Don't Do Business With Family

If there is one thing my dad has taught me it is not to do business with family.  He tells me if I want to help out a family member, just give them the money as a gift.  Do not expect them to repay you then you will not be disappointed.  This could cause hard feelings if the family member does not repay you in a timely manner.     My mom’s family is always doing business together, and every time my mom tells us a story about it, my dad starts to go crazy.  One simple mistake could split the family apart, which is something no one wants.  My Aunt moved into a patio home my Nana owns.  To make a long story short, the whole deal went bad really fast.  It caused hard feelings with many family members.  Even though everyone has forgiven each other, the incident will never be forgotten.

  

  By watching my family, I have learned to not do business with family.  Although everyone may have the   best of intentions going into a deal, too many things can go wrong.  It is not worth hard feelings within the family to make such a risk.

What Happens to You Does Not Make You the Person You Are, How You Handle it Does.

My Nana has told me this life’s lesson so many times.  A person cannot always prevent unpleasant things from happening to them.  Bad things happen to everyone.  But one does have the power to control how they react to the action.  This life lesson is something Randy Pausch lived by.  Instead of looking at his cancer in a negative way, he did everything he could to help his family get through his death.  My mom’s family has put us through a lot of situations where we could have looked at things in a lot of negative ways, and generally my cousins’ mom did.   From all of these stories, I have learned that you need to handle as much as you can in a positive manner, or they will eat you away inside.  Nana has actually landed in the hospital several times due to stress.  One time, she went with my aunt to retrieve her belongings in Tennessee.  My aunt’s boyfriend was throwing big boxes of pots and pans at my aunt as hard as he could, and Nana couldn’t do anything about it.  They drove back that night, and the next day, Nana went to the hospital with a “broken heart.”

   Nana isn't the only person I know who has been effected by things that have happened to her.  At my birthday party one year, we did a lot of team games.  My friend Raychel just happened to be put on the same team as my cousin twice in a row and she made a huge deal out of it!  She started yelling about how the only reason she came was to get away from her annoying brother and that Luke was even more annoying than he was.  After that she ran into my room crying and we all had to go in and change the teams to get her to come back out!  She even texted me, "I'm so bored," from my room.  She was affected in a negative way by something as small as a team.

Save Early, Save Often

“Save early, save often” is one of the most valuable lessons my dad taught me.  So many times I have put a lot of time into typing a project, and then all of a sudden I lose it.  So now I hit the save button every few minutes.    I admit I sometimes feel silly when I save my document every 3 minutes, but I feel better when I hear someone say, “My computer turned off.   Now I have to start over.”  I am never that person freaking out from losing a document.

  
























It is always better to be safe than sorry when working with technology.  Sometimes things happen and you can never know when you may get distracted and have to walk away from you computer for a minute.  So I have made it a practice to “save early, save often”.

Don't Procrastinate

I learned the hard way to not procrastinate.  Several times I have waited until the last minute to start a school project.  Then I end up spending my entire weekend trying to complete it.  Now I try to pace myself and do a little each night.     For example, when we were reading Dante’s Inferno in history, I did the study guide for one canto every night instead of waiting to do ten the night before they were due.  By pacing myself, not only do I have more free time on the weekends, my projects usually end up better than they would have had I waited until the last minute.

 

  I encourage everyone to not wait until the last minute to start a project.  Otherwise, you will experience unnecessary stress while working on the assignment.  Also, you will probably not do the best job you are capable of since you feel extra pressure from the deadline.

It’s Better to Do the Right Thing Simply Because it’s the Right Thing to Do, Not For the Credit.

  Doing the right thing without wanting credit shows real character in a person.   So many people want to be praised for every good act they do.  I think that spirit defeats the purpose of doing something nice. 

   Everyone needs help from time to time.  It takes one person doing something generous to start a chain of nice gestures. One of my mom’s coworkers would always write checks to families in need and not want my mom to tell anybody who wrote the check.  I think this person assisted people with the right spirit.

  Instead of being nice then bragging about it, you should do the generous deed just for the sake of being generous. Doing one nice thing and bragging about it doesn’t make you a good person.  If you give in the right spirit, you will reap the benefits.