Advice To My Younger Self Quotes

Advice to my younger self: 1 Start where you are with what you have 2 Try not to hurt other people 3 Take more chances 4 If you fail, keep trying

Be the girl you want your daughter to be. Be the girl you want your son to date. Be classy, be smart, be real, but most importantly be nice.

If I could give one piece of advice to my younger self, it would be: 'Put your blinders on and go full speed ahead!

Advice to my younger self: Avoid to a cheap mindset, mentality, desire, belief, emotion, habit, behavior, frivolous thinker, just because they feel you will get lost, doesn't mean you will be.

If I could go back in time to alter the course of my own running career, after a decade of writing about the latest research in endurance training, the single biggest piece of advice I would give to my doubt-filled younger self would be to pursue motivational self-talk training—with diligence and no snickering.

As I said, I decided to try an experiment: Right now, from within my perception of my current circumstances, and from within the starkness of this realization, I determined to conceive and focus on what I would tell—and what I have told—my younger self, and live with the consequences. Here is what I wrote down: Immediately disassociate from destructive people and forces, if not physically then ethically—and watch for the moment when you can do so physically. Use every means to improve your mental acuity. Every sacrifice of empty leisure or escapism for study, industry, and growth is a fee paid to personal freedom. Train the body. Grow physically strong. Reduce consumption. You will be strengthened throughout your being. Seek no one’s approval through humor, servility, or theatrics. Be alone if necessary. But do not compromise with low company. At the earliest possible point, learn meditation (i.e., Transcendental Meditation), yoga, and martial arts (select good teachers). Go your own way—literally. Walk/bike and don’t ride the bus or in a car, except when necessary. Do so in all weather: rain, snow, etc. Be independent physically and you will be independent in other ways. Learn-study-rehearse. Pursue excellence. Or else leave something alone. Go to the limit in something or do not approach it. Starve yourself of the compulsion to derive your sense of wellbeing from your perception of what others think of you. Do this as an alcoholic avoids a drink or an addict a needle. It will be agonizing at first, since you may have no other perception of self; but this, finally, is the sole means of experiencing Self. Does this kind of advice, practicable at any time of life, really alter or reselect the perceived past, and, with it, the future? I intend to find out. You

And suddenly it hits me. Our roles have completely reversed.It's no longer me giving my younger self advice; it's her giving me advice. And I'm fast realising that actually I don't know better at all. About some things, yes - I glance at that terrible silver eyeshadow - but not about everything, far from it.

Years ago, someone asked me what I would say to my younger self if I could. Without hesitating I answered: “That’s easy. I’d have said, ‘Be quiet.’” Not forever. But until I could stand back and look at things through a wider lens. Until I understood that words have consequences, and they last a really long time.

Gandhi wrote: ‘I seem to have detected a flaw in me which is unworthy of a votary of truth and ahimsa. I am going through a process of self-introspection, the results of which I cannot foresee. I find myself for the first time during the past 50 years in a Slough of Despond.’ One wonders what readers of the press statement made of this decidedly odd interpolation. To them, the cause, manifestation and the precise nature of this flaw was left unelaborated. Gandhi’s close disciples knew the details; and the labours of the editors of his Collected Works have since made them public for us to examine it. Here is what happened. On 14 April 1938, Gandhi awoke with an erection; and despite efforts to contain his excitement, had a masturbatory experience. He was sleeping alone, and it was decades since he had been aroused in such a way. The details of the incident were kept from his ‘political’ followers such as Jawaharlal Nehru, but discussed with the spiritual followers who had stayed with him in Sabarmati and Segaon. To one Gujarati ashramite he wrote that ‘I was in such a wretched and pitiable condition that in spite of my utmost efforts I could not stop the discharge though I was fully awake.... After the event, restlessness has become acute beyond words. Where am I, where is my place, and how can a person subject to passion represent non-violence and truth?’ To Mira, Gandhi wrote in a language even more vivid in its self-abasement: ‘That dirty, degrading, torturing experience of 14th April shook me to bits and made me feel as if I was hurled by God from an imaginary paradise where I had no right to be in my uncleanliness.’ To his other close woman disciple, Amrit Kaur, Gandhi spoke of ‘an unaccountable dissatisfaction with myself’. But he had not lost faith, and was resolved to overcome the memory of his failure. ‘The sexual sense is the hardest to overcome in my case,’ he remarked. ‘It has been an incessant struggle. It is for me a miracle how I have survived it. The one I am engaged in may be, ought to be, the final struggle.’ Gandhi had taken a vow of brahmacharya, as far back as 1906. He thought sex was necessary only for procreation, and rejected the idea that sex might be pleasurable in and of itself. In his writings and speeches, he had often spoken of the importance of the preservation and husbanding of sperm, which he termed ‘the vital fluid’. After this (to him) shocking experience, how could Gandhi best control his passions, best preserve and husband that vital fluid? Several ashramites (Amrit Kaur among them) thought he should avoid close physical contact with women, especially younger women. He should abandon ashram girls as supports while walking (he rested his hands on their shoulders to propel his frail frame along), and discontinue the practice of having his nails cut or his body massaged by women disciples. Gandhi was not convinced of the sagacity of this advice. He had, he reminded one disciple, not ‘advocated total avoidance of innocent contact between the two sexes and I have had a certain measure of success in this’. To Amrit Kaur, he insisted that ‘it is not the woman who is to blame. I am the culprit. I must attain the required purity.’ Gandhi had wanted to write about the experience of 14 April in Harijan, baring to the world his failure and lack of self-control. He discussed this with Rajagopalachari, who was then in Segaon. Rajaji dissuaded him from making his experience public. Afterwards, Rajaji wrote to his son-in-law Devadas, who was also Gandhi’s son. The Mahatma, he said, was deeply worried ‘that he was still unable to overcome the reflex action of his flesh. He discovered, it seems, one day and he was so shocked and felt so unworthy that he was deceiving people and he wrote an article about it for publication in Harijan, which, thank God, I have stopped, after a very quarrelsome hour'.

* Do you have any quotes that you live your life by or think of often? “We are simultaneously gods and worms.”—Abraham Maslow * Advice to your 25-or 30-year-old self? “I would encourage my younger self to just not be afraid, right? To realize that a lot of things that were—I don’t want to say crippling anxieties, but—definitely ever-pervasive fears in my life growing up were unnecessary. A lot of time was wasted, a lot of energy was wasted, being worried.” TF: Across all guests, the most common answer to this question is some variation of “It’s all going to be alright.

I thought I had nothing in common with my mom when I was younger. And it was true. I had to gain some maturity to understand the beauty in her sorrow, the wisdom in her gentle advice, how great of a human being she is, and how lucky I am that she is my mom.

Choosing to Free Yourself The hardest thing is not doing what you want—it’s knowing what you want. Be aware there are no “adults.” Everyone makes it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, and discarding as you see fit. Figure it out yourself, and do it. [71] How have your values changed? When I was younger, I really, really valued freedom. Freedom was one of my core values. Ironically, it still is. It’s probably one of my top three values, but it’s now a different definition of freedom. My old definition was “freedom to.” Freedom to do anything I want. Freedom to do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like. Now, the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s “freedom from.” Freedom from reaction. Freedom from feeling angry. Freedom from being sad. Freedom from being forced to do things. I’m looking for “freedom from,” internally and externally, whereas before I was looking for “freedom to.” [4] Advice to my younger self: “Be exactly who you are.” Holding back means staying in bad relationships and bad jobs for years instead of minutes.

I suddenly realized I was in the humiliating predicament of being a smaller boy who was having money taken from him by a bully. This was wholly unexpected. Reading about such situations, I would smile superciliously and think that nothing of that kind could ever happen to me, because I would immediately fight back. It is, after all, better to take a beating once than to be humiliated repeatedly. Unfortunately, I had never read that such a relationship might begin with a con, a seemingly amicable request. For the next six months this boy (Crane was his nickname) poisoned my existence. I had to avoid him, otherwise every meeting turned into an excruciating dialogue with poking and threats. I was desperate and didn't know what to do. In my class I was the biggest and strongest, but Crane was taller and older and brazen and self-assured, which is, of course, the most important asset in the art of street confrontation. I had no older brother I could turn to, not even an older pupil I was friendly with. Complaining to my parents would shame me; besides, I already knew the advice they would give. "Well, just give him a good punch and he'll back off." It is all very well for adults to advise you to throw a punch. All bullying seems to them mere childish nonsense, although its emotional and psychological intensity is a hundred times greater than any problems they might be facing.... "What's that there, is your lip swollen? Let me see," he said, pretending to be in a conciliatory mood. At that I did the most daring thing in my life. Nowadays I get asked in nearly every interview where I get my courage. I genuinely believe my work in the past twenty years has not called for bravery; it is more a matter of having made a conscious choice. It certainly does not require even 1 percent of the courage I needed at that moment. I am sure it is a feeling familiar to many people: from sheer rage, desperation, and, paradoxically, above all, fear, you gain the courage to take the most resolute and reckless action. Yelling at him every swear word I knew, I punched him in the face several times as hard as I could, landing about half the blows. Completely taken by surprise, he fell over and looked up at me in bewilderment, lying on his back and half covering himself with his hands, evidently expecting me to start kicking him. I looked down no less bewildered. The fit of rage had passed, the adrenaline was draining away, and with every millisecond I came closer to the famous predicament of Schrodinger's cat: Crane might now get up and I would be dead or not. At that moment I leaned a rule in life: it is easier to perform a bold action than to live with its consequences. I ran away as fast as I could and looked back: Crane was running after me. After a couple of minutes I had a stitch in my side, but I ignored it, aware that if I stopped, everything would be much worse. I got away, but the next three days or so were scary, I feared getting beaten up at school in front of my friends or, even worse, in front of girls. To my great surprise, though, when I came face-to-face several times with my nemesis at school, he just glared at me menacingly. This gradually mutated into his very deliberately seeming not to notice me, while I, similarly, did not seem to notice him. I am still not sure why he didn't try to take revenge. Perhaps the answer is to be found in economic theory: A free agent wanders through the market taking money from younger pupils, each of whom is intimidated. By my outburst of insanity, I raised the price of harassment in my torturer's eyes and he made the rational decision to move on to others who were less psychotic. So I was, you might say, saved by the invisible hand of the market...The second possible explanation is that I wisely did not blab about the incident, sharing it only with a couple of close friends. Crane realized I was not trying to sabotage his reputation as bully in chief...