Dear Younger Me, I can’t believe this letter will be a blog post but this letter has so many feelings to it and I hope that other people, who are still young, will resonate and find that this is their chance to make realizations within themselves – early on. This letter will serve as hope for my future self and hope for those who are looking for their future self, but it begins in embracing the young self of where you are.
One day, I will be in my mid-20’s and older (happening right now) and I will learn so much over these years and this newfound wisdom will build me to be the person I’ve desired to work to be for so freaking long. And I will be content.
Be grateful for what you can do in this presence because the presence will be part of the past.
You see, you’ll be looking back at some of your old work and scroll through the hundreds of pictures you will take in the future, and that will get you feeling nostalgic and having this sense of “I am so happy of all what I’ve done and seen thus far and all the happiness and growth these adventures will bring of me.”
Be grateful for what you are experiencing now in this presence, for the great beautiful moments and for the ugly, messy experiences that will have you questioning every single thing about you. Those collections of moments will have you facing yourself because that’s resilience and that’s existence. When you fast forward to time, you will look back and you will think “I’m glad I overcame that time because I wouldn’t have known that this exact moment of where I am is where I had to end up at and this is exactly the decision I had to come to.”
If there’s something you really want to do, DO IT.
Stop thinking about the “what ifs” or feel held back at your fears. That’s just going to make you feel a bit smaller, and you don’t want that shrinking feeling and the regrets of “why didn’t I just do X?” (Unless you had legit reasons.) You will probably go in the future thinking you should’ve just explored more cities when you were already in Italy, even if you were clueless of how to find your way because I know you have that inkling to just see more, even if it means being alone to do so. But you will build up to those fears, just start off little by little because I know you’ll probably end up dipping your feet into solo travels anyways.
Don’t take advantage of your health.
You are already perfectly healthy. Your lungs work and your chest and body parts don’t hurt. So why are you drinking until you puke your guts out and why are you smoking until your lungs get filled with disgusting smoke? Little do you know, your health will suffer years later because you’ve weakened your own immune system.
Drinking and doing all the heavy partying you did is not a solution to your problems. It will NOT bring you happiness. It will not bridge any relationship that you can have with God and understand His true love. Take good care of your body while you can and if you are struggling hard with your mental health and have to do things that you think will fill you up with joy, you are wrong because you aren’t doing a proper job at helping yourself and you’re actually adding more to your emptiness.
Don’t wish you were older and that you had the same life as everyone else.
Why would you wish you were older? So you can be in a rush to do things or feel like you’re experienced in more things? Just be glad where you are now in your life at this very moment because this time shall pass.
You scrolling endlessly on social media and comparing yourself to others and thinking “why can’t I have X, Y, Z” will be a waste of your time and also just make you feel much worse. However, that’s not to say your feelings aren’t validated, they are because it’s human nature to feel these things, but remember: You are on your own path and you are especially on God’s timing. What he wants for you now is okay and you may eventually achieve your own success, whatever success is defined to you.
Stop saying that experience was a waste of your time. It had to happen. And also stop saying you failed at something, shift your language.
Your sisters taught you over and over again that you shouldn’t say that experience (like heartbreak) felt like such a waste of time, because really, if you didn’t go through all that time figuring it out, you wouldn’t have learned these life lessons or what you want or what you know you truly deserved. I know it’s hard to see the positives when hard things come, but when you have time to rebuild your strength, you will see what I mean.
And you need to stop saying “I failed”. Your language of how you say things can give you a negative perception of yourself, so shift your language because it can help you with how you feel about yourself. Instead of saying “I failed”, you could say “I did my best” because you did your best, at the time. You are not a failure when you can pick yourself back up and do better for you.
Have tougher boundaries. Don’t let people treat you ‘less than’ because you are worth wayyyyy more!
This is going to be the hardest damn thing you will learn throughout your teenage to young adulthood years and that is because you will need to learn about respecting yourself first and truly knowing what it’s like to love yourself. When you don’t love yourself or have a strong foundation on the base of your heart, you will think you’re ‘less than’ and just tolerate the disrespect and excuses others will give you. You may not think you’re tolerating it when you get mad and ignore someone for a short amount of time, but if you let someone back into your life when you knew so dang well it would end up the same way, this is why: You tolerated it.
But, don’t feel any self-loathe or anger towards yourself, because you will eventually walk away from all that and know when enough is enough. That is your strength and your guidance leading you.
The toxic people you let into your life does not mean you are necessarily the problem.
Once again, don’t self-loathe for this. You need to stop putting the blame onto yourself and know that you are just going through the motions of understanding people better. Those people who are toxic to your life means they just need to learn to work on themselves better too (maybe you attract them into your life because you share similarities) and you’re just empathetic, which will make them vulnerable to wanting to be around you longer. You just care and love people for who they are, but please, please place your needs first than these people. Your own needs will thank future you.
The decisions you make now will impact the life you’ll have later.
Speaking of “your own needs will thank future you”, you should understand the decisions you are making at this very moment will impact your future. So, like I said, don’t be in a rush to grow up or to get past your growth because you need to carefully think of what you choose to do for yourself now. Evaluate and really know what is right from wrong.
Oh and the hundreds of tedious essays you wrote in college and the hundreds of blog posts you’ll end up writing for? Keep it up because it’s going to pay off. And all of the times you endlessly read things and searched up questions that needed to fill your curiosity? Keep it up because you’re just gaining knowledge that people wouldn’t personally teach or inform you.
Work on your finances early on.
Stop shopping so much and working for your paychecks just to spend it every time on materials that only give such temporary satisfaction. Save away a HUGE portion of it and start using your money to invest. Start building up your credit and learning to pay for it on time because this habit becomes easier over time. Think of all the goals you want to reach and start by saving to work towards achieving that goal.
Also, YES keep traveling because your travels are going to be your biggest investment yet — to run a blog business later on and to help you build your confidence that you’ll carry with for life.
Don’t think your first “yes” from opportunities is a guarantee ticket to long-term success.
Sure, you can say yes to that new job and that new boyfriend, but just because you say yes to these things does not mean it will be a guarantee to long-term success. There’s always that chance that new blessing will fade away or you realize your definition for “success” has changed over time even after holding onto a long commitment.
However, you can take all those experiences to help you with… experience. Your experiences can teach you to learn to do better as you grow and when you realize it’s not for you anymore anyways. You’re going to get a heck load of no’s in this life, of course, but there’s always going to be yeses that will be thrown your way every now and then – so whatever you do, do not give up.
Your mind will change, so is settling going to really be worth it?
You see all those hundreds of job opportunity alert emails you get from Internships.com and Indeed.com, with a lot of them coming from New Jersey and Hawaii, when you were once interested in maybe moving there one day? You’re probably going to trash them a few years later. Plus, you applied for so many of those and they rejected you anyway because deep down, God knows you were meant for so much more and He knows you can make some place your true place one day.
Don’t measure your self-worth through accomplishments or people.
I guess this goes hand-in-hand with the rest of my other points. But, your self-worth is not measured through what you’ve accomplished through this life or through people you’ll meet. These things may make you feel special but only so temporary. Your self-worth is a constant thing you’ll need to have for life and it should be about just trusting how beautiful and overall amazing you are as a person – with or without those things.
You may have heard things along the lines like “your work won’t love you back” and “no one can love you as much as you can love you” has a lot of truth to it. You will take up jobs and go through relationships with all kinds of people and move on from them but only look back at them with such fondness.
You’ll eventually stop caring about what others think, so why care about what others think?
I know it’s hard to not take things personally when someone criticizes you, but don’t put too much of your heart in it if it’s something you don’t agree with. You aren’t living for others’ approval. You aren’t even needing their approval in the first place because you probably did not ask for it. You’ll see there are people who won’t always like you or will build resentment towards you for whatever reason, but that’s just energy you don’t ever need to feed into. You’re going to do just fine, boo.
And I know you will because, by the time you hit your mid-20’s, you’re going to give zero effs about a lot of things by then.
Just put your energy into those who truly see the pure and loving and caring heart you actually have. Give them love because they see love in you too.
I hope whoever reads this finds so much love in them. I was incredibly inspired and impressed by those that I know who are younger than me (like my own friends with my shared faith). Some of them hold so much inspiring leadership and traits to them so early on and have learned about these things already. And if you are young and still not there, remember these things. I made my life harder than it had to be from these lessons but it all comes down to us learning in God’s time.
