Advice to my younger self
Advice to my younger self
Should we follow articles which are advice to my younger self from a successful person?
We all see articles like “Advice to my younger self” or “Things which I know in my 20s” etc. A lot of us feel very attracted to the wisdom of a successful person and what that person is advising to their younger self. This creates an obvious question: Would they be as successful as they are if they have followed their own advice?
As much as I would like to believe it, I am not sure if we should follow it completely. There are a lot of things which we do in our present which shape us. In hindsight we all see a lot of those choices as mistakes. Does that really mean someone else should just follow those advice? Is the advice to younger self a regret? On one hand we think we shouldn’t regret what happened in the past but on the other hand we look back and give that advice of what we should/shouldn’t have done in the past.
When we are thinking about hindsight we are comparing our past choices with our present situation which I feel is not fair to the past. At that point in time, we didn’t not know certain variables and our choices were what we could think at that moment in time with whatever information we had.
Now one could argue that reading these articles can give us more variables on which those choices can be altered. But I believe in addition to that we should not forget the current context of our situation which could be very different from the other person’s current and past situation. World is a complex system and taking a lot of advice from someone else without evaluating the current context could do more harm than help.
I feel we should be allowed to make our own mistakes and learn through it. It’s a random world and there is no set path to achieve what we want. So definitely listen to others but also follow your gut.