Written in 2014.
To my younger self,
Please understand that working hard isn’t enough. You’re going to have to accept recognition for what you’ve done, and make sure that people understand how awesome you are. Recognition is a good thing, even if you’re embarrassed. Learn to smile and say “thank you”. Don’t let anyone else take credit or assume credit for your hard work. Work hard now, so that you can get where you want to go. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want, then demand it. Don’t be afraid to set high goals and reach for them. How else are you going to get there?
Younger self, it’s okay to argue your point and stand your ground. You don’t always have to be so nice to everyone. It’s okay if people don’t like you. Not everyone is going to like you anyway.
Follow your dreams. Even if they’re scary. You won’t regret that semester studying abroad in high school. And you won’t regret taking that really cool internship. Travel before you have kids, and don’t rush into it. Don’t be afraid to take risks. You have an amazing support system, and should take chances to fly.
To my younger self — get off your butt and keep exercising. Make sure you get enough sleep, and stop drinking the stupid Coca-Cola. Keep the weight down. You don’t want to have to deal with losing it later.
Younger self, you did a great job taking care of the kids, and having them so early. That was a great plan. You also did everything you could for your parents. Know that it will be a really rough road ahead, but it will be worth every second of it, and when it’s over, you’ll miss them.
Younger self, you did a pretty good job. I’m proud of how well you set me up, and how far along you got, even not knowing so many things, and having so many lessons to learn.
The line I’d underline now
Of everything in that letter, the first paragraph is the one that turned out to matter most, and it’s the one I’d say loudest to anyone reading this.
Working hard isn’t enough.
Not because hard work doesn’t count — it’s necessary. But it is not sufficient, and a great many capable people spend a decade discovering that the hard way. They assume that doing excellent work is the job, and that recognition arrives as a natural consequence. It doesn’t. Nobody is keeping score on your behalf. There is no committee reviewing who deserves what.
The work and the recognition of the work are two separate tasks, and only one of them finishes when the project does.
This lands differently for women, and I’d be dishonest not to say so. Waiting to be noticed is behaviour that gets actively trained into girls, and then penalised in adults. And the same self-promotion that reads as confidence in one person reads as arrogance in another. That is not a reason to stay quiet. It is a reason to be deliberate about it, because the alternative is having your work attributed to whoever spoke about it first.
I wrote separately about the Girl Scout Gold Award — arguably harder to earn than Eagle Scout, and almost nobody has heard of it. Same achievement, different amount of noise. That gap isn’t an accident and it isn’t only about scouting.
What I’d add now
Three things the 2014 version didn’t know to say.
Get comfortable being disliked earlier than you think you need to. The letter says it’s okay if people don’t like you. What it doesn’t say is how much time and money you will spend avoiding that outcome before you believe it. Almost every expensive mistake I’ve watched an owner make — keeping the wrong employee, keeping the wrong client, not raising prices — traces back to not wanting to be the person who caused someone’s discomfort.
Ask for the specific thing. “Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want” is right and useless. The version that works is precise: this contract, this introduction, this rate, by this date. Vague asks get vague answers, and then you conclude that asking doesn’t work.
Build the room before you need it. The letter mentions an amazing support system, and I had one. What I’d add is that professional support doesn’t assemble itself the way family does. A handful of peers who’ll tell you the truth is something you construct deliberately, usually years before the moment you badly need it.
What to do with this
Write your own. Not as an exercise in nostalgia — as a diagnostic.
Whatever you find yourself telling your younger self is almost always advice you still need. The things we wish we’d known are rarely fully learned; they’re things we now understand intellectually and still get wrong under pressure. My letter says to accept recognition and ask for what I want. I have had to relearn both roughly annually ever since.
That’s the useful part. The letter isn’t for the person you were. It’s a list of the places you’re still weakest, written in a form gentle enough that you’ll actually read it.
A note added later: “keep the weight down, you don’t want to have to deal with losing it later.” I did have to deal with it later — more than 210 pounds over seven years. My younger self was right, and it was also survivable. Both things are true.
