Advice to my 16 years old self!

Always wanted to write something on this. I always felt that during our teens, school or collage days we aren’t taught or even told anything about how our world outside these academics would be, how we are supposed to handle many situation which could come by, never made to realise what are our positives and how we can we take some untraveled path to achieve them.

I am very sure these which I said above aren’t something which could be part of our academic learning. But surely should have been inculcated in us by teachers and parents at very early stage. Maybe it’s never happened due to very limited purpose to their life towards their wards. Whether it comes to studies or ambitions, they were always limited to whatever they know in these matters, and in many case these were never passed on to us.

At our homes, mom’s spend a huge amount of time with us, but they are either being ignorant or limited to knowledge they get and ends up just comparing the academic marks and awards kids achieve in school or collage. And when in comes to dad, due to a lot of friction due to age, the kid and the dad never talks about adult world or about his ambitions to parents. Maybe this have changed now and more and more parents are being open to their kids and helping them.

Here are very brief advice which comes to my mind now for my 16 year old self.

1. Keep dreaming and exploring how to achieve them — I had lot of dreams. Dreams about what I should be when I grow up, dream about something to create which could be used by millions of people. But during my teens I didn’t know how to explore the possibility of achieving them. Never went past the limited people I met to talk about it, and in many cases never talked about it to anyone. Maybe I should have explored and taken more steps to achieve that. This could have done easily by talking to more people and asking for help and suggestion. Maybe I would have become a Pilot if I did so :)

2. Learn about Money — Money doesn’t always mean a lot of cash to spend, but more to have a comfortable current life and planning for future. This was never told to teenage me. We as a kid had always read about lot of rich people, but was never told about how they achieved it. Never mentioned about a hard earning good person making a comfortable life and how he achieved it. Maybe this should have been part of things dad talked to a kid during his teens or part of real social studies class we attended. One way or other it would have been good if a teenage was made to understand the meaning of hard earned money and how to manage it — and if possible experience it too by doing some sort of short term jobs.

3. Never be afraid of failure — I still remember the day in my school when I went to stage to represent myself for school election and ended up stammering due to fear of failure and facing people. It went bad and it took a lot of time for me to realise that failure is fine, it was just a stepping stone to the person whom I am. Maybe I wouldn’t have taken this much time to realise this if I was told that Failures are fine and its a good way to celebrate it too.

4. Read more non-academic books — I now consider books to be the best medium for self learning and motivation. As I school going kid I should have read more often and more meaningful content. Maybe due to the circle we were in during our academic times, we were never made to realise the importance of non-academic or non-fiction books. Books adds a ton of knowledge which could have helped in me in all the above points too in much early stage.