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Lifes little instruction book

Self

  • Learn to play an instrument

  • Memorize a poem

  • What you must do, do cheerfully.

  • Judge people from where they stand, not from where you stand.

  • Choose your life\'s mate carefully. From this one decision will come ninety percent of all your happiness or misery.

  • Don't use profanity

  • When you lose, don\'t lose the lesson.

  • Smile more

  • Take time to smell the roses.

  • Be more interesting

  • Don't waste time responding to your critics

  • Never take action when you\'re angry.

  • Be curious

  • Never pay for work before it\'s completed.

  • Be willing to lose a battle in order to win the war.

  • Don't gossip

  • Accept pain and disappointment as part of life.

  • Remember that winners do what losers don\'t want to do.

  • Seek opportunity, not security. A boat in a harbor is safe, but in time its bottom will rot out.

  • Rekindle old friendship

  • Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you\'ll regret the things you didn\'t do more than the ones you did.

Social

  • Remember people's names and birthdays (write them down)

  • Write a short note inside the front cover when giving a book as a gift.

  • Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.

  • Volunteer. Sometimes the jobs no one wants conceal big opportunities.

  • Every person that you meet knows something you don\'t; learn from them.

  • Meet regularly with someone who holds vastly different views than you.

  • Don't interrupt

  • Try everything offered by supermarket food demonstrators.

  • Be forgiving of yourself and others.

  • Learn 3 good jokes

  • Give people a 2^nd^ chance but not a third one.

  • When someone is relating an important event that\'s happened to them, don\'t try to top them with a story of your own. Let them have the stage.

Kids

  • Hug children after you discipline them.

  • Cherish your children for what they are, not for what you\'d like them to be.

  • Take a ride in a hot-air balloon.

  • Put love notes in your child\'s lunch box.

  • Allow your children to face the consequences of their actions.

Generous

  • Donate blood

  • Make someone\'s day by paying the toll for the person in the car behind you.

  • Skip one meal a week and give what you would have spent to a street person.

  • Learn First Aid

  • Surprise loved ones with unexpected gifts

  • Let people pull in front of you when you\'re stopped in traffic.

  • Choose a charity in your community and support it generously with your time and money.

Integrity

  • Keep secrets

  • Remember the three Rs: Respect for self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all your actions.