We all need a motto. Something to keep us on track when times get rough.
Is it listening to music, or a little voice in our head that gives us a way forward?
Or is it just a simple rule of thumb that can keep us through everything?
u/wolfpack202020 asked:
Reddit, what's your Rule No 1 in life?
Here were some of the answers.
Little Traditions
Giphy
Always have something to look forward to. Make some future plans. It keeps me going.
To piggyback off of this, find a hobby that takes place regularly and on a weekday. It greatly diminishes the "work for the weekend" mindset that many people have. I bowl league on Tuesdays and Thursdays and honestly look forward to those just as much as I do the weekend.
Valuing Yourself
Directly expressing my needs instead of hinting.
This is one of those rules I needed to pick up again as an adult. I got discarded and messed with a lot as a kid because I was small and weird, so I got into a kind of mindset of minimizing and hiding my desires. It turns out being upfront with what you really want to do makes it far easier to be a friend to rather than them feeling more and more annoyed that they have to guess what you want or feeling bad that they always dominate or get to pick but you insist it's fine doing whatever. The rule is to make sure it's not a huge hit to group plans and also to not do it so often or every single time. Yes, wanting to lurk in the apartment playing Halo is fine, but it gets boring when that's all you want to do every single time.
Step Back
Listen to my gut. I don't have to always follow it, but taking a moment to step back and ask how I feel about things, and ask myself a few questions to try and see why, has been a lifesaver. Works wonders for handling emotions and making decisions.
The Ball, I'm On It
Don't waste anybody's time. If you asked somebody for a ride, be waiting outside when they arrive. If somebody asked you for a report at work by 3 o'clock, have it ready by five minutes to. Basically, just plan ahead and have everything ready to go when it needs to be ready. Nobody's going to want to bother with you if you're not on the ball.
That Word
If you make a promise to someone make sure it's one you can keep. If it's something that might not happen, I'll say "I will do my best on this but I can't promise anything." I try very hard to keep my word good.
Just Try Your Best
Smile and say thank you. I had a friend once tell me my smile could melt and disarm anyone. So since then I've made it a point to smile as much as I can and especially when interacting with retail workers I always make sure I smile and say thank you. I almost always get a big smile back which feels good because you never know how many jerks that person has had to deal with that day. You might be the only decent customer they've had.
Silence Is Golden
If you want your plans to come true, NEVER, I say NEVER tell about those plans to anyone. Even to the closest relatives and friends. The only exception is that those people are directly involved into your plans.
My Oxygen Mask First
Bruh, love yourself first and foremost. Most people out there will not.
ETA: Basically keeping yourself physically and mentally healthy. It includes recognizing how others or ourself are causing harm; this includes removing ourselves from relationships, habits, environments that can be detrimental, and damage control.
Being kind and respectful to oneself, not selfish and greedy is one way to do it.
Conditions
Life is difficult, painful, and confusing; it's difficult, painful and confusing for everyone. So be compassionate and understanding. There's a story to everyone's struggles, there's a reason behind anyone's failures. Be kind.
With the addendum that this rule does not apply to Yankees fans and Toronto FC fans.
Mind Over Matter
Giphy
If someone else can do something. Why can't I achieve the same? In other words, never sell yourself short. You are capable of much more than you think. Having that failure mentality is usually the reason you're constantly failing.
Reddit user mariababexoxo asked:
"'Never confuse education with intelligence; you can have a PhD and still be an idiot,' stated Richard Feynman. What are some real-life examples of this?"
Chemical Engineer
"I had an intern with a PhD once. She was trying to be a chemical process engineer. VERY book smart."
"I spent the Summer teaching her how to use basic tools like screwdrivers and wrenches for simple tasks like opening containers and adjusting clamps. She had zero practical skills and couldn’t figure anything whatsoever out on her own."
"She’d get lost in a building and call me and I’d tell her to find the exit, but she’d get lost inside and we’d have to go in and get her. This routinely happened, and she would just find somewhere random and sit until we collected her."
"When her car’s GPS lost signal once she didn’t know what to do so she stopped in the middle of the road and texted me where she was and that there was something wrong with her car and to come help. I figured there was a breakdown or something based on the text and drove out to check on it because she wasn’t responding."
Giphy"She was crying sitting on the side of the road and a cop was yelling at her to move her car which was still in the lane."
"If you told her to pick something up from a store she’d ask where it was and if you didn’t know, she would never find it "She refused to ask an employee because she knew they weren’t as smart as she was."
"She’d just walk in random directions looking for things. For example if you said 'go to Walmart and find some work boots because you lost yours' she would send me pictures of random aisles in Walmart with 'is this close? which way from here?'.”
"Book smart but utterly dim."
~ captainofpizza
It's The Milk That Makes Them Healthy
"My wife once had a roommate who was working on her PhD."
"At one point she went on an Oreo diet because they're vegan."
"She was later surprised to find her health wasn't improving."
~ educational_palmeira
GiphySquirrel!
"I am a graduate student at the University of Oxford."
"I recently had to explain to another grad student the concept of animals hibernating. She's British and English is her first language, so it wasn't a vocabulary issue. She just didn't know that animals did that."
"When I explained it she said 'Oh! like squirrels!' Squirrels actually don't hibernate, but I just nodded."
~ slider501
Have You Tried Turning It Off...
"Ask literally anyone who's ever worked for a university's IT department. I've never met a group of people more unwilling to learn anything new—outside of their small specialization—than university professors."
"These people would rather argue with you for 10 minutes that 'I did restart my computer' than just spend the 2 minutes to restart the computer when the logistics software is showing the machine with a 45 day uptime and all of us can see that sh*t."
"Department heads do this."
~ Mammoth_Clue_5871
GiphyIt's One Banana, Michael
"My roommate in college was/is an academic genius, 35 ACT in med school right now."
"I brought him to Walmart with me because he wanted to buy an 8-pack of Gatorade. At the self checkout he scanned one, saw the price was 7 bucks, and decided that must have been the price for EACH Gatorade."
"He ended up scanning the pack 7 more times and paid 56 bucks for some Gatorade, all while thinking that was a fair price."
~ Royal-Character-2035
And Vampirism!
"The nurse I used to work with during the pandemic was constantly bragging about how rich and important and highly educated she was.
"Only for her to suggest to our director of nursing that the kitchen start putting extra garlic in everyone's meals because garlic cures COVID."
~ GlassPeepo
GiphyHistory ≠ Geography
"I know someone with a PhD in History who went to the Caribbean with only long trousers and jumpers/sweaters to wear."
"He was so hot he had to cut his jeans down to shorts."
"Then, as part of the same trip, he went to Washington DC, and had to wear jean shorts the whole time because he cut up all his trousers."
~ RexEverything_
And On The 7th Day...
"I met a PhD molecular biologist who was an evolution denier. I found out years later that he was somewhat infamous."
~ whittlingcanbefatal
"I’ve met two PhD students who worked on bacterial evolution and one who worked in biochemistry."
"All three believed that human evolution was not a thing, all three were religious."
~ D-g-tal-s_purpurea
GiphyNobel Disease
"There are a ton of laureates that go conspiratorial batsh*t later in life."
~ hacktheself
"Kary Mullis is the worst one and he really emboldens other conspiracy theorists."
"He won the Nobel prize for helping invent the PCR test... then he denied AIDS existed while in a government position leading to 330,000 deaths and said climate change wasn't real because his astrologer told him so."
"Oh, and ghosts."
"Anti-vaxxers love him."
~ AstonVanilla
Members Around The World
"Heard about a mechanical engineer who is a flat earther."
"So yeah, him, or any engineer, physicist, or astronomer that believes in that."
"The fact that a single one can get their degree and then turn around years later and believe in something fundamentally incompatible with the BASIC physics required to make sense of their degree is baffling."
~ QuanticWizard
GiphyWhat Did They Do With The Couch?
"Helped some mates move house. One was a Uni Student doing a double degree in Computer Science and something else very challenging."
"While we were packing boxes he asked if he could could borrow a saw. When I asked why, it was so he could shorten the legs on the dining table so it would fit out the door."
"The look on his face when I grabbed one of the legs and started unscrewing it was priceless. As was the look when I asked him how he thought they got it in the room in the first place."
~ cruiserman_80
New-Fangled Gadgets
"In my old university in Germany in the early 2000s. The university was old, really old."
"And when I started they just began modernising the lecture halls etc... The German department got a new, fancy, state of the art lecture hall with any kind of technology you could wish for."
"The professors got extensive training on how to use it."
"There were some of them who after three months still didn’t know how to switch on the lights. Don’t even talk about the microphone or how to open and close the blinds on the skylight."
They didn’t originally plan on having an old-fashioned overhead projector there, but after a few weeks they relented and provided one because the professors didn’t know any other way."
"In their defence, the other lecture halls were so old that they still had the hole for the ink well in the tables."
~ moosmutzel81
GiphyDo No Harm
"I work in mental health and have known sooo many healthcare professionals with advanced degrees who I wouldn’t trust to take care of a goldfish and can’t believe counsel people on a regular basis."
~ DeadSharkEyes
What's That Burning Smell?
"My MIT PhD. friend complained his dryer was taking forever to dry his clothes."
"I asked him if he was cleaning the lint trap—'it doesn't have one'."
"Spoiler alert: it did have one, way in the back and I took out a sweater's worth of lint."
~ arbiterror
GiphyIt's Not Rocket Science...
I chuckle whenever someone uses this saying to indicate something isn't complex like rocket science ever since my friend became an aeronautical engineer.
Why?
Well, we'd have to go back to the mid-1980s when we were both teenagers in high school. As many teens with cars in rural America did, my friends liked to drive around on the back roads as a form of entertainment.
One sunny, Summer day two of my friends came to visit me with a tale to tell.
It seems they were driving on a stretch of road with a speed limit of 35mph [56kph] because of a cluster of homes and farms. When the car slowed to this speed, Mr. Future Rocket Scientist looked down at the pavement passing by below his window on the passenger side.
Upon studying the passing blacktop for several moments, he came to the conclusion he could easily run as fast as the car was moving, so...
...he undid his seatbelt, opened the car door and STEPPED OUT of the moving car.
According to the driver, one moment our friend was sitting next to him and the next he was gone. Or mostly gone.
After a brief moment of panic during which he slowed then stopped the car, he noticed Mr. Future Rocket Scientist's right hand gripping the door's armrest and his left hand gripping the side of the passenger seat.
He was probably only dragged for a few seconds which wasn't long enough to do more than scuff up his jeans, jean jacket and the toes of his shoes.
He escaped with only minor road rash and a few bruises.
After the driver told me what happened from his perspective, Mr. Future Rocket Scientist interjected:
"It worked!"
"I was doing really well until I tripped over that rock."
Luckily an understanding of things like velocity, speed, trajectory, friction, drag, inertia and gravity aren't needed for aeronautics.
GiphyNeedless to say, we've never let him forget his "experiment."
He still claims the only problem was that rock on the road.
And I now use the saying "it's not rocket surgery" instead of either of the original sayings.
Reddit user juliacorco asked:
"What is the creepiest tv episode or movie you’ve ever seen?"
Haunting of Hill House
"Haunting of Hill House on Netflix."
"Scary as hell."
"Bent Neck Lady makes the hair on my neck stand up on end every time."
"Same with the ghost looking for his hat. Or whatever was down in the cellar."
~ Pretend-Cucumber-711
GiphyHereditary
"Hereditary"
"That one scene near the end in the dark bedroom…is essentially a reverse jump scare. Something is there the entire time and it’s just a matter of when you notice."
"Sent chills up my spine."
"That movie stuck with me for days."
~ Plus-Statistician80
Doctor Who/Torchwood
"I have two contenders, from the Doctor Who universe..."
"'Blink' from Doctor Who."
"'Children of the Earth' from Torchwood (all 5 episodes)."
"Both are the stuff of nightmares, but in very different ways."
"'Blink' will make you not sleep at night, while 'Children of the Earth' will deeply disturb you."
~ Common_Sense_Dudd
Giphy"The first few seconds I was exposed to the Weeping Angels in 'Blink' I thought it was a dumb, silly conceit."
"By the end of that episode I knew I would have nightmares for months."
~ codyish
"'Children of Earth' was amazing. There was so much complexity to it, and the way they solved it was downright horrifying."
"The 456 just felt so real with their motives, and were really dark compared to other Who-niverse villains."
"It wasn't that they were trying to build a galactic highway, or were trying to save the universe. Just that (SPOILERS) they were drug dealers/addicts and would kill millions if the didn't get their supply of children."
~ NinjaBreadManOO
Paranormal Activity
"Paranormal Activity."
"I was not prepared and only 12 years old."
"Traumatized for years!"
~ Sudden-Star-7190
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode 'Hush'."
~ Malk_McJorma
"The gentlemen were some of the best villains."
~ Sudden-Star-7190
Room 1408
"Room 1408 creeped me out."
"I usually don't find hauntings or ghosts scary, but this one was something else."
"Left me really uneasy when trying to sleep after."
"I had to keep a light on. I'm 46."
~ hartschale666
The Twilight Zone
"I find the The Twilight Zone episode titled 'Living Doll' to be particularly creepy."
~ Ill_Fisherman5547
"Talky Tina was so creepy."
~ peachesfordinner
"The Twilight Zone episode—'Mirror Image'—with the woman at the bus station who has a doppelganger still creeps the sh*t out of me."
~ BurningSlash88
Ghost Ship
"Opening scene from Ghost Ship."
~ teslatinkering
"This movie is 21 years old, I’ve only watched it once and I still remember this scene vividly."
"Props to the creators because I can’t say that about many movies."
~ PainfulPoo411
X-Files
"The X-Files."
"Episodes 'Home'—inbred family in Pennsylvania—and 'The Host'—the Flukeman."
~ True-Mousse4957
"I was going to say season 3, episode 12—'War of the Coprophages'."
"Only due to one little thing."
"Mulder is in a lab with some scientist looking at the weird cockroaches. They're just chatting away when a cockroach walks across 'your' TV screen."
"It's made to look like it's an actual cockroach walking across your in real life screen. We don't even have cockroaches like that in my region of the world, but it still freaked me out for a second."
~ STROKER_FOR_C64
The Blair Witch Project
"Not gonna lie."
"I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theatre after watching some MTV documentary on it the day before."
"I thought it was real and I was afraid to walk to my car."
~ heavymetalsculpture
Are You Afraid of the Dark
"There's an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark—'The Tale of the Dead Man's Float'."
"It's about a school that was built on an old cemetary and there is some sort of creature thing thant comes into the pool while some kids are swimming."
"I still think about that episode every so often."
~ streetsoulja31
"There’s that one episode—'The Tale of the Frozen Ghost'—where a kid froze to death at some point and the ghost kid just appears and says 'I’m cold' in such a weird inflection…."
"It still creeps me out now. And whenever I am cold, that’s the only way I can say it in my head."
"Man that series had no business being that scary!!"
~ mistresssweetjuice
GiphyFor me, children in horror can always produce the creepiness factor.
Who doesn't feel unsettled after seeing the twins in The Shining?
So what movies or TV episodes creeped you out?
