What is the Best Advice You ever had?

Daily Good, a great website from Change.org posed an interesting question this week: What is the Best Advice You Ever Had? A great question to think about, and interesting to read the 'best advice' others quoted. To me, it would be one of the following:

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. Ralph Waldo Emerson

it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye. - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. - Steve Jobs

Indra Nooyi  -- PepsiCo's CEO, listed in Time's Top 100 influentials around the globe -- was recently asked that very same question by Fortune magazine. She had the following great response:

My father was an absolutely wonderful human being. From him I learned to always assume positive intent. Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response. You don't get defensive. You don't scream. You are trying to understand and listen because at your basic core you are saying, "Maybe they are saying something to me that I'm not hearing." So "assume positive intent" has been a huge piece of advice for me.

In business, sometimes in the heat of the moment, people say things. You can either misconstrue what they're saying and assume they are trying to put you down, or you can say, "Wait a minute. Let me really get behind what they are saying to understand whether they're reacting because they're hurt, upset, confused, or they don't understand what it is I've asked them to do." If you react from a negative perspective - because you didn't like the way they reacted - then it just becomes two negatives fighting each other. But when you assume positive intent, I think often what happens is the other person says, "Hey, wait a minute, maybe I'm wrong in reacting the way I do because this person is really making an effort." (via CharityFocus)

Wouldn't it be something, if each and everyone of us would react from this point of view? How many discussions would be avoided? To me definitely another great advice to add to my list. What about you? What's the best advice you've ever had? Please feel free to share them!

Comments

[Jos]

The best advice I ever had, is to avoid your own ratio secretly mixing up your true feelings. Unavoidably ratio will try and prevent you from following your heart, and - as 'ratio' is a smart guy - it will disguise itself as if it were your feelings talking. But usually it are your fears encouraging your ratio to do this.

[Dan]

I offer my thoughts on a positve attitude:
http://www.changethis.com/14.PositiveAttitude