What advice would we give our younger selves? This is a fascinating question. It is not surprising, therefore, that when this question is asked on Quora, it gets a lot of replies. In this post, I list some helpful replies and elaborate on them a little more.

I would not say a word – Niklas Goke

Reflecting on Bill Gates’ response, this contributor reasons that because so many factors direct our life trajectory, one word could send what would otherwise have been a satisfactory life careening in the opposite direction. We don’t know if our lives would be better if we had chosen a different path. We cannot travel back into the past and test our choices. 

I will add that we are also bad at predicting what would make us happy. This insight finds support from the psychological research found in Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness (2006) and Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism (1991). So, it could be that getting what we thought we wanted would disappoint us instead. Recall when we were dissatisfied with an event we had been anticipating with great excitement?  

The takeaway is to create satisfaction in our lived experience and not pine for a state-of-being that doesn’t exist. 

You are going to die one day, let that sink in – Brendon Lemon

Philosophers throughout history have deliberated what the knowledge of death and belief in an afterlife, or lack thereof, offer to someone’s conduct. See for example this summary on YouTube by Hank Green, the host of Crash Course Philosophy.

See also this impassioned closing statement in an Intelligence Squared debate about the ethics of human life extension. 

In recent decades, psychologists have also weighed in, pointing out that while we tend to avoid thoughts about death, older people who’ve confronted their own mortality or experienced it through their loved ones are more likely to maintain their focus on intrinsically valuable things, like being generous, maintaining good relationships with others, and pursuing goals unrelated to money, power, or fame.

Acknowledging our finitude can help us cultivate a sobering yet optimistic perspective on our lives. We become less affected by negative events and we rejoice more in positive ones. We take ourselves less seriously but remain driven to create meaning unique to our circumstances.

Eat healthily and exercise – Curt Barter

This one is self-explanatory. Unless we are professional athletes, sportspersons, or something similar, we all know we should be doing this better for the sake of our future selves and those who depend on us.

Thanks to Google, YouTube, and Amazon, there are great resources available. I’ve just been reading Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Body (2010) and recommend it heartily. For free resources on exercise, YouTube is pretty good. The crucial advice is to not overdo it because our bodies need to heal. Make sure also that some of the physical training involves train-to-failure and high-intensity intervals. To avoid plateauing, switch up exercise routines when you are no longer feeling the burn.   

For nutrition, these two not-for-profit sites, World’s Healthiest Foods and Nutrition Facts, come well recommended. The latter advocates a vegan diet. Veganism is a hotly debated topic. While not vegan myself, I’ve learned a little about the pros and cons of veganism on human health, food sustainability, and animal suffering from this Intelligence Squared debate. I highly recommend it.   

There are benefits to maintaining a healthy body. It helps us to sleep better, it improves our mood, and people can rely on us more. As someone who has endured leg pain in his early 20s because of an injury sustained in National Service, I can testify that regular exercise was the far better option to being hooked on painkillers or NSAIDs. 

People do not care about us as much as we think – Sibell Loitz

Each of us only has access to our own thoughts, desires, and beliefs. It is no surprise then that many of us think that the world revolves around us. Interactions with children and adolescents reveal that self-centeredness which leads to impulsive behavior and the inability to plan for the future or consider the needs or perspectives of others are common developmental milestones in our young.

It is likely that this self-centeredness is evolutionarily adaptive. But evolutionary forces don’t always track objective reality.

The truth is that the world does not revolve around us. People are not thinking of us as much as we think they are. Like us, they are mostly thinking about themselves. One phenomenon which illustrates this is the spotlight effect. It documents the widespread but erroneous assumption that the people in our surroundings are paying attention to us or caring about what we do far more than they actually are. 

This assumption can lead some of us to be convinced that “the world” is out to get us. The reality is that no considerable proportion of people care about us enough to plot against us. This is incredibly liberating: we are free to live our lives as we see fit and take responsibility for our successes and failures. We don’t need to always blame others or see ourselves as helpless victims when things don’t go our way.

Use mental dental floss – Michele L. Gaddis

Sometimes we get stuck in negative patterns of thought. Its effects can range from making us moderately annoyed to full-on depressed, anxious, or enraged. In times like these, the ability to change our thought patterns quickly and effectively is much appreciated. If the issue is pathological, that is, considered serious enough to be a form of mental disease, then please consult a mental health professional. Otherwise, find reliable methods to get the recurring thoughts out of your head.

For example, when I had just entered junior college to prepare for GCE A-levels at 16, I remember being really worried about something. I can’t remember what I was worried about, but I remember its intensity. I shared my worries with a new friend had started to regularly play badminton with. He told me to just stop worrying and play.

His advice was not particularly profound or even motivated by a genuine concern for my well-being: he just wanted someone to play with. But even though I thought that he was being insensitive, I also remember feeling much better when I was fully occupied with badminton and not with my worries. It turned out that his “advice” helped me a great deal. 

Some might find watching their favorite television show, playing their favorite sports/video games, or listening to their favorite music helpful. The bottom line is to find something that isn’t potentially destructive, like alcohol, or time-consuming, like binge-watching shows on Netflix, that can take our minds away from the unnecessary thoughts that trouble us.

However, even though confiding in friends is usually a good thing, they may make the situation worse because you are forced to think about whatever is troubling you more. If the issue cannot be solved by ruminating, stop thinking about it. Be sure to explore cognitive behavioral therapy if the above fixes remain inadequate.

Stop comparing yourself to others – Dean Yeong

This is its own form of suffering. The comedian Tom Shillue explains it best. At the back of our heads, we know that when we covet someone’s achievements, we usually ignore the challenges and life experiences that person had to go through to get there. But the achievement and the challenge are almost always a two-package deal. So the question is, would we want to be similarly challenged?

Learning to learn – Sarthak Pranit

Learning efficiently is fast becoming a sought-after trait in life and work. This was hammered into me at 80000 Hours, an incredible not-for-profit careers advice website dedicated to helping altruistic and ambitious young people in the “West” identify and pursue ethically significant careers. There are online courses available to help us with just that. This one, in particular, comes recommended by 80000 Hours. 

I have taken the course and have written about its key insights here. 

How people view you and treat you is a direct reflection of how they view and treat themselves – Sarah Mitko

I don’t think all of this quote is strictly true: other peoples’ perspectives on us aren’t always subjective. Furthermore, even if they are subjective, it doesn’t mean that they are not valuable (I am not implying that this is what Mitko intended to mean): Their input can still give us insight into how we may be perceived by others. 

But it is also true that sometimes people will view, judge, and treat us in ways that are filtered through an overly subjective lens. When they criticize us, they project their unwanted faults onto us. Since Sigmund Freud, the idea that people project their own faults on others has become a recurring theme in social psychology. 

The solution, then, is to ask ourselves whether we can trust the source. Does this person have my best interests at heart? Have they offered accurate advice to others in the past? We should trust our judgment and ask a third, fourth, and fifth party. The more people involved, the likelier it is that we’ll get accurate feedback.

Writing is the best way you can heal yourself – Anirudh Singh Parmar

This is probably truer for some than others. The most mileage to get out of this advice is to journal regularly. Having access to our past thoughts can be revealing. We discover how we’ve changed or grown in ways we couldn’t otherwise. Social-scientific studies indicate that we change more than we expect.

We may surprise ourselves with the truth of this observation when journaling. It can also be a healing experience, especially when we realize how little we now care about the anxieties that would have crippled our past selves.

If you found this post interesting and wish read more like it or contribute your own advice, I recommend signing up to Quora and doing so there.