Best Advice I’ve Been Given

This is a hard one because throughout the years I’ve been given a ton of advice, sometimes it was wanted and others it wasn’t. Course isn’t that how we all feel sometimes? For this post I am going to go as far back as being a kid and having my dad’s phrase that can be applied to just about anything in life. Whenever I would fall my father’s advice would be, “Get up and try it again!” I remember many times I just wanted to yell back, “No, I don’t want to try that again. That hurt.”  Did you ever hear that phrase?

Yes, this phrase can be used for anything. As I was trying to learn to ride my bike and I would crash and scrape my knee I heard this phrase. When he would try to get me to learn to run faster, jump higher, etc because I wanted to do better at track I would hear this phrase. Sure, the phrase works great for anything you can fall at but I never really thought about it other than that. But now as I view life I can’t help but think of how much we all deal with this one. This is kind of the same phrase as “Try and try again” or “If at first you don’t succeed, try again.” To me this is okay you failed at your first attempt but that doesn’t mean it should stop you.

In life I’ve faced this very thing many times. If you knew my trials and triumphs you either would laugh, cry or simply not believe them all. We will just talk about the funny moments and a few of those when most would’ve given up. I was not a test taker, instead I would pysch myself out once it was in front of me. So no matter how hard I would study I would fail it the first time around. Normally the second time around I got it.

When it came to having kids it was always that second push that pushed my babies out, yes I know I had it easy. (It was the pregnancy that would almost kill me) When it came time for me to take the written part for my driver’s test I would fail the first time and get it the second. College took me two try-outs too, see when I would first sign up my husband would get orders overseas making it impossible at the time (as I didn’t drive) for me to go. I ended up having to cancel and wouldn’t try again for almost 10 years.

Yes, sometimes the whole “get up and try it again” would take me years before I would try. Even when it came to learning to drive I did that. I tried to learn to drive when I first got married (97′), that didn’t work so I basically decided I was better off letting others drive me around. That is until the night I almost gave birth to my third child at home. The only person available to drive would be the pizza delivery service I had ordered that night because my neighbors all left town and even though I had a jeep in the parking lot I never learned to drive it.

I would learn to drive when she was 7 1/2 weeks old (03′). This is also true with trying to lose weight, deciding to get back into shape, paying off debts, etc. Yes, I even threw debts in there. See sometimes a person has every intention on doing things right, they even try their best to get their finances back in order and fail miserably. Heck sometimes it can take more than two times to try getting it right. Some of you will understand what I mean about finances and pulling yourself out of debt.

The truth is, sometimes it takes more than once to get it right and perfect. This makes me think back to that phrase one more time, “Get up and try it again.” My dad knew this phrase was more than accurate, his first marriage wasn’t a good thing but when he married my stepmom he would prove it could be the best thing a person could do. So yes, he was right, sometimes when life hits you hard and trust me I know it will, you just got to pick yourself up off the ground, dust yourself off and know that it will get better and you will succeed. So there ya have it, the best advice I’ve ever been given was “Get up and try it again.”