Advice to my Younger Self

By Erica

If you could travel back in time what would you tell your younger self? Maybe you’d tell yourself to study harder for that one chemistry test. Or maybe you’d tell yourself to ask that one guy out in seventh grade.

Whatever it is, reminiscing is an important part of many of our lives. As important as it is to focus on the future, it is just as important to look back and reflect on our past. Every single day, from every single experience, we learn and grow. We learn from our mistakes and our accomplishments. We learn from our good days and our bad. We are the product of our past and what we’ve learned from it.

Throughout my life, there have been many amazing milestones: my first day of middle school, my first exam, my first boyfriend, and so on. However, with these amazing milestones came the not so great ones: my first time getting bullied, my first time failing an exam, and my first heartbreak. The older that I get, the more time I spend thinking back on everything that has happened in my life - from my best wins to my biggest failures. As I look back, I can see how much I have changed as a person. In seventh grade, I was an insecure little girl that ate in the school bathroom alone everyday and cried herself to sleep every night.

I have to admit, I am still not perfect or even anywhere close to it. However, I have changed and grown more than I ever thought I could and from all my experiences and everything I have learned, these are the pieces of advice that I would give myself if I could go back in time:

1. Everything happens for a reason.

   As you go through life a lot of good and bad things will happen to you. But remember that everything happens for a reason. Without failures and bad times, you will never learn. Without breakups and people leaving your life, you will never meet someone better. Without heartbreaks and pain, you will never grow. Once you really accept this, you will be able to stop dwelling on bad situations and trust that they happened for a purpose. You might not be able to tell now, but in a couple of years you will look back and realize exactly why something happened and what you were able to learn from it.

   
   

2. Be nice to people.

   You never know what other people are going through. So smile. Wave. Be nice to everybody. You might regret being mean to someone but you will never regret being nice.

   
   

3. Show the people you love that you love them.

   Time goes by much faster than you think and you never know when people will be gone. So go hug your mom while you can. Go give you dad a kiss. Go hang out with your friends.

   
   

4. It's okay to ask for help.

   There are 7.5 billion people in the world; you do not have to go through life alone. It is more than okay to ask for help. Asking for help is a sign of courage and strength, not of weakness or incompetence. It shows that you are brave enough to admit when you don’t know something and are willing to learn something new.

   
   

5. Time heals.

   It is not the end of the world. Whatever terrible thing you are going through will pass. I promise. Please, please do not give up. Things will get better with time.

   
   

6. Stop caring so much about what others think of you.

   Don’t try to change yourself to please others or to have others like you. At the end of the day, as long as you like yourself and are happy with yourself, it does not matter what anyone else thinks of you. Not everybody will like you and that is completely okay. Don’t waste your time trying to make others like you. Instead, spend that time making yourself someone you love and are proud of.

   
   

7. Enjoy being a kid while you can.

   I know that you want to grow up but life moves on so much faster than you think. Please enjoy being a kid while you can. Go outside and play in the rain. Go ride bikes with your friends. Go push each other on the swings. Enjoy the little moments. Life will never be as simple and carefree as it is now. Time passes much faster than you think and even though all you want to do right now is grow up, I promise that when you’re older you will wish that you could go back in time and be a kid again.

Life is messy and complicated. But everything that happens is a chance for us to learn and grow, which is why it is so important to be able to look back at the past and learn from experiences. Now that you know what advice I would give to myself, what are some of the things that you would tell your younger self?