What I Wish I Would Have Known: Life Lessons to My Younger Self

You might have heard of people being asked “What advice would you give your younger self?”.

I am always fascinated by the responses to these questions as it brings to the surface what deep in our hearts we already know, yet we still seem to get caught up in life.

Caught up in all the expectations and promises that if we were to live our life a certain way, we would feel inherently better about who we are.

I have been reflecting on this question as this year comes to a close and a new one begins.

Here are my thoughts, my letter of advice to my younger self.

“To my darling girl,

We have it so very wrong. Having observed and absorbed the world around us, all the magazines, TV shows, movies, books, everything, telling us to shrink ourselves, we thought this was the antidote to all our pain. 

We convinced ourselves that happiness was a size, something tangible we could achieve, instead of what it truly is, an emotion that will be forever fleeting because that is what all emotions are and as they should be.

We deprived ourselves of the opportunity to connect to others because we thought ourselves not worthy of connection.

We spent so much time, years wasted, trying new diets, new meal plans, new workout plans, all of it. Hating ourselves, judging ourselves, shaming ourselves for not being the person we thought we should be.

The irony is that the only reason we wanted to shrink ourselves is because we thought we would finally be loved and accepted once we did… and yet the relentless pursuit of a smaller body is what actually deprived us of the opportunity to truly connect and be loved.

The missed dinners at restaurants because we couldn't properly estimate the number of calories in MyFitnessPal.…

The saying “NO” to movie nights because we had binged so much after restriction we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave the house…

The forfeited conversations with loved ones because we were doing mental calculations of how we needed to eat and exercise so that we could hate ourselves a little bit less going to sleep that night…

The crying in our bedroom when the bathing suit didn't look right so we didn't go on the vacation.

We blamed our body when in reality we were the ones cutting ourselves off from feeling loved because we thought we were unworthy.

We released ourselves from the responsibility of happiness and surrendered the ownership of taking true action steps in our life towards it because we thought we could only have it once we were smaller.

My darling girl. 

We are enough. 

We are loved. 

We are valued. 

We are worthy. 

I know you do not feel it right now and that’s okay. It will come.

I beg you to not make the mistakes that I have made.

Please give yourself the love you so desperately seek and stop wishing parts of yourself away.

Our body is not the enemy, our eating habits are not the problem.

When the fog of shame lifts you will begin to see that what we think is self-sabotage is self-protection from unmet needs.

This is a journey and there are many lessons to unlearn.

What I can tell you is that the body and life you love will not come from shaming yourself, but rather from addressing your unmet needs and approaching it all through the lens of body respect and self-care.

Give yourself permission to be happy, to feel enough as you are right now and I promise you that your eating habits, exercise habits, and body confidence will all fall into place. 

With much love,

Your Future Self.”

I invite you to take a moment to pause and reflect on these questions, bonus points if you get out of your journal and a pen to write it down.

1. What advice would I give to my younger self?

2. How can I give myself the love I so desperately seek?

3. What is one thing I will stop doing and one thing I will start doing to treat my body with more respect and love, (knowing that the byproduct is a better relationship with food, body and exercise)?

You got this.