What I Would Tell My 20 Year Old Self?
If I could sit across from my 20 year old self, I do not think I would hand over a neat list of instructions. I probably would not say, “Do this, avoid that, choose this path.” Life is rarely that tidy.
I think I would take her hand and say, “You are going to be afraid more often than you expect. Do it anyway.”
That might sound simple, but it has taken years to understand. At 20, I thought confidence came first. I thought I had to feel ready before I started. Ready to speak up. Ready to try something new. Ready to walk away. Ready to say no. Ready to be seen.
Now I know that confidence often arrives after the action, not before it.
“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and the confidence will follow.” Carrie Fisher
Those words hold so much truth. Fear does not always mean stop. Sometimes it simply means, “This matters.”
54 years on, I'm still engaged in what I love and loving every moment of it.
Looking back is not the same as living in the past
Do you ever look back at your younger self and wonder what you were thinking?
Not in a cruel way. More in a soft, curious way. The way you might look at an old photograph and notice the haircut first, then the hope in your eyes, then the uncertainty you were trying so hard to hide.
At 20, many of us believe we are grown up. We feel as if life should already make sense. We imagine we know who we are, what we want, who we will love, where we will live, and how everything will unfold.
Then life happens.
Plans change. People leave. Opportunities appear in strange disguises. Some dreams fade, while others become more important than we expected. We make mistakes. We recover. We take the long way round. We surprise ourselves.
Looking back can be useful, but only if we do it with kindness. The point is not to judge the younger version of ourselves. The point is to understand them.
That younger version did the best they could with what they knew, what they had, and what they had already survived.
If I asked myself, What I Would Tell My 20 Year Old Self, I would begin there. I would tell her that she was not broken. She was becoming.
You do not have to please everyone
One of the clearest memories I have of being younger is how much I cared about what other people thought.
I cared if someone seemed disappointed in me. I cared if I said the wrong thing. I cared if I was liked, included, understood, approved of. I cared so much that I often pushed my own needs to the side.
People pleasing can look like kindness from the outside. Sometimes it is kindness. But often, underneath it, there is fear.
Fear of rejection. Fear of conflict. Fear of being judged. Fear of being too much, too difficult, too emotional, too honest.
So we smile when we are tired. We say yes when everything in us wants to say no. We go along with things because it feels easier than explaining ourselves. We keep the peace outside while losing it inside.
As I have grown older, I have cared less about pleasing everyone. Not in a cold or selfish way. More in a grounded way. I have learnt that being liked by everyone is an impossible job, and it pays very badly.
There is freedom in realising this:
Some people will misunderstand you.
Some people will not choose you.
Some people will dislike your boundaries.
Some people will only be comfortable with you when you are convenient.
That does not mean you are doing life wrong.
I would tell my 20 year old self to practise small honesties. Start with the little things. Say, “I don’t fancy that tonight.” Say, “I need time to think.” Say, “That doesn’t feel right for me.”
The first few times may feel awkward. Do it anyway. Your life gets quieter when you stop auditioning for approval.
Fear is not a sign that you are failing
I wish I had understood fear better when I was younger.
Back then, if I felt afraid, I often took it as a warning that I should stop. I thought fear meant I was not capable. I thought nerves meant I was not ready. I thought discomfort meant I was in the wrong place.
Sometimes fear does protect us. It can alert us to real danger, unhealthy situations, or choices that go against our values. We should listen to that.
But much of the fear that holds us back is not about real danger. It is about uncertainty. It is about stepping outside what feels familiar.
Trying something new can make the mind noisy. It starts creating dramatic little films of everything that could go wrong.
What if I embarrass myself?
What if I fail?
What if people laugh?
What if I am not good enough?
What if I regret it?
The mind can be very convincing when it wants to keep us safe. It prefers the known, even when the known is too small for us.
I would tell my younger self not to believe every frightening thought. A thought is not a prophecy. A worry is not a fact. An imagined disaster is not evidence.
Fear may come with you. Let it sit in the passenger seat. Do not let it drive.
Confidence is built through action
Confidence is not usually something you wake up with one day, fully formed and shining.
It is built. Quietly. Repeatedly. Often clumsily.
You build it when you do the thing you thought you could not do. You build it when you survive embarrassment. You build it when you ask the question, make the call, attend the class, leave the relationship, apply for the role, start again.
You build it when you keep promises to yourself.
At 20, I wasted too much time waiting to feel different before acting differently. I thought I needed more courage before I could move. What I really needed was movement.
Action teaches us. It gives the brain new evidence. It says, “Look, we tried and we lived.” It says, “That was uncomfortable, but we handled it.” It says, “Maybe we are more capable than we thought.”
This does not mean throwing yourself into everything at once. You do not have to transform your whole life by Friday.
Start smaller.
If something scares you but matters to you, ask:
What is one step I can take today?
What is the smallest version of this action?
Who could support me while I try?
What would I do if I were allowed to be a beginner?
That last question matters. So many of us avoid new things because we hate being bad at them. We like doing what we already know because it feels safe. It gives us a sense of control.
Being a beginner can feel messy. You stumble. You ask obvious questions. You get it wrong. You compare yourself to people who have been practising for years.
But every skilled person was once new. Every confident person has had moments of doubt. Every brave person has felt afraid.
The difference is not that they had no fear. The difference is that they took the next step.
The knocks and bumps are part of the person you become
There are things I would love to spare my younger self from. Heartbreak. Self-doubt. Bad decisions. The ache of trying to fit where I did not belong. The years spent being too hard on myself.
But if I removed every knock, bump, and fall, I would also remove the lessons that shaped me.
That is a strange thing to accept.
The difficult parts of life do not always make sense while we are inside them. Sometimes they just hurt. Sometimes we only understand them much later, when we see how they changed our choices, softened our judgement, or strengthened our voice.
I would not tell my 20 year old self that everything happens for a reason. That can feel too neat, especially when life has been painful.
I would tell her this instead: “You can make meaning from what happens. You can grow around it. You can become wiser without becoming bitter.”
We are all perfectly imperfect. That phrase can sound light, but it carries weight. Being imperfect means we will get things wrong. We will say the wrong thing. We will stay too long. We will leave too early. We will look back and cringe.
That does not mean we should punish ourselves forever.
Regret can teach, but shame traps. Learn what you need to learn. Apologise when you need to apologise. Change what you can change. Then let yourself move.
You are allowed to change your mind
At 20, I thought changing my mind meant I had failed. I thought I had to choose a path and stick to it, even if it stopped fitting.
Now I see changing your mind as one of the clearest signs that you are paying attention.
You are allowed to outgrow old dreams. You are allowed to want a different life from the one you once described. You are allowed to disappoint someone’s expectations of you. You are allowed to realise that something you worked hard for is not what you want any more.
That does not make the earlier version of you foolish. It means you had more living to do.
There is no single age where we become complete. Many adults still feel like big kids inside adult bodies. We carry our younger selves with us: the shy one, the hopeful one, the hurt one, the brave one, the one who still wants reassurance.
Growing older does not mean having everything sorted. It means learning to parent those parts of ourselves with more patience.
Stop making fear bigger than it is
One of the habits I would urge my younger self to break is overthinking.
Overthinking feels useful because it looks like preparation. Sometimes planning helps, of course. But there is a point where thinking stops helping and starts frightening us.
We replay conversations. We predict rejection. We create negative scenarios. We imagine failure in such detail that our bodies react as if it has already happened.
Then we call it intuition.
Sometimes it is not intuition. Sometimes it is anxiety wearing a clever disguise.
A more helpful question is, “What do I actually know?”
Not what do I fear.
Not what might happen.
Not what would be awful if it did happen.
What do I know?
Then ask, “What can I do next?”
That question brings you back to action. It pulls you out of the fog and places your feet on the ground.
You do not have to solve the next ten years. You only have to take the next honest step.
Be kinder to yourself while you are learning
If there is one thing I wish my 20 year old self had practised sooner, it is self-kindness.
Not indulgence. Not avoidance. Not pretending everything is fine.
Real self-kindness is honest and steady. It says, “Yes, that was hard.” It says, “Yes, you made a mistake.” It also says, “You are still worthy of care.”
Many of us speak to ourselves in ways we would never speak to someone we love. We call ourselves stupid, weak, dramatic, behind, too sensitive, not enough. We think criticism will motivate us.
It rarely does. It usually makes us smaller.
Kindness gives us room to try again.
If I could give my younger self a few simple reminders, they would be these:
You do not need everyone’s permission to live your life.
Your comfort zone is comforting, but it is not always kind to you.
Being nervous does not mean you are incapable.
You can be grateful for the past without wanting to repeat it.
You are allowed to become someone you did not expect.
Most of all, I would tell her that courage does not always feel like courage. Sometimes it feels like shaky hands, a racing heart, and a quiet decision not to run away from your own life.
What I know now
I still get afraid. I still overthink. I still have moments when I want certainty before I move.
The difference is that I no longer see fear as proof that I should stop.
I see it as part of being human. Part of caring. Part of growing. Part of stepping beyond what is familiar.
If I could speak to my 20 year old self, I would not promise her an easy life. I would not tell her she will avoid pain, mistakes, or disappointment. I would tell her she will keep learning. She will become softer in some places and stronger in others. She will survive days she once thought would break her.
And I would tell her this, gently but firmly:
Do not wait until you feel fearless. Do not wait until everyone understands. Do not wait until the path is perfectly clear.
Stay afraid, but do it anyway. Confidence will catch up.
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