Five Pieces of Advice I Would Give to My Younger Self

When I think of giving advice to my younger self, a million different things pop into my head, and the same is probably true for you. We all have advice we wish we could give to our younger selves, whether it be at 5, 15, or 30 years old. As we move into each new stage of life, we learn and grow more than ever before, and with that comes newfound wisdom that would have done us a lot of good in years prior.

I am only 22, so I still have so much learning and growing to do. But I definitely know more now than I did five and ten years ago, and I often find myself thinking, “man, I wish I understood this at 15.” High school would have been a dream is I’d known all I know now!

At 15 specifically, I felt like my life was falling apart. What 15-year-old doesn’t feel like that sometimes? But truly, I was struggling. I had lost my mom not even a week into my sophomore year of high school, after already losing my dad five years prior, and everything just seemed so dismal. Add that to all the usual struggles of being a teenager, and it was truly a nightmare.

I wish I could go back in time and talk to 15-year-old me. There are so many things I would tell her. For the sake of this post, I’ve narrowed it down to five pieces of advice to my younger self.

It’s okay to strive for excellence, but never expect perfection.

I have struggled with perfectionism for as long as I can remember, and I still do. I couldn’t tell you exactly what caused me to start thinking that I couldn’t make mistakes, but something triggered that in me, and I have had a heck of a time trying to let go of it. I’ve always been terrified of getting in trouble and of disappointing others. Just the thought of doing something wrong makes me feel sick.

Growing up, I always felt this immense pressure to set a perfect example for all of my siblings. I’m the oldest girl in my family, and I think that might contribute a bit (other oldest girls, does this track with you at all?). I’ve always been pretty agreeable by nature, and my family would often praise that about me. I think that somehow, in my head, I took that to mean that they expected me to never be disagreeable and to never do or say the wrong thing.

So I started to put this burden of perfection on myself, and it’s something I’ve carried with me for years. Thankfully, I’m learning to give it to God, but it was especially heavy as a teenager. When my mom died, it only grew, because I knew my aunt was taking on a lot by taking my siblings and I in and having six kids to raise on her own. Me doing anything wrong would’ve been catastrophic, or at least, that’s what I told myself.

I constantly expected perfection out of myself, in everything that I did. At home, at work, at school. Everywhere. And I had basically no grace for the fact that I was just a kid. Now, as an adult, I’m having to go back and fix all the issues that has caused (maybe I’ll do another post about this, as I’m realizing I have a lot to say haha).

So anyways, I think 15-year-old-me just needed to be told that perfection simply isn’t possible, and that no one expects it of her. It’s okay to mess up and make mistakes. It’s even okay to get in trouble sometimes! Part of growing up is messing up. Without doing that, we would never be able to learn and grow. So my first piece of advice to my younger self is this: give yourself room to mess up. You have permission to do that. You don’t have to stop striving for excellence, just stop expecting perfection.

Grief gets easier to carry when you let God hold it for you.

I heard someone say once that grief never gets lighter, you just learn how to carry the load. I think this is so true. The thing with grief is that it never really goes away. You’re always going to miss that person, and there will always be a part of you that longs for them. But eventually, you do have more good days than bad.

My dad passed when I was 9, and my mom when I was 15. I’m 22 now, so it’s been a few years. But even now, I have moments when it will hit me as if it was just yesterday. I’ll see something that reminds me of one of them, and suddenly I’m back in that pain again. It doesn’t cripple me, but I feel it with such intensity that it hardly seems real. I think I will experience moments like that for the rest of my life. But it’s just moments. At one point, it was every day, all the time. The initial wave of grief made it feel like I could hardly breath, like someone had removed everything inside of me and I was just this shell of a human trying desperately to survive.

But now, I feel whole again. Nothing has replaced my parents, and I still feel their absence deeply. But I have found a hope in Christ that has filled me in a way that can only be described as miraculous. He has taken my grief and turned it into a faith that I would never have found on my own. He has lifted so much of the weight of loss off of me so that I can breath again. And with that in mind, my next piece of advice to my younger self is this: search for hope in God, and your grief will get easier to carry. It won’t always feel as heavy as it does right now, so long as you realize that you will never be able to carry it all on your own.

Plans can change, and that’s not a bad thing.

I wanted to be a teacher my entire life. Literally since I was six years old. It was all I ever wanted to do. And at 15, I already had my whole life planned out. I was going to finish high school, go get my teaching degree, then get a teaching job and change the lives of my students one lesson at a time. The thought of not doing that was so scary. I mean, it’s what I had always said I was going to do. There’s no way I could change it, right??

Wrong. Gosh, if I had only known then what I do now. I honestly thought that I knew exactly what my life would look like at just 15. You’d think after all the losses I had experienced, I would have known that life was full of surprises. But then again, I think that’s exactly why I had it all planned. I wanted to have control over something in my life after so many changes growing up.

But now, at 22 years old, I have already realized how little my life plans actually matter. I have barely started living, and I already know that life can look so very different than what you have planned for yourself.

I did finish high school, got a teaching degree, and even went on to teach. I certainly hope I impacted my students’ lives in some positive way while I was there. But after a year of doing that, God totally rerouted me. 15-year-old Lizzy would’ve thought you were crazy if you told her that she’d quit teaching after one year to go work as an intern at her church, with no promise of a permanent job. But hey, here we are.

So, my advice to my younger self? Don’t get too caught up in your plans, because there’s a pretty good chance things will change. And when they do, don’t be afraid. God’s got things far more figured out than you do, and He knows what He’s doing. Just have faith that you will be exactly where you need to be when you need to be there. And if you don’t have it all figured out, don’t worry (even though I know you’re going to). Sometimes not knowing the plan is the best thing for you.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11, NIV

Constantly yearning for a bigger and better life will steal your joy.

I am a dreamer at heart. I always have been, and probably always will be. The problem with being a dreamer? You tend to always focus on what you could have rather than what you do have. It has only been very recently (within the last couple of months) that I have gotten to a place of true contentment. Ever since I can remember, I have dreamed of the life I want to live and the person I want to be, and those dreams have often made me feel like I just wasn’t quite enough yet. I hadn’t reached my goal, and somehow that made me think I couldn’t be fully happy where I was.

What a horrible lie that is! As I have worked and prayed to become fully content with where I am, God has really revealed to me the danger of striving for anything other than to be closer to Him. Everything will come to you in His timing, and constantly yearning for a life you don’t yet have will only make you resent Him for not giving it to you. I am finally in a place where I am fully content with my life, and what joy that has brought me!

So another piece of advice to my younger self would be this: don’t stop dreaming, but don’t let your dreams control you. There is nothing wrong with having hopes and dreams. After all, the Bible does tell us that God gives us the desires of our hearts, so if we are truly in tune with Him, our dreams will actually be God’s dreams. It’s when we let our own hopes and dreams run rampant in our hearts and minds that we get in trouble. Be content in what He has given you and trust that His plans will always be greater than yours.

Who you are now is not the measuring stick for who you should become.

I don’t know if this is just me or if it’s a universal struggle, but I have often found myself comparing the current me to 16- or 19-year-old me and thinking things like, “I wish I still looked like that” or “I wish I was still doing that.” It’s like I use my teenage self as the marker for my best self. That’s crazy, isn’t it? Because honestly, who was their best self at 13, 15, or 19?

Yet, I still struggle with those thoughts. Now that my life and schedule are different, I can’t do all the same things I used to have time for. I don’t have the same body I did then, nor the same friends, life, or goals. So much has changed, but almost all of it has been positive change. So why, then, do I sometimes fall into the trap of comparing who I am now to who I was then?

The truth is, I met a lot of my personal goals during my late teenage years. I was in good shape, succeeding in school, had great friendships, etc. On the outside, it seemed like I was doing great, and I think we tend to strive for that outward appearance of success more than the inward, which is a bit backwards. That’s my only explanation for why I’ve caught myself being upset that I am not meeting some of those same goals now. I’m not in as great of shape, I don’t have the same deep friendships I did then, and I left the career I spent years working towards.

Yet, I am healthier than I’ve ever been, at least emotionally and spiritually. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, I have a job that I love, am married to the man of my dreams, and am building a life that’s worthy of being proud of. That is true success, in my opinion, and every day I come closer to the person I want to be.

So my final piece of advice to my younger self is this: be proud of who you are now, but don’t think that it’s the best you’ll ever be. Don’t let the outward appearance of success blind you from seeing how much work you have to do internally to really become who you are called to be. And as you grow, remember that you are doing just that: growing. That growth is worth celebrating, and it doesn’t deserve to be belittled by longing for someone you once were.

I truly have so much more I would say to teenage Lizzy, but these are the big ones. These are the principles that have allowed me to grow the most over the last couple of years, and honestly, this isn’t just advice to my younger self, but my current self as well! This is what I would want every person at every stage of life to know should I have the chance to tell them. If you think this advice could help someone you know, make sure to share this post with them! And before you go, let me know in the comments what advice you would give to your younger self!