Welcome to Challenge 34 over at
Blog This!. The challenge topic this time is:
If you met your younger self - What would you tell yourself? Would you give advice? What advice would that be? Ask about your perception of the world? Give us an idea of who you think you were or who you think you'll be in the future...( Note, i have done a post similar in topic to this
back in 2007, but in the past two years i've learnt so much more! So this challenge post is a completely new and different post to the old one.... )
If i were able to travel back in time, Marty McFly style, and have a bit of a deep and meaningful with my younger self, i think there would have to be three key bits of advice i'd have to impart to teenage me:
Number one: DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR NEGATIVE SELF-VOICE. Seriously, thats in capital letters for a reason, 'cause its pretty damn important. You miss out on so much fun and adventure because you listen so attentively to your worst critic - you. Thats right, its nobody else saying it but you. Its entirely in your head, and in your head is where you'll be spending most of your formative years if you dont tell your inner critic to back the fork off, okay? Turn it off, tune it out and instead of backing out of things when they get a little scary, run into them head first and see which parts hit and which parts glance right off without so much as a scratch.
Number two: Save more money. How very pedestrian of me to advise you, but yea - save more money. You start working at the age of 14 which means you've literally earned hundreds of thousands of dollars, but now at 26 its nowhere to be found. I'm not saying you have to turn all Scrooge on me and not spend a single cent - i'm just saying maybe dont waste so much of it on crap. CD's are great and all ( although you could have done without East 17's " Walthamstow " or Ricky Martins self titled release... ) and its great having a different top to wear for every day of the month, but all that money frittered away on junk could have had you paying off more of your house or got you overseas sooner, and more often. Future-You loves to travel, but you wont get to do all that much of it ( a year sent living overseas and one short trip to SE Asia ) before your first child arrives because Young-You didnt save, save, save!
Lastly, Number three: Pay more attention at your Year 12 formal. Particularly to a young man that comes as a guest of one of your classmates. His name is Mick and you will meet him 8 years into the future, fall madly in love, get engaged and have a gorgeous baby boy. When you meet, you have no idea you were both at that same function all those years ago, and find it amusing that the universe sees fit to bring you back together after that first faint brush with fate. If you had both only known, you could have been together so much sooner, and both of your lives would have been completely different!
Also, rethink the velvet dress- right cut, right colour, wroooooooong fabric.......
