I just finished reading a book I really enjoyed called “This Time Tomorrow” by Emma Straub. I recommend it if you are looking for a good summertime read. No real spoiler here since the synopsis mentions the premise. A woman goes to sleep on her fortieth birthday. She wakes up the next morning and finds herself back in time on her sixteenth birthday.
That premise never gets old for me. Don’t we all wish we could back in time, even for a day, to change how our lives have turned out? Or go back in time to give our younger version some sound advice?
Which brings up that age old question “What would you tell your sixteen-year-old self?”
Here are three things I would say if I had the chance:
Stop trying to fix other people. I spent a lot of time in relationships with people who I thought I could fix. Friends, boyfriends, people who I thought I could help turn their lives around. It took many years and a lot of disappointments and tears before I realized that you cannot change anyone. They have to want to change themselves. If you really want to fix someone, go to the pound, and get a dog. A dog can be changed by a woman. A man cannot.
Stop constantly saying “it could be better.” There is nothing wrong with trying to do better in your career. Working on being a better person is admirable. But constantly looking at everything around you and saying, ‘it could be better,” sets up a lifelong habit of never being satisfied. Which leads to never really being happy. I still struggle with this one. Finding a balance between being ambitious and enjoying what you have is not an easy skill for me. If I had started working on this earlier in my life, I might be better at it.
You are smarter than everyone else in the room. It took a while for me to realize that just because you owned a business you weren’t necessarily smart. Or that because you happened to be my boss you knew the best way for me to do my job. I doubted my decisions, talents, and skills more times than I care to count. No telling where I would be today if I had realized sooner just how much I could do.
As far as I know, we can’t go back in time and fix our lives by changing one day. We can’t place a land line call to the house we lived in during our teenage years. But we can look at our past mistakes and without judgement, move forward to make what time we left the best time ever.
That premise never gets old for me. Don’t we all wish we could back in time, even for a day, to change how our lives have turned out? Or go back in time to give our younger version some sound advice?
Which brings up that age old question “What would you tell your sixteen-year-old self?”
Here are three things I would say if I had the chance:
Stop trying to fix other people. I spent a lot of time in relationships with people who I thought I could fix. Friends, boyfriends, people who I thought I could help turn their lives around. It took many years and a lot of disappointments and tears before I realized that you cannot change anyone. They have to want to change themselves. If you really want to fix someone, go to the pound, and get a dog. A dog can be changed by a woman. A man cannot.
Stop constantly saying “it could be better.” There is nothing wrong with trying to do better in your career. Working on being a better person is admirable. But constantly looking at everything around you and saying, ‘it could be better,” sets up a lifelong habit of never being satisfied. Which leads to never really being happy. I still struggle with this one. Finding a balance between being ambitious and enjoying what you have is not an easy skill for me. If I had started working on this earlier in my life, I might be better at it.
You are smarter than everyone else in the room. It took a while for me to realize that just because you owned a business you weren’t necessarily smart. Or that because you happened to be my boss you knew the best way for me to do my job. I doubted my decisions, talents, and skills more times than I care to count. No telling where I would be today if I had realized sooner just how much I could do.
As far as I know, we can’t go back in time and fix our lives by changing one day. We can’t place a land line call to the house we lived in during our teenage years. But we can look at our past mistakes and without judgement, move forward to make what time we left the best time ever.
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