What advice would you give your older self?

I was chatting to one of my kids buddies who was running their own business for the first time and they asked me a very genuine question.

“With all that I have learnt along the way, what advice could I give them?”

This was a really good question to ask because just like any other ‘older‘ (a very loose definition!) person I have accumulated a collection of valuable life experiences and learnings from my many different situations, which you would hope could benefit someone younger and with less experience.

I heard a series of interviews on the radio over the past few days with a similar theme: “What advice would you give your younger self?”

This is a clever thing to ask because it is all about passing on wisdom that has been learnt along the way and trying to crystallise this into solid pieces of advice.

The only problem with all of this is that it is a little bit too retrospective and doesn’t do a whole pile for us!

Ok, we did learn things that might help those with less experience and we can give theoretical advice to our younger selves. Brilliant!

Instead how about asking that younger person with all of their freshness, different perspective, raw energy and enthusiasm to give us valuable advice about our lives and then apply our accumulated wisdom and knowledge and then do a totally different exercise…