1. Make your bed everyday. (Why? Because it shows that you care.)
2. Wash your hands – but not obsessively. And don’t make a big deal about germs with your kids. A little bit of dirty is good for everyone.
3. Don’t pick scabs, at least not in public.
4. Learn how to be a good listener. It’s one of the most important skills you can have.
5. Know how to understand when you are wrong. 
6. Become a money expert: know how to earn it, save it, spend it, and share it.
7. Know when to say goodbye, and how. (I wasn’t very good at this one – in order to leave a relationship I’d resort to a scorched-Earth policy. Looking back, I wish someone had taught me how and when to say a proper goodbye.)
8. It’s actually possible to have too much therapy. Scraping at the clay of your soul is sometimes necessary, but there are times when things just need to be left to figure themselves out.
9. Silence is the terrarium of the soul.
10. So is nature.
11. Gossip is a bad habit, don’t do it! (but Marjane Satrapi said gossip the furnace of the soul, and I personally love to gossip which makes me a hypocrite for writing this…)
12. If you’re feeling down, go help someone else.
13. Go to college and graduate school to learn things.
14. The power of a geographic is greatly underestimated. If you get the chance to up sticks and move to another country: run, do not walk to the nearest airport. (You can always come back.)
15. Get your act together in your twenties so you can be ready to start having children (if that’s what you want to do), by the time you’re 30. No one told me that my eggs had a sell-by date and because of this ignorance stupidity I almost missed out on having you.
16. Read Taking Charge of Your Fertility, by Toni Weschler.
17. Don’t take pills or drugs unless it’s a medical necessity.
18. Don’t be the type of friend who ditches her friends for a man. Your friends are your tribe, and they’re going to be in your life for your lifetime – if you’re lucky.
19. If you don’t know something, don’t be afraid to ask questions. You don’t have to know everything.
20. If you are a have, it is your responsibility to help the have-nots.
21. In college, avoid sororities.
22. A good career choice for a mom is a therapist.
23. Don’t drink alcohol.
24. The day after you finish college, grab your best friend, a backpack, and see the world.
25. You can be anything you make up your mind to be.
26. If you do what you love, the money will follow.
27. How you treat your mom is really important. This applies to future boyfriends, too: pay attention to how they treat and talk about their mother.
28. Love at first sight really can happen (but it’s rare).
29. You are perfect just the way you are.
30. Always tell the truth.
31. Don’t be afraid to be in the minority. The majority opinion is rarely the correct one.
32. It’s okay to give a homeless person money. In the winter it’s okay to buy a homeless person an anonymous Starbucks gift card and put $25 on it so they can have a coffee and a seat when it’s cold, knowing that somebody cares about them.
33. Education is your passport to your future.
34. Never-never-never put down your musical instruments.
35. Know that you are loved.
36. Keep a daily spiritual practice.
37. You get out of the world what you put into it. If you go out into the world and you meet a jerk – you meet a jerk. But if you go out into the world and you meet seven jerks, you’re the jerk, kapiche?
38. Read the book Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood. Even “smart” women can get ensnared in an abusive relationship.
39. Being a mother is one of the most rewarding things in life.
40. If you take something out, put it back.
41. Only use credit cards to establish good credit – pay for everything with cash.
42. Return your library books on time. (I was never able to master this.)
43. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
44. Life is difficult. This is a great truth – one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. – M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled.
45. Never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides. The only person you should compare yourself to is yourself in your past.
46. Jealousy is just your soul’s way of nudging you in a certain direction.
47. Marriage has 3 phases: 1.) infatuation (the easiest most infantile phase), 2.) difficulty and darkness (it’s not a question of if, but when – all couples reach this phase and this is where most relationships end. It’s when the things you fell in love with irritate you. This is the time when real love comes into play – if you work through this phase you get to move into phase 3.) real, long-lasting love – when you love someone for who they truly are, not an infantile rendering of who you want them to be.
48. Exercise every day (I haven’t mastered this one, either – but you should), and eat whole foods.
49. Believe in yourself.
50. Take my advice with a grain of salt. (-:

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