The advice we would give our ten year old selves is remarkably similar to the advice we crave all these years later…
We are great at giving out good advice to those we love just generally not to ourselves.
This was my realisation whilst running a networking event at Climate KIC for women in green tech start-ups recently.
Often we hear the advice that we should be kinder to ourselves and think of the advice we would give our best friend if she was struggling with the problem we face. It sounds so simple.
The exercise I planned was aimed at trying to explore what advice we should be giving the future generations of women and what support they need to succeed.
This is related to one of my passions of finding ways to encourage more girls into STEM industries and help them realize that STEM careers can be fun and rewarding. So I thought asking this group of women to think back to what they wish they had realised sooner could highlight the keys to engaging the next budding female astronauts or engineers or those that excel at solving problems and want a career in research.
Instead the realisation for everyone in the room that day was that we all still need to listen to our own advice and be kinder to ourselves.
How much can we impact the world by leading the way and showing the coming generations how to support themselves better?
The advice we would give our ten year old selves (or what we wish we had known aged ten) is great advice however only a few of the points we could all agree on we truly believed and lived our lives by even today. The list is obviously aimed at ten year old girls but most is as relevant to ten year old boys too or even 30 year old boys I believe this list transcends a lot of todays society.
I would go as far as to say I do not know anyone male or female who can honestly say they do not sometimes struggle with any of the things on this list. We are all human after all but I do find it amazing that we always have the right advice for everyone, other than when we are standing in front of the mirror!
