What Lessons Would We Give to Our Younger Selves?

My friend recently had a significant birthday party and the photos displayed on her laptop showed a beautiful teenager looking uncomfortable in her bikini. “I wish I’d known then how hot I was,” she said.

As another example, my mum always regretted leaving school so early. She could have become a journalist so much sooner. And I look back and think I was like a hamster on a wheel who didn’t realize it was actually motorized. I could have slowed down! As we age, we can all wish we had done things differently.

I have spent my career with many 21-year-olds as they share their worries about the world. But I have realized that even by early adulthood, they seem able to reflect back on their teenage years to think about what they know now that they wished they had known then.

So, over these past few years, I have carried out research with my students to explore what lessons they would give to their younger selves, using a novel photograph-prompted think-aloud method whereby people simply look at an image of themselves in their teenage years and speak out loud.

It seems to generate a better stream of consciousness than a simple face-to-face interview. So what do they say? And how does this fit in with what we already know about looking after ourselves?

Lesson 1: “Create a safe space”

These young people told their teenage selves to choose their friends well, let go of people who make them feel bad, and set clear boundaries around who they are and where others start. Social support is often a positive part of our lives and research illustrates that it can promote mental and physical health and facilitate positive outcomes from health-related interventions.

Yet, as these young people illustrate, some kinds of social support can also be detrimental. Recently, we have been exploring social support in the context of weight loss and identified two types of negative social support: sabotage, whereby one person actively undermines another’s attempts to lose weight (e.g., being a feeder and saying “have some cake”); and collusion, whereby the process is more passive and often designed to avoid conflict (e.g., “Ok don’t go to the gym; let’s stay in and watch TV”).

Creating a safe space around us and maximizing positive social support whilst minimizing the negative seems key to staying well not only in our teenage years but throughout the rest of our lives as well.

Lesson 2: “Take perspective”

This second lesson focuses on looking outwards to see the bigger picture, recognizing what else is happening in the world, how we are not defined by labels, and how we are so much more than how we look. Perspective-taking is a core part of most psychological interventions, and asking “How would someone else see this” or “What would you say to someone else” is a useful strategy to build self-esteem and manage mood for pretty much everyone.

There is also much evidence that volunteering or helping others can improve well-being by helping us to look beyond ourselves. We can all get caught up in the complexities of our day-to-day lives, particularly when things are difficult or when we are young and haven’t had the benefit of time.

But even by their early twenties, young adults are beginning to realize that being caught up in ourselves is not the route to happiness.

Lesson 3: “Trust yourself”

Whilst this lesson might seem to contradict the need to take perspective, many of us spend our lives making endless comparisons to others around us in terms of how we look, what we achieve, or what we can do. This lesson is about being more present-orientated and existing in the moment, rather than just in relation to others.

Recently, we have completed a related study exploring why girls drop out of sport in their teenage years using a similar photograph think-aloud methodology. The results very much highlight the detrimental impact of making constant comparisons to others and how this can be exacerbated by a toxic sporting environment of revealing uniforms, pushy parents, and competitive coaches.

In this study, the young people told their younger selves to do sport for immediate benefits, such as fun and friendship, and be kinder to their bodies. Trusting yourself and stopping these upward and destructive comparisons may be a way to keep girls in sport. It is also a way to generally feel more confident about who we are.

Lesson 4: “Pay attention to what matters”

We live in a world where we are bombarded by information from all angles and are constantly told what to look like, how to behave and who to be. These young adults looked at the photo of their younger selves and discussed the bigger issues of body image, sexuality, identity, religion and mental health alongside many of the smaller day-to-day niggles of being a teenager.

But by their early twenties, they had already worked out that the key to happiness was choosing what to process and what to ignore, and to pay attention to what matters. I’ve always been interested in how selective our attention is and why.

How come I look at a room of people and see who has gone grey, whilst my partner sees what trainers they are wearing? Why, when we are out walking, do I notice the birds whilst my friend sees the dogs? And why, when things are difficult, do we get stuck on the problems not the solutions? We can learn to focus our attention on what matters most.

Lessons for everyone

These young people may have many worries. But already they have many useful lessons to give their younger selves.

Other young people would find these lessons easier to hear, as they come from those they can relate to. But maybe we should all learn from these lessons and look after our well-being by starting to ignore that which doesn’t do us any good.