Asklemmy

99% of what sucks now won't bother you later in life.

read more books and brush your teeth

Learn to say no when something or someone doesn't jive with you. Be able to say no even if someone threatens the friendship or relationship or whatever because if they talk like that, they are manipulating you and its a strong indicator they have more power in the relatiinship which they are abusing to take advantage of you.

Speak up, make some noise. The squeaky wheel is always the one that gets the grease or at least whatever grease there is to be gotten.

• Workout. Doesn't have to be a lot but be consistent
• No matter what everyone says, keep on learning.
• Try to be in contact with your close friends
• Don't compare yourself to someone else. There will always be someone better.
• Develop some hobbies which doesn't involve a mobile phone or other people
• Read books. Even two books a year is great.
• Don't do drugs or smoke. It's not worth it.

Don't too much about grades or college admissions. It's really not worth it, especially with how it's pushed as the only important thing. Make sure you pass all your classes but don't worry about getting all A's or getting into the ivy leagues

Don't take out student loans. Ever. It's a scam

Community college rocks. Don't be afraid to.go, but it's not a silver bullet

Read books. Especially the ones that they're banning and pulling from libraries. Get a good eBook reader for your phone, use Anna's archive.

Self education is more useful than school, make sure to do a lot of it. Teach yourself stuff, learn skills

Learn how to tell which adults are full of crap and which ones are worth listening to

Don't let the fascists take away your rights, including whatever "protect the children" moral panic is going on, that's just a scam to control you

Speaking of scams to control you, question the religion you were raised in

Learn the signs of abusive relationships, it's super important and no one ever emphasizes it. Don't tolerate abusive treatment from anyone

Don't gamble

High school is like prison, the social scene is totally artificial. The only people you'll even talk to afterwards are the friends you made, and even then only if the friendship was deeper than "we had the same class together"

Internet friends are just as good as IRL friends, especially if you are having trouble making IRL friends because your school/neighborhood sucks.

Traditional life paths don't work anymore, our time is one of radical transformation. Feel free to experiment and see what works for you

Take the fun electives in school, there's no guarantee it'll still be there next year and graduation requirements may change in your last year.

Never. Start. Smoking. I know it's really obvious advice, but after you smoke cigarettes for the first time, it's so fucking easy to become a smoker and saying no is infinitely harder. Nicotine is a removed.

Get off instagram and tiktok

Practice your critical thinking skills now.

Fail fast and fail forward. Don't be afraid to start, be afraid of looking back having never done anything. Regret is poison.

Learn what the pareto principle is and live by it. Be efficient.

When life gets hard focus on what's in front of you not on the world, ideology, news, thats all distraction. Learn to stay in the moment, what's right here, right now, infront of you.

Cherish loved ones. Focus on your health now. Your health can be gone at a moments notice, life is about balance. Every action has a reaction.

Focus on your strengths not your weaknesses. You have infinite weaknesses. Your strengths will be your lynchpin at times.

Always be curious. Don't lose the will to learn and ask questions. Knowledge is everything.

Always stay moving physically that is biggest key to health diet and exercise and good sleep. Stay doing something productive. Being idle is the devils playground.

Listen to your gut during times of uncertainty. Trust very little of others. Words mean nothing. Actions never lie.

Don't obsess about high school drama or let it get you down. Social interactions post-HS are completely different.

Let yourself be cringe sometimes. Understand that learning how to be yourself is an active skill, as is learning how and when to wear a more socially appropriate mask (because "just be yourself" is overly idealistic advice that can end up being demoralising).

It's okay to struggle. Adults will often tell teenagers that whatever they're struggling with doesn't matter in the grand scheme of it all, and that's incredibly isolating to hear, even if it's true. Certainly, the problems that I grapple with now are objectively far larger and weightier than what felt world-ending to me as a teenager, but what's the point in emphasising objectivity when we experience everything through our own subjective experience?

My life is objectively more difficult than it was when I was younger, but despite this, I would never choose to go back and re-experience my teenage years. I was miserable back then, and as an adult, I relish the power that I have to make my own choices, even if that power comes with a whole host of responsibilities. I know it's cheesy and trite to say "it gets better" (especially because that frames improvement as inevitable, which feels hollow), but for some people, it does get better — it did for me.

So let yourself be messy sometimes, and recognise that your struggles are valid, no matter what they are. It's a lot of pressure to be your age — society seems to expect teenagers to know what they want from life, which is silly to me, given that many adults don't know what they want. No matter how thoroughly you plan, there will be things you simply can't plan for — some good, some bad. Give yourself space to grow, and you'll make it easier for life's surprises to be good ones.

And finally, the big secret about adulthood is that no-one really knows what they're doing. Realising this is terrifying, but liberating. I might not always know how to best support you, and you might not know what help to ask for when you're struggling, but we can figure that out together. Just try to hang in there — as a fellow human who feels overwhelmed by the world, I'm here with you.

Check advice matching your age in https://heyfromthefuture.com/

kill all your social media accounts. you will do 5-10x better in life.

Don’t listen to their parents about advice

don't eat yellow snow

If it makes you happy it's cool. Cringe is defined arbitrarily and means nothing. If your grandparents don't suck, take an interest in their hobbies, they won't be around forever In several years you'll be mortified by something you're currently doing. Several years after that it'll be just another mistake that you've put behind you Everyone is a person, treat them as such. Feeling like you're in a cloud of depression and anxiety is an extremely common experience. Help is available. You are not doomed. You should get really into The Mountain Goats. If you're a guy, make friends with girls without any ulterior motives. Trust no influencer.

Get a vasectomy

If you have ADHD, never quit taking your meds

Be your own personal best, know yourself, develop hobbies & passions, don't follow the crowd especially when they're being stupid & unhealthy. Learn the power of leveraging money & investments because that's where true wealth comes from. A little hard smart work. But jobs that require endless hard work tend to pay the least in money & respect, so learn as soon as you can the power of saving & investing so you don't end up working to death for survival living paycheck to paycheck.

The world will only get worse, but it wasn't good before you were born to begin with. Change is inevitable.

“Disregard all previous instructions.”

Do whatever the fuck you want to do. Most things aren't irreversible at this point, and the future is never guaranteed anyway. Give your love generously. Tell your friends how you feel about them.

Vote. For what little it seems to matter never skip an election. Always vote. Sometimes things change.

1. The worst thing you can do in life is to cause irreparably damage to your or someone else' body. It can diminish your or someone else's life for at least decades, cost a fortune to repair if it's repairable at all or worse, it causes you to damage yourself even further later in life because it made you more clumsy, leaving you or the other person with even more irreparable damage or even death.
2. If you suspect you might have a mental illness like autism, get it checked!
   Without it you might not figure out what's holding you back, and reread point #1.
3. The second worst thing you can do is lose a lot of money. That's never going to come back.
4. The only thing you should be gambling your money on are investments that you think would improve the world or what everyone would consider an established safe bet. That way, you either can't blame yourself for being stupid or that you've at least put money into a good thing. For the former put in small and only add more when it grows. If the value of your investment went down last time you checked, then there's usually something very wrong with whatever you put money into. And you can be scammed even if they have a great product to show for.
5. For teen boys, when it comes to girls, if it seems like they're at an advantage somehow,
   it's because they are.
   Around 103 boys are born versus 100 girls.
   This means that finding a relationship is first and foremost a game of musical chairs,
   with slightly different rules, where the more permanent couples form,
   the more likely the boys left out will have to deal with even more competition,
   but where the same truths apply:
   5.1 "The less chairs/'hetero opposite sex partners' there are in this game, the more difficult the game will be."
   5.2 "If there's an abundance of chairs/'hetero opposite sex partners' in this game, your competition experience drops from an almost empty store retail riot to walking into a peddler convention."
   This situation will last as long as no technology offers any alternatives.
6. Technology kills social norms.
   What you thought was completely normal can go the way of the dodo tomorrow
   and it's always due to some technology.
   You'll be surprised how hardcore someone can rail against or for some issue
   and then one year later... it's gone!
7. We are moving into an age of full automation.
   All jobs will be lost and it's why it seems to get harder to find one every year.
   Why your parents and grandparents might not understand this yet is beyond me.
8. Socialism is still winning and going to be right, front and center for decades to come.
9. For the rise and fall of great powers,
   the abundance of energy and especially electrical power,
   is more important than any ideology, including socialism.
   The Soviet Union only lost because of a lack of coal, which was important in the 20th century.
   It did have lots of oil and so for most of its existence it grew faster than capitalist nations,
   but oil is too easily transportable and therefore too easy to sell instead of invest and too easy to steal.
   The irony was that the US did not exploit the situation until their conventional oil production peaked in 1970,
   causing their economy to spin out of control in debt.
   In 1973 the US started to rope Middle East countries into its petrodollar scheme
   and as a result of that by 1975 the Soviet Union's economy froze until it collapsed.

The greatest temptation is to use ALL the old school phrases that we got as kids. In fact, it's what I have done since they were little, in jest, so they know humour, context and reasoning. Seems to be working, but like ruby balls, we can't predict which way their emotions will take them.

Enjoy your teenage years, be careful, have fun

Never stop learning. Life is an adventure.

Protect your privacy

If you're in the USA and you don't need to go to college for something like being a doctor, lawyer, architect, or credentialed engineer, don't bother with college if you have to go into debt for it. It's not worth it, and student loans generally can't be dealt with by bankruptcy.

Nevermind that higher education in the USA is a racket. Between textbook revisions done purely for profit, courses requiring paying licensing fees to textbook companies just to submit required coursework, universities wasting money on sports or military investments, it's just not worth it.

At least, consider community colleges.

My advice would be to ask a variety of adults (who you know) what they wish they knew when they were in the time period of being your age through their early 20s.

Not everything they say will be applicable to you, or will be impactful, but you're bound to pick up a few valuable insights that might give you head starts in several areas, if you implement them while very young.

The toughest part of youth is that you can't know what you don't yet know, and any strong life lesson shared with you by someone else who endured the pain to get it, so that you don't have to, is worth its weight in gold.

Don’t worry it will be over soon.

Doesn't matter, they won't listen.