(Hint: Great Advice for Any Age)

 

by Jessica

One of the most illuminating questions we’ve asked the women of the Pro-age Revolution is, “If you could go back to your 24-year-old self and give her one piece of advice, what would it be?”

Their answers have been so beautiful and inspiring, and they are showing how we gain so much amazing insight, perspective, and joy as we age.

So much of their advice was about happiness and gratitude and feeling good. It’s really been making me reflect on how much more I know about pleasure and happiness now that I’ve got a few decades on my younger self.

But it all comes down to the idea that: It’s all going to be okay.

Even women who have gone through really tough stuff as they got older developed the strength and resiliency to not only endure those harsh times, but to evolve, grow and learn from them.

So many of us wish we could go back in time and tell our younger selves not to worry so much about what will happen—to just let life unfold.

And the great thing about that? It’s still true. When I catch myself worrying about the decades ahead, now I have enough experience behind me to remind myself that I didn’t need to worry then—so I don’t need to worry now, either.

There’s no clock we’re supposed to be on, no schedule our lives have to match.

Everything happens at exactly the right time for us, and everyone’s version of “perfect timing” is different.

You are already so beautiful—just the way you are.

 

Almost every woman we spoke to talked about how stressed out they’d been in her 20s about fitting society’s beauty ideals.

Most of us spent a lot of time that decade worrying about whether we were thin enough, curvy enough, “pretty” enough, whether we fit the mold—and what that would mean for how our lives unfolded.

Without exception, all the women we interviewed told us that not only did they recognize their own unique beauty a bit later in life—but they looked back on their younger, insecure, worried selves and saw just how beautiful they always were.

Society’s myths about how we’re “supposed to look” to be beautiful are just that—myths. The older we get, the more time we have to practice shaking off those myths and recognizing what’s really true for us—including the fact that we are already beautiful.

What piece of advice would you give your 24-year-old self? Let us know in the comments below!