This is NHPR’s The Big Question. In this series, we ask you a question about life in New Hampshire, you submit an answer, and your voice may be featured on air or online.
Solid advice can go a long way – from the best way to remove a bacon grease stain to how to make it through a break-up.
So, for September’s Big Question we asked you: What’s a piece of advice you’ve received in your life that has stuck with you?
Whether it came from a person close to you or someone you met in passing, we wanted to know how that suggestion has shaped your life.
Here’s what some of you said:
Clark Dumont - Lake Winnisquam, NH: The piece of advice that I've received is: ‘If you take it out, put it back, and make it better.’ And I received that from my father. But for me, it really is a simple yet elegant piece of advice. It's a mantra. It's become a state of mind for me that I've carried throughout my life and career and have worked to pass along to our children and our grandchildren. It's a core value that means that you can be relied upon, you can be trusted to do the right thing and to make things right and better for not only yourself, but for others.
Elaine Brody - Hudson, NH: The best piece of advice I ever got was from a dear friend who told me to ‘keep my door open and my mouth shut.’ And my husband and I have four daughters, and we are proud to have raised them to be wonderful women. But along the way there were some bumps, as there are with raising children. And over the years I have used that advice many times, not just for my children, sometimes for friends, sometimes for people that I don't even know very well who may have rubbed me the wrong way. And I try to remember to do what she said.
Martha Kruse - Laconia, NH: A piece of advice that I've received that has been enormously helpful in my life was from my father. My father has been gone since 1991, but his very simple yet profound advice has carried me through a lot of situations. That advice was: ‘Nobody ever said life is fair.’ I found this advice to be helpful when managing any kind of difficult situation, or just trying to understand a very challenging world.
Tracy Arnold - Rumney, NH: Some of the best advice I got was from a boss who told me: ‘Sometimes B-work is good enough.’ I worked in a highly regulated industry where often I was involved in producing documents for the regulators, and I was fretting over being perfect. And my boss said, ‘Let it go. Sometimes B-work is good enough.’ And I try to remember that now in my regular life, not work life, that yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect every single time.
Paul Hague - Newbury, NH: When I was a toddler, and for the remainder of my life living with my parents, I was constantly reminded that personal integrity is far more valuable than anything else that you could have. Because with personal integrity, you live a life that is based on truth and that… even if the truth doesn't feel good, commit to the truth. And if you live a life of integrity, you never have to look over your shoulder for those things that sneak up and bite you in the butt for having lied in the past.
Julie Wiseman - Franconia, NH: One piece of, I'm not sure if it's advice or words of wisdom, that came from my father, he said to me and to my brother and sister when he was teaching us to drive: ‘Some idiot always runs the red light.’ And I can't tell you how often this has been apt and how it's been passed on to my children and hopefully to their children if they're still striving in the same way as we do now.
Additional responses:
Keenan Pawley: When merging onto a highway, you either have to get ahead of them or behind them.
Pat Sevigny: When I was so upset about something, my dad said, ‘Patty, what were you worried about a year ago on [this] day?’ I stopped to think. I said, ‘Dad, I don't remember. What?’ He said, ‘Next year on this day you will not remember this either.’ I never forgotten that and I'm a nanny - use this all the time.
