To me, 12 years old:

Don’t hesitate. Push through your fears and accomplish all the things you were given. Have faith in yourself and remember to always focus on having fun. Don’t let the bad stuff make you forget about the good stuff. Spend all the time you can doing the most challenging things you can in life! Remember that you have an immense amount of love to give out to the world, so be sure to let other people see just how happy we can all be together. All those things that sound cool? Do them!

Backstory: I had a lot of opportunities growing up to do a number of different things, but every time they came up, I hesitated and the only one to lose out was myself. I’m incredibly happy with the life I live now, but I would certainly have pursued a lot of different things had I not hesitated when opportunities arose. It is this weakness where I have failed myself, even though through failure I have ultimately found success.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. And with hindsight being 20/20 comes the reality that if you don’t hesitate, you may burn out that much quicker. So, mindfulness and balance become key. Nobody can truly know which leap of faith is the good leap of faith, and which leap of faith is maybe not the wisest leap of faith. I still wonder about the alternate realities of my life and where I’m at, but nobody can guess where those would have ended up in the long term. Had I started a business at 12 when my friends and I were burning to do so, who knows? Had I started a business at 14-16 with other friends when they were desiring to do so, who knows? Would I have been able to? Just as the future is hard to guess, so is the past.

So the point is, your own natural inclination to hesitate is both right and wrong. Mine seems to have been right every time I’ve hesitated but I still wish I hadn’t all the same.

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