The Best Advice I Ever Got (12 page)
Read The Best Advice I Ever Got Online
Authors: Katie Couric
Alicia Keys
Grammy Award-Winning Artist, Musician, Entrepreneur Actress, and Activist
The Question
Throughout my life, I’ve been blessed to receive a lot of great advice just when I needed it most. My grandmother always used to tell me, “Nothing before its time,” which I didn’t understand for a while because I was far too impatient. But I now see that when you accept the fact that things will happen in their own time it takes a lot of pressure off, freeing you to put in the necessary work and follow the path before you.
The latest piece of advice that I’m living by is this: When making a very important business decision, I ask myself, “Would you still do it if you’d never see a dime from it?” I know that may sound crazy—who in the business world doesn’t base part of their decisions on the prospective riches that some action might bring in the future (preferably the near future)? But I find that if the answer to the Question is yes, you will be following the path of your most authentic self. It’s one of the easiest ways to figure out if that small voice in your head persuading you is your true instinct or that “other thing,” which doesn’t necessarily have the best motives.
It’s so easy to be diverted, to chase something or to make a decision based on a falsely imagined outcome. I was once approached by a wealthy businessman who offered me an opportunity to create a business together. To many it would have seemed ideal, but I asked myself the Question, and realized that my answer was no. Soon afterward, I learned that this particular businessman was involved in some dealings that I surely would never want to be a part of, and so I said a silent prayer, grateful to have trusted myself.
When you make a decision because you really love what you’re doing, because you’re really passionate about it, believe in it, and because you’d do it no matter what the outcome—that’s when you become most successful. Passion makes it much easier to eliminate the confusion, the clutter, and, more important, the garbage in life.
I truly believe that you can go anywhere you dream of going in life if you put in the work and are true to your heart. And if you ever find yourself feeling hesitant or confused (as we all do at some point) just ask yourself the Question.
Barbara Walters
Emmy Award-Winning Journalist and Bestselling Author of
Audition
Follow Your Bliss
In college, I had a well-known professor whose advice was: “Follow your bliss.” Practical application: Decide what you really would love to do … would do even if you didn’t get paid. (But get paid.) Get a job in that industry or business. Start at any level. Get there first in the morning. Leave last at night. Fetch the coffee. Follow your bliss … but don’t sleep with your boss. You will succeed.
Ina Garten
Bestselling Cookbook Author and Television Host
If You Love Doing It, You’ll Be Very Good at It
In 1978, I was working at the White House on nuclear-energy policy and thinking, There’s got to be more to life than this! When I wasn’t working, though, I was cooking for my friends, which is what I really love to do. I’d been married to my husband, Jeffrey, for about ten years and I had taught myself to cook by studying Craig Claiborne’s
The New York Times Cookbook
and Julia Child’s
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
. One day, I was in my office reading
The New York Times
and my eye caught the Business Opportunities section, which I’d never read before. And there it was—a specialty food store called Barefoot Contessa for sale in a place I’d never been, the Hamptons, on the East End of Long Island.
That night I went home and told Jeffrey that I really needed to do something besides writing nuclear-energy-policy papers. He said, “Think of what you’d like to do that would be fun. Don’t worry about making money—if you love doing it, you’ll be very good at it.” What amazing advice! I said, “Funny you should mention it—I just saw an ad for a specialty food store for sale.” My sweet husband said, “Let’s go look at it!” And so we drove up to Long Island, looked at the store, and my heart told me this was it. I made an offer on the spot, and the next day the owner called and said, “Thank you very much. I accept your offer.” Yikes! I’d bought a food store!
In the next few months I was overwhelmed with excitement and fear—what made me think I could run a business? But Jeffrey’s advice—“If you love doing it, you’ll be very good at it”—kept me going. Often I worked twenty hours a day, but it never felt like work. I loved running the store, and over the next twenty years I built it into a successful business.
Then I decided it was time to try something new. A friend told me that type-A people (I think she was talking about me!) think they can figure out what to do next
while
they’re doing something, but it never happens. She suggested that I stop working and spend the next year figuring it out. How scary is that? One day I was baking a thousand baguettes and running a store with forty employees, and the next day I had nothing to do. I have to admit, it was the hardest year of my life. But I know for sure that the next part of my career would never have happened without it. And this has been the happiest time of my life.
After I’d been struggling with one idea after another for most of the year, Jeffrey said, “Stay in the game. You love the food business—try something else in it.” Out of sheer desperation to have something to do, I wrote a cookbook proposal, thinking I could do that while I figured out what was next. I had always thought writing a cookbook would be a lonely venture in a room by myself. Instead, I found myself working with a team of wonderful people! I loved testing recipes and I loved working on the book with editors, photographers, food stylists, prop stylists, and book designers. Which brings me to the final advice that I’ve learned along the way: You can’t figure out what you want to do from the sidelines. You need to jump into the pond and splash around to see what the water feels like. You might like that pond or it might lead to another pond, but you need to figure it out
in
the pond.
After my second cookbook,
Barefoot Contessa Parties!
, was published, the Food Network asked me to do a television show. I was
extremely
reluctant, but I knew that the only way to see if it was right for me was to film a pilot. I needed to splash around in
that
pond. That was eight years ago, and it’s impossible to explain how much television has changed my life and my business. I love what I do every day, and I’ve had amazing advice along the way that has made all the difference.
Joyce Carol Oates
National Book Award-Winning Author, Poet, Playwright, and Professor
“Here Is Life …”
Writers may seek advice, and writers may give advice, but writers rarely take advice. Why?
Because writers are stubbornly independent. Writers are self-reliant, knowing that there is no one to really help them but themselves; writers hope to be “original,” which means not following in the paths of others.
Henry David Thoreau, one of our great American philosopher-poets, said, famously, “I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything, to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it.”
If there are a few—a very few—things I might tell young writers, or young artists of any kind, they are:
Never be ashamed of your subject, or of your passion for your subject.
Don’t be discouraged!
Don’t be envious of others!
Read widely—what you want to read, and not what someone suggests that you should read.
Forget “should.”
Create your art for your own time, not for posterity.
Create your art for your own generation and for those a little older, and younger, than you. These will constitute your posterity.
Don’t expect to be treated justly by the world, though you might try to treat others justly.
Don’t too quickly make your mind up: You hate something, you love something else.
Don’t too quickly cut yourself off from possibilities of experience.
Don’t give up. Which is to say, don’t be discouraged!
Take all advice with the proverbial grain of salt.
Chris Evert
Tennis Legend and Winner of Eighteen Grand-Slam Titles
Get Off the Sidelines!
Growing up, my siblings and I benefited from my parents’ emphasis on the importance of both sports and academics. My sister Jeanne and I played the pro tour after high school, and my three other siblings received tennis scholarships at top colleges. My father, a professional tennis coach, was extremely proud of all our achievements. I would often ask him why he got us involved in tennis in the first place. I expected his answer to be that tennis offered opportunities to travel the world, or that playing on the tour was a good way to earn a living or to achieve fame. Instead, he quipped that tennis was a good way of keeping us off the streets and out of trouble. In more reflective moments, he’d say that he wanted to encourage us to set goals for ourselves and to learn the feeling of achievement.
As I get older, my father gets smarter. After having three children of my own, I understand what he meant about the value of setting goals. Having a passion in life, like a sport, keeps you busy and prevents idle time that can lead to temptation and wrong choices. Following a passion is also a source of self-esteem. As my children have grown up, each and every accomplishment has made them feel good about themselves, and as their mother I could not be more proud.
