25 pieces of advice to each year of my past self
How I feel reflecting on the last 25 years…
Reflecting after more than 25 years on this earth, much to the encouragement of a close friend who brought up the idea (you know who you are 🥰). I was originally just going to list off 25 things I've learned but then I figured this has been done many times already by bloggers/youtubers.
But I realised, something that not many bloggers/youtubers try to do, is reflect on 25 lessons, by doing 1 inspired by each year of their life. I think that's a bit more interesting because it also shows some "flow" to how my thoughts have evolved with age. I appreciate all my email subscribers who continue to reply back to me or give me feedback. Something that really stood out, was people appreciating how vulnerable I am. I will continue to do my best (where I can) to be honest and vulnerable about my life if it helps others…
So I tried to do 1 piece of advice chronologically for each year of my life (the first 6 years are harder to recall, so I've asked my mum for help there through the use of photo albums she had of me as a baby).
This was a fun exercise for me, where I pretend myself today, is speaking to each year's past self. This is what I would say in "advice" to each past year to myself. Here they are below!
Life is precious ⏳
As a baby, my mum had me quite late, and so I never had much of what other kids had, which were parents who were as active, because they were older. You actually learn you have a knack for talking to older people probably because of this. All life is precious.
Walk before you run 🏃♂
You have a bad habit of trying to run everywhere, and you bump into lots of things. Just don't hurt yourself too much, especially when you get blackouts in the house.
Meet your best friend, and learn that you'll be ok even if you don't continue being best friends a decade down the line 🧑🤝🧑
My best friend and I were inseparable, or so we thought after 10 years. But for the times that we were friends, recognise he was always good-intentioned to you.
Actually learn to sleep in pre-school, and don't be scared of your nightmares 👻
A lot of those dreams will be nightmares, and you will continue to have these even today, but you shouldn't fear them. Sometimes it is the subconscious trying to tell you something, so it can be very useful.
Mum will delay taking you to kindergarten - you will blame mum for doing this without realising the big picture 🏫
You will feel stupid. That's ok. You need to stop comparing yourself to others. You don't learn until many years later why your mum did what she did.
You will go to detention for reasons out of your control in kindergarten - don't take it too personally 😅
You make a mistake playing lego in the classroom when everybody is playing outside, and the kindy teacher will flip and send you straight to detention. You will feel humiliated staring at a wall in a year 6 classroom wondering why you were there as a 6 year old but that's ok too. In fact, you do many things that annoy teachers over the years, typically talking too much - but you still do that today... Learn to listen more.
Try to give music a chance - you don't last more than a month in violin/piano though... 🎹🎻
Sincerely, more time should have been given to music, but I can understand why I sucked in music. I much prefer listening than I do playing. My brain was just never wired that way. And I had a bad habit of never really listening to what my parents wanted me to do. I much preferred playing the Nintendo 64. You don't realise that gaming would become useful for stock picking until you start working full time - and you become a dedicated video games analyst more than a decade later.
Let go of the grudges you have on bullies - it's not worth it, and you often don't know what they're going through 🤝
You don't realise this now, but that kid who bullied you and some of your other friends was growing up in a broken family and had issues of his own. Try to be more understanding of this.
Learn to read more books - you're not as good as you think you are at English 📚
You start thinking you're a hot shot, but you actually neglect English for Maths, and you don't have any practice reading. This is probably why you will end up like a slug in future when reading. But actually, you just don't like reading novels, but you love reading the news. You will only know this >10 years later.
Learn good behaviour - you might get a school medal for it 🏅
This is probably the first time you decide there's a goal you want, which is to just get to be up on stage for something. You were never smart, but you were smart enough to get a good behaviour medal. Frankly, you become a bit of a teacher's pet...
Belonging to a group of nerds doesn't make you smart, and you will also have a girl crush on you for the first time (and you shouldn't have been so mean to her) 🤓
You start to associate with smart people because you think it will rub off on you. It doesn't work that way. You actually need to work hard. Also, a random girl will start liking you, and you will be very hot/cold towards her (but generally cold to her). Don't do this in future.
You're actually not as smart as you think you are, and you fail to get into any selective schools - it hurts but try to still enjoy year 6 📉
This is the beginning of a very painful ~2 years but a very good time to humble yourself and begin to reflect on where you went wrong and start fixing your weaknesses. You think selective exams are the be-all and end-all. Try to relax, because it isn't...
Starting in a new high school is brutal, and a massive learning curve. You will find it very difficult to make any good friends, but you do meet one of your best friends 🙉
You won't really feel like you belong in the school because you thought you deserved a better school, but you will only learn this many years later. But for the time being, you struggle and do very average in your exams. That's ok because you end up meeting one of your best friends in this school over table tennis for Wednesday sport. He still remains one of your best friends today, and he becomes important later in the story to bringing you back to church.
You will feel the accumulated embarrassment in your church over the past year (since everybody else goes to selective school) and you drop to your lowest point in life, leave the church and leave all your close friends, and fall into mental depression - but know that it's always darkest before dawn 🌩
You will forget that churches are not perfect and that there will, unfortunately, be a minority of bad people who will bring you down. You will feel stupid in front of your friends/aunties/uncles and you'll go into a mental breakdown that leads you to leaving the church and cutting yourself off from everybody. This is the lowest point of your life even though you think you're in a death spiral. The thing is, you don’t blame anybody for this but yourself. And you learn when returning back to church years later to be more welcoming and understanding to everybody so that this kind of bad experience in the church doesn’t happen to anybody else.
You won't exactly know what the turning point is, but you will be inspired to prove everybody wrong, and having a good Maths/English tutor can help you gain confidence in yourself again 👨🏫
You start adopting goals, because you learn the only way you can die is by proving people wrong. You spend the year working on yourself, picking up a clarinet, doing SRC, and getting better grades with the help of a Maths/English tutor who believe in you and make you start believing in yourself once again even if nobody else would outside your mum/dad.
Re-applying to a selective school, and finally making it into one, will remind you that the ~5 years of pain was worth it - you also learn how to think much longer term, and set goals 🙏
You like to think it was all your efforts in a dramatically short amount of time that let you passing the entrance test and moving to a selective school. The reality is, your mum/dad had been praying for you to change school and God was always working in the background and allowed it to happen. But something useful you do learn, is learning how to set long term goals and having the patience to stick by them longer than most people. You begin to even start having the ability to think over multiple decades in setting goals with your life tracker that you eventually start teaching university/high school students to adopt.
Another new school (more competitive), will test you academically and socially but you learn from it and will meet a great bunch of friends who inspire you all in different ways 🐍
You find first year of a selective school tough, with a new environment, new teachers, new peers, new challenges all a lot to absorb at once. You do generally ok but you're most thankful for a welcoming bunch of guys from b-quad. You end up meeting a lot of inspirational friends, and you get inspired in many different ways. Some will inspire you to study harder. Some inspire you to revisit your faith. Some inspire you to just be nicer.
You will do ok in HSC despite all the anxiety/stress - and you should learn to cherish the time in year 12 more since it won't come again 👨🎓
You probably wont enjoy year 12 as much as you would like, given your mentality of study, study, study with your group of friends. But you appreciate the group of friends you have since they always had your back and were very helpful and not competitive towards you. You also constantly debate what you wanna do in life, jumping from law, medicine, dentistry, optometry, etc. That's ok, you probably won't figure out what you want in life at 18 years of age.
You will be toughened (maybe even get severely sick) from working at Deloitte/studying commerce in UNSW at the same time - but you will come out much stronger from it and be battle tested going forward 💪
Nothing until now will have prepared you for balancing work and study at the same time. You might even fall really ill from the demands of travelling to all those audit clients and suffer a WAM hit. That's all right because you only learn from it and you improve from there. Just don't go overboard with the work, because you start veering dangerously into the workaholic territory that most people will know you for.
You will have a crush on somebody for a chunky period, and think if not her you would never meet somebody like her again - but you will attend church regularly because of her, and learn to let her go and attend church by yourself ⛪
You will not have the courage even after ~1 year of liking a girl, to ask her out because you're just scared of rejection. You need to learn to let that fear go. You also start going back to church for the wrong reasons, of wanting to get to know a girl. The beautiful irony is that you don't get the girl, but after 1 life changing month volunteering in Sri Lanka (you get lost in rural Sri Lanka without phone/water, but by some miracle you find your way back) and turn back to God. And you are going to church again out of a heart for wanting to go yourself, and not because of somebody else. This helps you with adjusting to the wide age and ethnic range of your current church.
You won't get invited to that many 21st bdays (working/studying constantly exacts a heavy toll on your relationships) - but it's ok, because you will meet your first mentor that changes the trajectory of your life significantly 🦉
At the time, you will feel like you will worry about why you don't have many invitations to 21st bdays. But you will realise it was worth it after you meet your first mentor. You realise you won a friend who ends up altering the way you look at the world, make decisions, and your career trajectory. And you learn something that a lot of university students struggle, which is learning to merge their passion with what they're studying. You will later realise this is a fair trade-off for invitations to bday parties. You also recognise it is more about the quality of friends rather than the quantity of friends anyway.
A hedge fund will give you a chance as the first graduate ever in their shop, and you will climb the steepest learning curve you've ever seen - you may get yelled at and make bad stock picks, but you will be ok because you've been hardened from your mental depression days - know that tough periods are seasons that too will pass 🚀
You will appreciate it was just a case competition with a judge in the finals that noticed you, which led you to this job. Of the ~100 applicants, somehow by God's will you stand out from everybody for whatever reason. Learn to be humble. The learning curve is intense and you will struggle with the movements of the positions in the fund because you are still finding your feet taking on the burden with the team in managing billions of dollars. Your first and second mentors will come in handy here for guidance to keep you sane. You start also going to City Bible Forum, as some of them will understand the pain of your office work/life balance. That's where you will learn to recognise that there are seasons in work, where you will be more busy and less busy. And that is ok.
COVID comes, but with it the best buying opportunity in the stock market in your life thus far, and you will need to be brave to pull the trigger to buy when there's blood on the streets 💉
Recognise that the world continues to move forward even when its darkest before dawn, and you will be remembered in your shop for some amazing stock picks (but you must remember to stay humble, as you may have been right for the wrong reasons). You are inspired by the power of prayer in any investment you make going forward. You also will spend more time learning to think more seriously about money and how it should be used. In fact, it is these reflections that eventually lead to much deeper thought into thinking about what the Bible says about money in terms of giving, saving, spending and investing, and you eventually get opportunities to speak to different churches about these thoughts you've had.
Finishing your last CFA exam and passing will end your education career for a chunky while and you should finally find time to cherish your friends/family/self more 🧘
You would've never thought ~3 years ago you would've reached this point. You will finally understand why God put you through the pain of balancing study/working back in UNSW, as you adapt to the CFA exams with a much greater sense of calm. And when you finish, you will look back on all the sacrifices you've once again made, giving up time with friends/family/holidays/etc to pursue the CFA charter. Whilst you may be sad for a while, you will accept you made this conscious decision. When all done and dusted, you will use time more wisely then to catch up with friends/family/self. The last one about self care is important as you run close to burnout from all the different roles in your life. You're ok and you won't burnout if you manage your time for more rest.
In the most unexpected time and most unexpected way, you will meet a girl, and fall in love again - learn to depend on God more each day 🥰
And once again your perspective on a lot of things in life will be challenged, but for the better, and you promise to work harder everyday to be a better partner. You become tested once again, going through the highs and lows. But you should be able to reflect back on everything that you've learned in the last 24 years that have led you to where you are and trust yourself. You recall a sermon back in 2016 about human relationships being like a dorito chip, with a corner being you, the girlfriend, and God. That triangle framework hopefully will serve you well, along with seeking advice/counsel from others.
As I reflect back on these last 25 years that have flashed before my eyes, I am reminded of the one constant throughout all this. For me, God was present in every moment. He had a plan for me, and in a lot of ways, it took many years to finally look back on the past to understand why I went through certain trials/sufferings.
I end with my favourite Bible verse that I believe has summarised the last 25 years of my life in a nutshell (I share this a lot, so people who know me should know the verses):
"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." - Romans 5:3-4
I challenge all my readers to reflect on what they would say to each year of their own past self! I would be curious to know what people write, and feel free to <reply> back to me in email (or leave a comment on my blog post below) if you do this exercise for yourself. I love learning about other people and would love to hear your stories! 😀
Thanks for reading,
Michael Li
