“The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours- it is an amazing journey- and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.”

Bob Moawad

One of the greatest questions I’ve ever been asked is: if you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?

I’ve never been particularly good at limiting myself to one thing.

So, if I could sit down with a younger me, I’d tell her this:

Your future needs you. Your past does not.

Chase life. Write it down. Be loud about the things that matter to you, even when your voice shakes.

You will stop caring so much about what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

The right to exist is not something you have to earn.

Neither is love.

When it comes to that, be afraid. Be very afraid. But don’t be careful.

Love fiercely.

Great love is built, not found. And if I know anything about you, you will spend a lot of your life believing love might be the whole point of this thing.

You may even be right.

But loving someone does not require abandoning yourself.

Anyone who makes you question your worth should not be given unlimited opportunities to do so. A history with someone does not entitle them to your future, and the longer you entertain what isn’t for you, the longer you postpone what is.

Still, look for the good in people.

Some will disappoint you. Some will surprise you. Stay close to the ones who keep showing up.

And when someone doesn’t, resist the urge to make their absence mean something about you.

You deserve something more than the worst you can stand.

Remember that one.

You will spend too much time believing endurance is evidence of strength. It isn’t always.

This life is meant to be lived, not endured.

So take the trip. Say yes when you can. Take the risk when the possibility of regret scares you more than the possibility of failure.

Write about the existential crisis. You do not have to solve it first.

Especially because you won’t.

You will make mistakes. Some you’ll recognize immediately. Others will take years.

Own them.

Once you know better, do better. Until then, don’t be so hard on yourself.

There is no prize for punishing yourself longer than necessary.

And stop selling yourself short.

Offer up your thoughts. They are valuable.

You will be tempted to stay quiet when you aren’t certain you’re the smartest person in the room. Speak anyway. Certainty and intelligence are not the same thing.

Softness does not imply weakness.

You will learn this one slowly.

The world will occasionally make you wonder whether having a soft heart is more liability than virtue. Protect it without hardening it.

Pick your battles, certainly. But when it comes to tests of character, know what you stand for before you’re asked to prove it.

There will be hard seasons.

Some will change you.

Some will simply hurt.

Do not force every painful thing into a lesson before you’ve had time to grieve it.

Not everything happens for a reason. But you will eventually decide what to do with what happened.

That part belongs to you.

You have power.

You have worth.

Neither disappears because you have forgotten it for a while.

And please stop trying to have your whole life figured out.

You will make plans. Life will laugh at some of them.

Let it.

There will be years when you are certain you know where you’re going and years when the map might as well be written in another language. Both count.

Don’t wish either away.

Hike your mountains. Spread your wings. Shake the earth when the occasion calls for it.

But learn to sit still, too.

There will be ordinary Tuesday mornings you would give anything to return to someday.

Pay attention to them.

Pay attention to the people sitting across the table. To the places you keep assuming you’ll visit again. To the versions of yourself you are so impatient to outgrow.

None of it stays exactly as it is.

That isn’t a reason to be afraid.

It’s a reason to be there while it does.

Revel in the wonder for as long as it lasts.

You have more of it ahead of you than you know.