While mistakes are inevitable and they're a huge learning tool, sometimes we wish we could go back and tell ourselves not to talk to that boy or cheat on that test. What would you tell your younger self?
“Learn to live with who you are rather than…”
“Learn to live with who you are rather than who you wish you were. It’s impossible to measure up to the person you never were. Forgive yourself. Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past. Own what you’ve done, even the things you now realize were mistakes. Don’t run from your problems or you will run into them again headlong and blind. You can only act in the now and only as the person you actually are. The closer you get to accepting that, the less you will have your expectations violated and the happier you will be.”
“One of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever make is…”
“One of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever make is hesitating to step outside of the box for fear of disappointing conservative (religious) expectations of the female gender. Eventually you’ll discover that most of society is pretty open. Find a middle ground between pleasing everyone and being an jerk. Study the way you know you can. Pursue a technical field, where your mind can feel at home.”
“Don’t date the 35-year-old man-child.”
“To the 18-22 year-old girls. Don’t date the 35-year-old man-child. He is not relationship material. Neither of you are mature and the power imbalance will not benefit your livelihood. Men that date young come with a heaping pile of baggage that you are not equipped to deal with. Manipulation and emotional abuse is in your future. There’s a reason women his own age want nothing to do with him. They can see through the facade. You are not the love of his life in any healthy or natural capacity. Listen to the advice of your friends and family. Do you really want to put them through meeting this guy?”
“It’s okay to fail and…”
“BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. It’s okay to fail and learn along the way, but don’t give up and let go of your potential because you don’t believe in yourself. You’re smarter than you think and you don’t need to be a GENIUS to get into some pretty great careers.”
“Time waits for no one.”
“The phrase from the movie ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’ gets more and more relevant: ‘Time waits for no one’. So get your stuff together and do all you wanna do, and do it now. Also, make your own choices. Don’t let people/your parents tell you what to do every time, develop your own personality. And make more mistakes.”
“Not everything is what it seems.”
“Not everything is what it seems. People are going to use you and trample all over you. You’ll have your heart broken many times. You will be treated as an object instead of a person. Life is going to punch you down and your not going to get up a lot of the time. It got to hard for you. Trust me. Pick your sled up every time. It truly does get better.“
“If I had my time again…”
“If I had my time again I won’t create a ‘to-do’ list, I’d create a ‘to-don’t do’ list.”
“I’d give myself the time to…”
“I’d give myself the time to indulge in the things that I now understand are the most important.”
“What I wouldn’t give to…”
“What I wouldn’t give to extend those good night kisses, instead of moaning about having to get up early in the morning.”
“An extra second of cuddling…”
“What I wouldn’t give for an extra second of cuddling my babies before they became to big to hold.”
“Five more minutes on the dance floor.”
“What I wouldn’t give for five more minutes on the dance floor while my legs were still strong enough to carry me.”
“If I could go back I would…”
“If I could go back I would try to be lost in each and every moment.”
“I would make peace with the world.”
“I would make peace with the world, not hate every aspect of it.”
“Stop caring so much about…”
“Stop caring so much about being popular/what other people think of you. It doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things.”
“I would tell the younger me to…”
“I wish I could go back and tell the younger me to be kinder to myself.”
“I would tell myself to be kinder.”
And instead of yelling at, hating and judging others, I would tell myself to be kinder to everyone around you.
“One of the most important lessons I would tell my younger self is to…”
“One of the most important lessons I would tell my younger self is to learn to be able to let go and be okay doing so.”
“I’d spend more time being.”
“Believe me if I could be a young woman now, I’d spend more time being, not doing.”
“Things will hurt you, people will hurt you.”
It’s okay to fail. Things will hurt you, people will hurt you. But you are strong and you will be okay. Your intelligence won’t get you through everything. You will need to study. Learn how to study now. Sometimes you need to put yourself before everyone else.
“You deserve much better.”
“You deserve much better than him.”
“None of the things you think are important now are…”
None of the things you think are important now are important at all. You WILL look back at the things you stressed over the most in high school and regret the time you wasted on it.