In the book Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris, Ferris interviews successful CEO’s, authors, speakers, and more. The book is a compilation of all the tools the titans have used throughout their life to rise to titan status by overcoming hardships and set backs.
One of the questions Ferris asks almost all of the interviewees is “What would you tell your 30 year old self?”
For some of you reading this, you may want to switch 30 for 25 but ask yourself the same question.
If you could tell your younger self words of wisdom, what would they be?
For me, it looks a little something like this (bullet pointed for ease):
- Love yourself. Really love yourself. Be kind and stop talking to yourself so meanly.
- Slow down! What’s the rush to finish school and move on to the next thing. Slow down and appreciate the journey you’re on!
I wanted badly to be more accomplished in school and my career, and in life that I buzzed through these years quick. Life is short and it moves quicker as you get older, so slow down and enjoy it now.
- Trust. Yourself and that everything will work out.
- Go to therapy. Not because there’s anything ‘wrong’ with you but because you want to improve yourself.
- Stop fighting with your mother.
A practice
Recently, a client of mine going through nutritional coaching was prompted in her daily lessons to write a letter to her younger self. She’s been in the program for 6 months and has done tremendous work evaluating herself, her relationship to food and to her body. Throughout the course of the program, she’s been challenged to look at and evaluate almost everything about herself and her relationship with food: where do her beliefs come from, what does she really believe, want and need in her life and with food, and how she sees her body.
The work in the program makes you dive deep and it was through watching her look deeply at her thoughts and behaviors around food that inspired me to write this post. We don’t only need to dive deep and do the work with our diets in the name of losing weight, but shouldn’t we be diving deeper with ourselves so we can live happier, more fulfilled lives?
Through that work, it’s inevitable we discover parts of our self or our way of thinking that no longer serve us.
We get caught up in our lives and doing things out of habit without realizing that habits may no longer be the best choice to make. In order to let those habitual patterns go, a practice of writing them down is helpful.
In the Tools of Titans, if you’re wondering what the most common answers to the question of what the titans would tell their younger self, it was mostly insights and encouragements to their younger selves.
I asked this same question on my Facebook Page last week and the response was humbling and tremendous. I was blown away at the things people ‘wished’ they’d told their younger selves.
Words encouraging their 30 year old selves to take leaps of faith, to trust themselves and their instincts, to care less about societal constraints, and to follow their dreams and passions.
What about you? What does your letter to your younger self look like?
I have a short guide that walks folks through simple Mindset + Movement, two things that go hand in hand. You can grab your free copy of it here and start practicing some mind shifts in addition to the letter writing exercise in this blog!
