There are many words of advice I would give to my teenage self. I believe there are several of us who wish we could kick ourselves in the rear for things we may or may not have done as teenagers.
WordPress created a challenge at the beginning of 2022. This post comes from the first day of the Bloganuary Challenge by WordPress. I participated in the challenge initially but returned the articles to drafts. With more time, I figured I could put more thought into my responses.
Read More Books
The first suggestion I would give my teenage self would be to read more books. As a teenager, I did not enjoy reading. I remember days when I would fall asleep after reading the first five pages of any book. Being told by the teacher that I had to read or what I had to read was most likely the root cause.
Today, reading is something I still do not do enough of. However, I want to add reading as one of my goals this year and the next. Last year, I was working towards reading ten pages a day as a goal. It lasted for a little while, but then I lost the motivation.
Furthermore, my teenage self should know that reading more often could open doors to new opportunities. Some people out in the real world are making a living by proofreading what others write. As a journalist or blogger, reading could help improve writing skills. We absorb invaluable information from reading. A study showed that the most successful people read many books per year.
As a teenager, it was not an inability to read and write; I did not want to put the work in due to my lack of interest. There were many other things I considered to be more important than reading. Consequently, this brings me to my second piece of advice.
Work Before Play
Friends and video games were of the highest importance to me growing up. I only wanted to play with my friends or have a controller in my hand. And sometimes both. Schoolwork did not matter, chores had been done half-assed, and I could have spent more time doing other things. So, I would tell my teenage self to focus, learn, and work harder than I did.
Do not get me wrong, it is nice to have friends. I was happy to have many of them in my life. To this day, I barely consider any of them to be friends. We have all grown up and gone down our own paths. And if I had placed those friends on a different tier of importance, I would have made a few alternate choices in life. And perhaps I would have spent more time reading, as I mentioned above.
Moreover, if I was not playing with my friends, I was playing games. Whether it was one of the Nintendo systems, the Sega, or even the PlayStation. I cannot tell you the number of hours I have spent on games. I still play many games to this day, mostly on PC. However, the amount of time I spend playing them has lessened.
It’s impossible to know what things would be like today if teenage me could listen to my advice, including ones I haven’t written about in this post. However, I believe that things would be different for anyone if their teenage selves could listen to the advice of their present selves.
What advice would you give to your teenage self? Feel free to share in the comments.