The Best Advice you’ve ever received!

Life Advice The first kind of counsel for your consideration: words of wisdom for almost any life situation.

1.“You’ve never seen a cat skeleton in a tree, have you?” When Alexandra Aulisi’s cat couldn’t get down from a tree, her grandmother reassured her with those words, predicting (correctly) that the cat would come down on his own. “This advice made me realize that, sometimes, you need to shift your perception of a problem to see a solution,” Ms. Aulisi noted.

2.“Don’t pickle things.” That line, brought to you by reader Sam Singer’s mother, means: If you have something special, use it now. “Serve daily meals on your good china. Wash your hands with the luxurious soap you received as a housewarming gift. Drink that bottle of amazing wine right away. Don’t save things for future use — because who knows what the future looks like?”

3.“Exercise adds 20 degrees.” For example, “if it’s 28 degrees out and it seems too cold to go running,” Rory Evans wrote, “once you get moving, it’ll feel like it’s 48 degrees. And that, you can handle."

4 “Touch it once.” According to Christine H., this household hint involves putting something away the first time you pick it up. That way, “you don’t have to waste energy looking at it (and feeling guilty), or letting it get dusty so you have to clean it before putting it away.”

 5. “Sleep on his side of the bed.” Mattie Scott heard this advice at her husband’s funeral. “It’s truly the best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten,” she notes. “The effect was profoundly comforting, and it greatly lessened the ache of missing his physical presence.”

6.“Things don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.” Gail Dekker first heard her friend, a wedding coordinator, offer these words to young couples whose emotions were running high. But it works in all kinds of situations, including Ms. Dekker’s house hunt. “My initial reaction was that there was something wrong with every condo I saw. My friend reminded me: A place didn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful. She was right.”

7.“Take a breath.” Melissa Fanning heard this from a yoga teacher (“at a corporate retreat about which I remember nothing else”). It wasn’t a yoga instruction; it was a suggestion to pause at stressful moments, to avoid saying or doing something regrettable. “I use this advice every day,” Ms. Fanning wrote. “It has preserved peace, calmed me, and made me appear smarter than I am.”

8.“You can’t control other people’s actions, but you can control your reaction to them.” Kim Radich uses this advice daily. “For example, when a family member reacted negatively to a situation, I remembered I can’t control their behavior, and I let it roll off my back.”

 9.“Just be a gentleman.” Harry Kelly admits that this advice “may sound corny.” But that guidance came from his mother at a heightened emotional moment: as she dropped him off at college shortly after his father had died. “It means not taking advantage of other people and trying to adhere to your moral values,” he wrote. “Her advice has kept me from doing some bad things and encouraged me to do what is right. Best advice ever.”