Stop Giving Advice to Your Younger Self - 2 Minute Tuesday

“What advice would you give your younger self?”
It’s a popular podcast question—and honestly, it’s a terrible one.

You can’t change the past. Even if you could, do you really think your younger self would listen? I know for sure my 21-year-old self wouldn’t have taken advice from the 37-year-old me. He’d probably just say, “What would you know, old man?”

So what’s the point of thinking about advice you can’t use?

Here’s a better question—one I picked up from my recent podcast guest, Jon:

What advice would your 90-year-old self give you right now?

That flips everything.

You can’t change the past, but you can shape your future.
So, take a moment and actually write it down:

• Who do you want to be at 90?
• How do you want to feel?
• What do you want your life to look like?
• And what would that future version of you tell you to start doing today?

Most people never think that far ahead.
 But if you know where you want to be, you can start making choices now to get there.

I think about this all the time—and it’s exactly why I live the way I do. I’m not just focused on today or tomorrow. I’m making sure I like where I’ll end up when I’m 90.

Have you thought about it?

Transcript

I reckon I'm going to smash this one out today in under two minutes. OOP. Might need two minutes on the clock.

00;00;10;05 - 00;00;35;14
Unknown
So what advice would you give to your younger self? Very common podcast question I've said on the podcast. And look, it's a terrible question because first you can't change the past. So like, whatever you want to change in the past, you can't then achieve that in the now. And second, as I've spoken about on the podcast, how would you even convince your younger self to start making those changes?

00;00;35;14 - 00;00;54;26
Unknown
Because my 21 year old self is definitely not going to listen to my 37 year old self now. It's just going to be like, shut up, old man. Like, what do you know? So even if you could take that information that you know now and then give it to a younger self, it's kind of useless. It's not going to change the present.

00;00;54;28 - 00;01;13;25
Unknown
So flipping that around this actually comes from this week's podcast guest, John. I think he has just a great way of flipping that around. And what would your 90 year old self give advice to you right now? So right now it's a good thought process and a good actionable thing that you can actually do right now and write it out.

00;01;13;27 - 00;01;38;27
Unknown
What do you want? Who do you want to be when you're 90? What is that 90 year old self doing? Has he feeling, what are you achieving? And what advice would that 90 year old be giving to you right now? So you end up there good by thinking about it, right? So it because it makes you it gives you an opportunity to start making those choices to end up there rather than trying to go back in time and end up somewhere where you can't change.

00;01;38;29 - 00;01;57;19
Unknown
So again, think about it. Where you've got 20s left, where do you want to be when you're 90? And are you doing the things right now to achieve that? Have you even thought about what you want to be doing when you're 90? I reckon a lot of people don't even think about that. I do all the time and that's why I do what I do.

00;01;57;23 - 00;02;10;06
Unknown
So I end up where I want to be when I'm 90, because I don't want to be in opposite of that. If I can smashed it, sorry, I'll just spoil.