes: Is God indifferent to us, as the dog is to the flea, or does He allow us to suffer for reasons we do not understand? When someone takes his dog to the veterinarian, the dog has no idea why his master allows pain to be inflicted on him. In the same way, perhaps, God doesn't always give us what we want, but He knows what we need." -- Robert Ringer
37) "If you are bored with life, if you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things - you don't have enough goals." -- Lou Holtz
38) "The difference between high achievers and also-rans is almost always the degree of preparation." -- Anonymous
39) "If you won't even remember it five years from now, there's no point in getting upset about it." -- Anonymous
40) When you're dying, you're probably not going to wish that you spent more time watching TV. On the other hand, you probably are going to wish that you had done more with your life and that you had spent more time with the people you loved. Do it now, while you can.
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