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We all have our own way of doing things, and we've certainly all been enchanted with life hacks and life tips on social media.
But there are some hacks that sound a little too good, or too weird, to be true.
Redditor luffyDaMinecraftDog asked:
"What's the dumbest thing someone ever told you that actually worked?"
The Old Headache Squeeze
"I had a headache at work (years ago, at a previous job). I almost never get headaches, so it was p**sing me off because I couldn't ignore it."
"My coworker: 'I can get rid of it. Come here, I'll squeeze your head.'"
"Me: '...What.'"
"'I'll squeeze your head.' And sure enough, he grabbed my head and squeezed the sides so hard I thought he was going to fracture my skull. Then he squeezed from the front and back."
"Him: 'Better?'"
"That headache was GONE and never came back. Now I go around curing my coworkers' headaches. Everyone thinks I'm nuts until it works."
- PeppermintBiscuit
The MacGyver Hat
"My husband and I used to live in an apartment fourth-floor apartment with a balcony that was over a greenhouse. The actual greenhouse had walls around it and was gated. Never saw anyone going in or out of there."
"One day while I was out having a smoke, a strong gust of wind came and blew my cap off my head, which did a boomerang in the wind for a moment before dropping directly below me on the roof of the greenhouse. I really loved that hat. It was a beautiful, purple, full round ball cap that I got traveling."
"I went inside to tell my husband, who didn’t seem to care much. I quickly scrambled for ideas on how to get it back. I couldn’t think of a single thing, and realized that unless I get the gates unlocked and a ladder, there was no way I was going to get it back."
"I would have made peace with this if the hat wasn’t DIRECTLY in my line of vision. So I’d have to stare at it every day."
"A storm was coming, so I knew if I just waited until tomorrow to see if I could find my way in, the hat would be ruined anyway. I’d consider jumping off my balcony to get it, but it was a glass roof, so no bueno."
"My husband then came up with this idea. This was in Japan, so we had these things which are futon clamps. A lot of folks in Japan sleep on ‘futons’ which are like duvets crossed with mattresses. In the morning, people usually throw them over the railing to air out and use a “futon clamp” to anchor them.
My husband grabbed the clamp, opened it up and held the teeth open with a chopstick. He then tied two bath towel belts together and fastened it to the clamp. He told me he was going to throw the clamp into the wind so that when it landed on my hat, it would knock the chopstick out and fasten to the hat."
"I was upset so I told him to f**k off and went to mope. Two minutes later, he came back with my hat."
- josiahpapaya
Down in the Depths of Google
"I got a fuel pump for a very old S10. I put it in the truck, but it did not work. I Googled the problem, and lots of other people were having the same issue with the same fuel pump and no solutions."
"Some random guy on an S10 forum that I found on page three of the Google search results posted 10 years ago that the instructions were wrong on that fuel pump. You needed to connect the red wire to the black one, and not the green one like the instructions said."
"It worked instantly."
- anchordwn
Just Over Yonder
"I worked for a courier company and this happened to my boss. He was on a long delivery out in the country. We're from Virginia, but he's currently in Kentucky. We're pretty country ourselves, but not like this."
"This was in the pre-smartphone era, so he stopped to talk to a local for directions."
"The guy said, 'Go as far as you can see, twice, and there's your turn.'"
"My boss stared with bewilderment at the level of Deliverance that just came out of this guy's mouth. But... he fixed his eyes on a spot as far as he could see. He drove to that spot and made a mental note of the next farthest spot he could see."
"Upon arriving at the second spot, dead on was the little unmarked turn he was looking for."
"We still quote it to this day... 'Go as far as you can see, twice...'"
- scarecrow937
A Glitch in the System
"I read a newspaper article about a guy who went to his local convenience store and bought two lottery tickets. Most people in that situation would play different numbers on each ticket to double their minuscule chance of winning."
"Not this guy. He was interviewed later and said he believed that playing the same numbers on both tickets would 'double down' his chances, showing somehow that he was really serious about wanting those numbers to win."
"So that's what he did. But it turned out that he actually DID have the winning numbers for that drawing, and he owned two out of the three winning tickets. Therefore, he was entitled to walk home with two-thirds of the jackpot, instead of just half."
- CaptainTime5556
A Scary Talking-To
"We figured out that the 10 cents per copy xerox machine at my high school (that gave change for dollars in dimes) would accept xeroxed dollar bills in the bill changer."
"The Secret Service gave the school a visit to explain to us how bad a crime counterfeiting was."
- DeFiClark
Looking for Fallen Objects
"If you drop something and can’t find it, drop another and watch where it falls."
"It worked GREAT twice while tiling my bathroom."
"It didn’t work so well when I dropped a winch handle off the boat."
- hulagirl4737
" Also, shining a torch along the surface will make it easier to spot."
"Again... it won't work with the winch handle."
- TwirleyShirley89
Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
"If your cat loses interest in his cat bed or scratching post, don’t get rid of it! Just move it to a new location in your house. The cat will find it and use it again."
- Hawt_Dawg_
"Yup. Or hide it for a while. Or lay it on its side. Same with toys. Hide them for a while (two to three weeks) then bring them out and the cat will play with them again. It’s good to have a few different toys and rotate them every few weeks."
- exotics
"This also works with children."
"P.S. I mean... Do not hide children. Hide their toys."
- Persefonia2
A Time to Work and a Time to Worry
"If you find yourself obsessing about something, set a date and a stretch of time to 'worry' about it."
"I have no idea why, but that was the only thing that let me set something down in my mind and sleep one night."
"It was a piece of advice my mother gave me a few days earlier, and ironically, it was something else she'd said to me that was the source of the worry."
- honcho_emoji
Anticipatory Grief Is So Real
"My therapist told me to 'give myself permission to grieve later,' because I was grieving something that hadn’t happened yet."
"It sounded so obvious when she said it, because she said, 'You’re going to grieve it AGAIN later. It hasn’t happened yet. So give yourself permission to grieve later, and to not grieve it right now.'"
"Bizarrely, it worked (for the most part). And I 'give myself permission' to do other things later, too (worry, get mad, cry, etc). Somehow the act of consciously telling myself I can do it later makes it not so overwhelming right now."
- perpetuallybookbound
Distracting Anxiety
"When having anxiety or a panic attack, put your hands in cold running water. It helps with causing a sensory ground, you focus on the sensation of the cold water."
- Suspicious_Future_58
"I've heard to fill a bowl with ice water and stick your face in it. It flips a switch in the brain."
- the-dog-walker
"It triggers the mammalian dive reflex, which slows your heart rate and blood pressure."
- caffeinatedlackey
Interesting Options
"When you experience bad turbulence on an airplane, lift your feet up. The movement of your feet messes with your mind and makes it freak out. So if you lift them your anxiety goes down instantly."
"That always works for me, but if it doesn’t quite do the trick for you, I recommend ordering a few beers in quick succession."
- Brillo137
Feline-Unfriendly Frequencies
"One day I came home from work and there was this little white box sitting on the counter. I asked my wife, 'What is this thing?'"
"She said, 'It's a box that emits a high pitched sound that only cats can hear and it will keep Spike off the counters.'"
"Me: 'How much did you pay for this magic box?'"
"Wife: 'It was fifty bucks.'"
"Me: 'FIFTY DOLLARS FOR A MAGIC BOX THAT'S NOT GOING TO WORK? CAN YOU RETURN IT?'"
"Wife: 'Let's just see if it works and I'll return it if it doesn't.'"
"I ate my f**king words. This was 10 years ago, and my cat got up on the counter ONE time after we got the box and then never again. The box doesn't even work anymore. I think it's not even plugged in anyway. Still, the cat won't go near it. Sorcery."
- scottcmu
Escape Tunnel Vision
"If you can't find something and you know it's right in front of you somewhere, walk away for a minute or two then come back. You'll find it right away."
"It's easy to get tunnel vision when looking for something, especially when you get frustrated. Stepping back to reset your brain does wonders. Then you get kinda mad since whatever you were looking for is sitting right there where you were looking."
- verminiusrex
No "All or Nothing" Attitudes Here!
"Doing something half-a**ed is better then not doing it at all alot of the time."
"Like, 45 seconds of brushing your teeth is better then not brushing them. Taking a shower but not washing your hair is better than not showering. Cleaning a small area of your house is better than doing nothing."
"It may not be the 'perfect' version of what you wanted to accomplish, but you're still taking care of yourself, your space, and your goals, and that's what actually matters."
- littletrashpanda77
These tips were fascinating, and for most of them, unless you've experienced them yourself, they sound pretty unbelievable! But that's one of the joys in life: acknowledging what you did not know and thinking of how you could apply your new knowledge later.
Though... we still don't know what we'll do if we ever drop something small into the ocean.