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I’m reading The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives by Katie Couric. She asked a plethora of well-known people from entertainment, industry, philanthropy, sports, politics and everything in between to tell her what was the best advice they ever got. It’s a terrific compilation of nudges, comfort and encouragement. It’s good if you’re not sure where you’re going, have a choice to make, feel disconnected from your dreams or need some motivation in the middle of a hard slog. Get the regular book version, though. The narration is terrible. Entirely too many people e-nun-ci-a-ting as if they’re speaking to the dimwitted.

Anyway, I decided to do my own little version of it. I’ll go first.

My parents always told me to do my best and celebrated my results. When I got a D (as tended to happen in anything math-related – all those years of hospital school weren’t really conducive to understanding that field), they asked me if I’d done my best. By then, this philosophy been so much part of my upbringing both in terms of them teaching it to me and me seeing them do their best every day, too, so the answer was usually yes. And then we celebrated as if I had gotten an A.

All these years later, I changed the name of that philosophy a bit to “buy the ticket,” but it’s made from the same cloth. Do your best and celebrate the effort.

What’s the best advice you ever got?