What I Would Say to My Younger Self if I Could Go Back in Time

Well ,here’s me as a baby still – maybe a year old? I’m not sure. This blog post has been promised. And I held off because it seemed like it would take longer to do. I have a short video this week, so it give me time to do this blog.

So, therapists often say that you can heal yourself by talking to yourself at various ages when traumatic things happened. I’ve not spent a lot of time in this, but I have gone back and spoken to myself to forgive myself for a few things. I wouldn’t say that my life has been traumatic as a whole, but it did have some pretty traumatic moments – some my fault, most were not.

Also I have NOT spent a lot of time on this particular blog entry but I did jot down my “first thoughts” as I asked myself what would you tell yourself at each age. So here we go.

What would I tell my 4 year old self?

• Spend as Much Time with your Grandparents as you can

What I would tell my sixth grade self?

This is NOT my sixth grade self but probably my 8th grade self. My fifth grade self was still chunky and I had weird looking glasses, lol.

• Read more
• Learn more
• Craft more
• Don’t eat those twinkies
• Don’t eat those chips
• It doesn’t matter whose better – Donny Osmond or The Jacksons – you like them both
• Be more patient with your sister, teach her, take care of her. ( I did save her from choking on a banana once, while Mom was away.)

What would I tell my 10th grade self?

• Work on your confidence
• The popular kids are only a fad – when they grow up many won’t have it together
• Be less serious
• Don’t worry about the boys
• Learn to be resourceful (cook, sew, read more)

What would I tell my college self?

• Spend more time with friends and enjoy college life
• Work less
• Don’t be serious with anyone til JR or SR year.
• Date around and be picky
• Develop a spouse list of “must haves” and manifest it (No insult to George as a spousal material but it took too long to find him). lol
• Plan to stay in touch with my college buds – I didn’t and I regret it (Still am with a few though and it’s a blessing)

What would I tell my 20 year old self?

• Be non-reactive
• Don’t be afraid, be less fearful
• Rediscover yourself
• Develop good eating habits now
• Begin exercising now
• Spend more time in the Word
• Don’t forget thy Creator
• The decisions you make now will change you forever – but no pressure
• It’s ok to be alone, God is there. Trust Him.

What would I tell my 30 year old self?

• Embrace life because it is fleeting
• Do a better job at balancing work/family life
• Don’t spend so much time on the computer (old habits never die, lol)
• Be a better influence
• Keep focused on what is important and avoid the distractions
• Be more careful with my words – written and spoken

What would I tell my 40 year old self?

• Your career is not as important as YOU think it is
• Life can be disappointing and so can people, but it’s OK.
• Life won’t ever be perfect, quit trying to perfect it, just trust in God daily
• Be responsible for YOUR actions and everyone else has to be responsible for theirs
• Good job standing up for yourself when you needed to and not letting anyone run you over working in a man’s world – you rocked their boat and made them think! You expected answers and held them accountable!
• But maybe there were times you’d been better off to be all quiet mousy and that is ok too!
• Congrats for getting your master’s but was it really worth it? They didn’t pay you like they did the men did they? Nor did they give you the men’s big titles.

What would I tell my 50 year old self?

• You finally learned that ONLY YOU can truly make yourself happy. What took you so long.
• Life will have a lot of changes but YOU have it in you to survive and figure it out.
• I’m not sure I wanted to know what was coming – aging parents, strife and discord in the family. So I will just say Change is coming but YOU got this as long as you claim God as your Father, Savior, Leader, and Guide.
• Trust more in God and less in people. He’s a deity and they are only human.

What would I tell my future self?

Well, as I look through the decades I see so many hard difficult times and so many good times. The love of family and friends and so many wonderful coworkers – we are at work a chunk of our life. I had so many good mentors and I had a few bad ones.

Each decade had its own victories and defeats. Each decade taught me a lot. I made lots of mistakes, but I did lots of good things and did a lot of things right too.

I don’t see life getting any easier but it doesn’t mean we can’t be happy. I think even this year I’ve learned a lot. I see things a lot clearer now for some reason – even as far back as age four! God has shown me a lot.

So here’s what I’ll tell my future self:

• Be brave
• Be confident
• Prepare ahead
• Trust God
• Love family
• Stay away from negative behavior that sucks your good energy
• Enjoy and be content
• Explore
• Get rid of Stuff
• Have more experiences (read more, discover more, do more of what you love)
• But above all, Work for the Lord, Follow His Will, Share His Word and His Good News – because that is what matters the most.

I’m sure I didn’t touch the surface of any of these years. And if I did this exercise again next week I’d probably have a few different answers, but I’d say these are pretty spot ON! It’s been a pretty good life. I ‘m not ready for it to be over yet. I want to spend some time with my daughter and grandson before it’s all said and done! And spend as much time with George as I can. I just have to figure out how to get to TX and to the beach! 😉