Ask HN: What would you tell your younger self 10 years ago?

Keep the faith. Keep your confidence. Realize that for success you'll have to do the same thing ten thousand times, and then you might be half-decent at it. Stay curious about other people and don't hesitate to break the ice. Build prototypes and demos of all the stuff you want to work on. Leave your demo applications online and maybe even showcase them in job interviews. For every 100 applications you send to jobs, maybe 4-10 will give you a callback, and maybe 1-4 will give you an offer. Prep for interviews like prepping for final exams, spend about 2+ weeks voraciously consuming all the mock/sample content you can find online (youtube). Make yourself an expert in a handful of things. Strive to surround yourself with ethical people who are driven to succeed and benefit others. Keep an eye out for cool hiking trails. Keep a daily logue of things you did. Keep a todo list of things you wish to accomplish. Imagine the ideal life, ideal surroundings, and ideal people in your surround and work backwards from the result. Avoid complaining and criticizing. Develop your empathy and compassion for all beings as frequently as possible. Meditate daily, for there are stains only meditation can clear away. Don't dwell too much on the past or on your troubles. Get excited and get happy for the outcomes you want. Find a few people you really admire and study their lives intensely. Prefer places to work where you get along with the people well. Invest in yourself. Write often. Get in the gym three times a week and sweat it out. It's okay to leave a disruptive situation. Remind people you love them and care about them. Don't let politics stress you out, don't play the game. Write more essays with a coherent thread or call back. Keep a list of good jokes that you add to as funny things happen. Don't shirk away from being in control of a situation, don't lose your kindness and your calm even when you want to beat your chest and scream at the absurdity, it'll all flow more smoothly with some discipline. Stay stretchy. Alternate use of left hand and right hand and stay ambidextrous, you'll prevent nerve damage. Get out into the open air. Beep at drivers who are asleep at the wheel. Pray for love and safety and freedom for yourself and others every morning and every night. When meeting someone new, get their contact information. When in a really good mood, reach out to others. Mix your toothpaste with activated charcoal (whitening++). Mix your coffee with activated charcoal (tummy ease++). Don't wait for a hand-out, perfect yourself, create value. Keep applying to jobs even when you have interviews lined up. Follow-up with all your interviews even when it seems that one is a certainty -- you can leverage offer letters against one another for a better outcome. Rather than demand a rate, say "make an offer." Edit parts of a lease you find unsavory and have the landlord or their rep initial them before signing. Every contract is editable, is a negotiation. Things happen once or not at all. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain in approaching new people. Learn how to sell stuff. If a friend's situation seems weird or strange or creepy, find out why, don't wait for tragedy to strike. Avoid smoking, there are cleaner ways to get interesting substances into your body. Avoid blaming others, take responsibility even when it's clearly not your fault, this can lead to healthy laughs and joyful perplexity. Focus on landing a good job, building a passive income stream, and taking good care of your psyche and spirit. Make efforts to increase the prosperity for yourself and others. Learn new instruments and record the melodies you invent on your phone or audio recorder, listen to them weeks or months later. Buy in bulk. Focus your energies like a laser beam on what will be of long-term benefit. Don't be selfish. Think Big.

Would you even want to tell yourself advice learned from ten years of experience?

If I learn from the past ten years and then go back and tell myself two outcomes are possible. My past self listens and changes my future self or my past self doesn't listen and then end up who I was anyway. If my future self changes then they no longer exist to tell my past self and a time paradox is set up where they can't tell my past self advice.

With all that has been gained by the present self would you really want to give that up?

If I had told myself that I can live a life free of afflictive emotions, emotions of attachment, free of ego ten years ago, I would never have learned how to do this or how it is possible.

Re 7: But other people also aren't side characters. Especially, your children aren't. (Your wife isn't, either, and neither are your co-workers.)

I needed that to some degree ten years ago. I needed it a lot worse 20 years ago.

1. Learn about investing and invest. 2. Publish early, publish more. 3. Exercise more. Eat more healthy. 4. Don't take things for granted. The world can change and will do. 5. Start a startup, don't be afraid of failure and cling to a safe job. Opportunities are a plenty. Don't be too risk averse.