What is the best advice you've ever received?

Everyone knows this, not enough people do it.

Everyone knows this, not enough people do it.

The stock market goes up most of the time. Don't push too hard against that.

Everyone knows they should exercise even if they don't do it.

On some level we all know not to eat too much sugar even if we need to learn what constitutes too much.

Doing the hard work or work that is not fun will open doors for you.

Ties in with number 7.

That means don't be too smart for your own good. We all know people think they are smarter than system, but actually are not and make life more difficult than it needs to be.

I say this a lot. Life gets much easier when you figure this one out.

You never know what you might have to do in the future, or what you might want to do.

This helps with and ties into number 11.

The way this has evolved for me lately is to immediately assess what is the worst that can happen, realize that it will be ok and carry on. This happened at the start of the year when a combo of malfeasance and incompetence by the partners got our firm shut down. If we couldn't find a new home, then no income would have sucked but we could have made it work. Fortunately, we landed pretty quickly.

This works on at least two levels, not being money obsessed and donating time to an organization is worth more than money you could donate.

There's less explaining to do and less to remember when you are truthful.

Life is not always fair of course but dwelling on being treated unfairly is wildly counter productive. Remembering we are not entitled makes it easier to move on from something that is unfair.

Hopefully this has helped me be a better fire chief.