The Best Advice I Ever Got (17 page)

Beyoncé

Grammy Award-Winning Singer, Songwriter, Performer, Actress, and Designer

Take Time to Know Yourself

Knowing who you are is the greatest wisdom a human being can possess. Know your goals, what you love, your morals, your needs, your standards, what you will not tolerate and what you are willing to die for. It defines who you are. I have learned not to obsess over being number one all the time. Sometimes not being number one gives you the incentive and the courage to fight harder; it is motivating. Have patience. Have grace. Be secure enough in yourself to base success on personal growth.

Take at least twenty minutes every day to be still and quiet. Time to sit in complete silence. Think. Reflect. Dissect your thoughts and feelings. Relive any mistakes from the day before. Decide how to be smarter and tougher, how to be more committed and considerate of others and more sensitive and aware of your surroundings. Choose something you learned that will make you a better person.

Choose to be happy and positive. Live like the blessed human you are. Define you. Knowing who you are allows you to create your own beautiful legacy.

Mehmet Oz, M.D
.

Surgeon, Television Host, and Bestselling Author

Take Time to Really Listen

In my final year of surgical training, I was called to see a petite fifty-three-year-old Jehovah’s Witness with an aggressive bleeding stomach ulcer. In keeping with their religious beliefs, Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to receive blood transfusions. The problem facing my patient was that her hematocrit—the percentage of red blood in her body—was at only seventeen percent. The normal value is forty-five percent, and in this precarious setting it was standard procedure to transfuse blood in order to keep the figure above thirty percent. She needed surgery, and I needed the safety net of blood in her veins to afford me time to complete the operation. I approached my fading patient and her family. To my dismay, they were firmly opposed to a blood transfusion.

My only hope was emergency surgery—a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding in time. We were in the operating theater within minutes, but I already knew that we were too late. By the time the bleeding ulcer was sewn closed, the hematocrit was down to four percent. By way of comparison, healthy baboons die at blood counts of seven percent, and this frail woman had just undergone major surgery. She didn’t stand a chance.

The surgical team felt distraught and powerless. I was angry that the stubborn, medically illogical beliefs of this family were preventing me from saving a life. I stormed through the hallway toward the large family that waited outside the Intensive Care Unit. Exasperated, I explained what had occurred in the OR and stressed that the patient’s life would most definitely be lost if we could not transfuse her. Too little blood remained to provide her fifty-three-year-old heart with the oxygen needed to survive. Already the electrical ECG strip showed that the heart was dying. The decision-makers of the family needed to determine whether they were willing to sacrifice the life of their matriarch upon the altar of their religion. I left and gave them five minutes to decide.

I returned to an eerily calm waiting room. An older gentleman came forward and briefly explained that their God would protect her and that they would rather see their loved one die than go against the tenets of their religion. I was livid. I felt that, in standing on principle, the family had abandoned their matriarch. They knew nothing of what was happening to her medically, yet they were condemning her to death. I left the ICU banging my stethoscope against my thigh in disgust. I refused to be present when she died from a very preventable ailment: the lack of blood.

The matriarch survived the first evening, and the next, and another, until she was released from the hospital eleven days later with a hematocrit of nine. Though her levels were still low, the ruby color of her cheeks had returned and she was well enough to go home.

We doctors are taught early in our training that if we really listen to our patients, deep insights will shine through for us. I realized that I had been angry at my patient’s family because of my perception that they were disbelieving my advice. I was wrong. They absolutely trusted my judgment and predictions, yet firmly believed that their mother was better off in heaven without blood than alive on earth having sacrificed her religious principles.

Many times in my career I have cared for thoughtful souls who understood that, even though their decisions went against my medical advice, they were still making the right decisions for their own lives. Even though I still disagree with the choice made by my Jehovah’s Witness patient, the experience taught me to listen more acutely to what my patients—as well as my friends and family—are really trying to say and to stop judging their comments as a referendum on me. Knowledge offers a wonderful perspective, but the wisdom to correctly guide our life decisions is deeply ingrained in each of us if we take the time to listen.

Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas

The Jonas Brothers, Recording Artists, Musicians, and Actors

Remember Where You Come From

Our grandfather Paul Adam Jonas gave our father a piece of advice when he left for college, and this advice has been passed down to us through the generations. As Grandpa Jonas said, “Live like you are at the bottom, even if you are at the top.” For us, this has been a nudge on a daily basis to remember where we come from, and to live with humility and gratitude in our actions no matter where life takes us.

Sheryl Crow

Grammy Award-Winning Singer-Songwriter

Do the Best You Can

I have learned all my best lessons by diligently attending the school of hard knocks. Somewhere along the way, my mother and trusty adviser turned me on to a book called
The Four Agreements
, by Don Miguel Ruiz.

The book is thin and a very quick read, with the four agreements being: (1) Don’t take things personally. (2) Don’t make assumptions. (3) Make your word impeccable. (4) Do the best you can. Those four simple tenets are reminders to me, on a daily, moment-to-moment basis, how I can have a more easygoing and enjoyable life. I often fall short of perfection, and I will take personally something that has nothing to do with me or catch myself joining in idle gossip. I have even been known to make the odd assumption about what others ought to be doing. But under the umbrella of the “Do the best you can” rule falls all the challenges one can accept for being the best person one can be in all she does.

Thomas Friedman

Bestselling Author and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist for
The New York Times

Be a Skeptic, Not a Cynic

Always remember, there is a difference between skepticism and cynicism. Too many journalists, and too many of our politicians, have lost sight of that boundary line. I learned that lesson very early in my career. In 1982, while working in the Business section of the
Times
, I was befriended by a young editor named Nathaniel Nash. Nathaniel was a gentle soul and a born-again Christian. He liked to come by and talk to me about Israel and the Holy Land. In April 1982, the
Times
assigned me to cover the Lebanese civil war, and at my office goodbye party Nathaniel whispered to me, “I’m going to pray for your safety.” I never forgot that. I always considered his prayers my good luck charm, and when I walked out of Beirut in one piece three years later, one of the first things I did was thank Nathaniel for keeping watch over me. He liked that a lot.

I only wish I could have returned the favor. You see, a few years later Nathaniel gave up editing and became a reporter himself, first in Argentina and then as the
Times
’s business reporter in Europe, based in Germany. Nathaniel was a wonderful reporter, and one of the most un-cynical people I ever knew. Indeed, the book on Nathaniel as a reporter was that he was too nice. His colleagues always doubted that anyone that nice could succeed in journalism, but somehow he triumphed over this handicap and went from one successful assignment to another. This was because Nathaniel intuitively understood that there is a big difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism is about asking questions, being dubious, being wary, not being gullible but always being open to being convinced of a new fact or angle. Cynicism is about already having the answers—or thinking you do—answers about a person or an event. The skeptic says, “I don’t think that’s true; I’m going to check it out.” The cynic says, “I know that’s not true. It couldn’t be. I’m going to slam him.” Nathaniel always honored that distinction.

Unfortunately, Nathaniel Nash, at age forty-four, was the sole American reporter traveling on Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s airplane when it crashed into a Croatian hillside in 1996. Always remember, real journalists are not those loudmouth talking heads you see on cable television. Real journalists are reporters, like Nathaniel Nash, who go off to uncomfortable and often dangerous places like Croatia and get on a military plane to chase after a visiting dignitary, without giving it a second thought—all to get a few fresh quotes, maybe a scoop, or even just a paragraph of color that no one else had. My prayers were too late for Nathaniel, but he was such a good soul, I feel certain that right now he’s sitting at God’s elbow taking notes—with skepticism, not cynicism. So be a skeptic, not a cynic. We have more than enough of those in our country already, and so much more creative juice comes from skepticism than from cynicism.