6 Things I Would Tell My Younger Self in My Early 20s

What would you tell your younger self?

There are so many things I would tell my younger self in my early 20s, so many things I could’ve done better or differently.

However, I’ve also realised that this doesn’t have to be a regret. These lessons I’ve learned would be applicable to any age, even right now, given that life is going forward, not backward, and we’re not racing against anyone.

I truly believe that every minute is another chance to turn your life around. It’s never too late to start doing the right things for yourself.

If you’re looking for early 20s advice, here’s the list of 6 things I would tell my younger self and keep telling myself now because either no one told me then, or when they told me, I didn’t listen:

1. Nobody thinks about you as much as you think they do.

When I was younger in my early 20s, I had a very hard time with anxiety and insecurity. I was constantly worried about what people said about me or thought of me.

If I had a less-than-perfect social interaction with anyone, be it an acquaintance or a professional contact, I would immediately be convinced that they would cross my face for life, and this irrational belief was very distressing.

I wish I could tell my younger self that people’s reaction to you is not permanent, and they’re likely to be more consumed with themselves than with you.

That’s why you should take people’s opinions of you into consideration for self-improvement but you should not obsessively stress about it.

If they do actually think negatively about you that often, those thoughts stay in their head, so it’s their problem to deal with, not yours.

Plus, they have a limited perception of you. Their judgment, as a result, cannot expose or define the evolving entirety of you. You define you.

2. Taking care of your body will transform your life.

For a long time, I kept putting having a fit body on my list of goals but never had enough motivation to achieve it.

I didn’t think it would make much difference except for maybe enhancing my appearance, which wasn’t really a big concern to me.

I wish I could tell my younger self when I couldn’t get myself to the gym that working out is about so much more than vanity — it’s about increasing self-control and willpower, the key to success and happiness.

Especially, the bodily changes, even when subtle, could be so mentally significant that they could gradually transform other areas of life.

3. It’s important to be hard-working at what you love.

The older you get, the more responsibility you usually have and the more tasks you need to get on within the time span of a day.

With work, commute, socialising, household chores, self-care, and so on, you will at some point struggle to find time for what truly matters to you.

I wish I had learned time management sooner when it was my most abundant resource. I wish someone would’ve told me it is important to be hard-working at what you love.

Unlike a paid job with structured progress tracking, you won’t have real deadlines for any other areas of your life.

If you settle along the way and make no change, nothing terrible happens. You don’t gain anything but you don’t feel like you lose anything either. Life goes on.

Only when you’re faced with the reality of who you are with unmet goals and unexplored potentials would you realize what you truly have lost: time to invest in yourself which could never be taken back.

You don’t need to know exactly how your effort will materialise but doing something is better than doing nothing. Little things will add up.

4. Let yourself feel and learn from your emotions.

There were times I regretted meeting certain people and going through certain things as I thought I didn’t deserve the pain caused by those experiences. I wanted to erase pieces of myself and be someone different and less damaged (or so I thought).

I wish I could tell my younger self then that things do happen for a reason, and that reason is not some mysterious universal force but me. I’ve learned that the outcome of your experiences of choice is primarily driven by your inner working, including what you’re prone to engaging and how you react to it.

When it’s negative, it’s your opportunity to look inside yourself and understand what keeps you from harmony and fulfillment, then eventually strive to take a different course of action.

Until you do, you will keep ending up with the same emotional suffering and unwanted result.

Think about it — even if you went back in time and didn’t know what you know now, you would still do the same thing.

So, don’t waste time regretting anything. Embrace what has made you a better you and march forward.

5. You will never feel as strong about something as when you experience it, so while you’re at it, don’t hold yourself back.

When you feel so overwhelmingly strong about something, your brain convinces you that this temporary state will last forever. But it doesn’t.

You might remember feeling it later but you won’t be able to feel it the same way again once the moment’s gone.

It means every time you hold yourself back, you rob yourself of wonderful and precious human experiences that might well be the anchor of your own existence.

Admittedly, I’m an emotional person. When I feel something, I feel all the way. I wish I had realised this in my early 20s so I wouldn’t have suppressed my feelings and harmed my own mental health in the process.

I would have stayed true to myself and not let others dictate what’s normal for me. Truth is, the people who shame you for your emotions are the people who struggle with them the most.

6. It’s okay.

It’s okay. It will be okay. Keep going.