You can relay a single 140 character message to your 16-year-old self. What do you say?

In My Humble Opinion
101

Don’t join the army, go to college, dont be afraid of rejection, work hard in all aspects of your life, dont waste your potential.

102

I am stuck with this conundrum. The most important message would be to tell myself to prevent my then girlfriend from going on a family trip in March two years later. She was killed by a drunk driver during that trip.

But if that never happened then I would have made much different choices in life. I would not have done certain work that has proven very beneficial scientifically. I would not have left the US and moved overseas. And I would never have met the now Mrs Iggy.

I could come up with a text message for either option. But I do not think I could bring myself to send it.

103

16, eh?

“Don’t let Mum run your life. Change schools, she’ll not really throw you out. Don’t go to uni until you want to. PS, you’re not really fat”

Not sure if I’d really want to send it though. It would have meant some more massive arguments, then hopefully saved me an awful two years and quite a lot of needless debt, but who knows after that?

104

Set priorities. Stick up for yourself. Some people love melodrama more than friendship or fairness; surround yourself with positive people not false or vicarious friends. Have faith. Don’t work so hard. Don’t feed trolls. Sleep more. Be grateful. Chat more and talk less. Do what you love.

105

Avoid carbohydrates, don’t start smoking, move far away from family, some day you can get a sex change.

106

So sorry for your loss.

I don’t think the question is about taking some action to change history because you know the outcomes. It is about being able to trust information if the information came from a very trusted source, and what could be better than from yourself. It is more to the point of would you have accepted this information and made the change? Often youth and inexperience doesn’t allow us to take what might be good advice. But in reality, we are all given mostly good advice from family and school growing up. This is told to every generation, but few follow it. Even now, you are told to eat better, exercise more, and save more money. But the vast majority of adults still don’t do these things and neither do young people.