IF I WERE YOU

Look up. We’re all staring down most of the time. The phone. The cold concrete. Try it. Look up. Some how life’s problems melt away.

Realise you wont live for ever

Until you find happiness within, you'll always be searching

Lost relationships

I'd walk away from any room where you have to shrink to fit.

Three years of being less so a relationship could stay comfortable.

I'd ask for the raise. The worst answer is the one you're already living with.

Five years underpaid because I assumed someone would notice.

I'd go easy on your younger self. They were doing their best with what they knew.

Most of my twenties spent punishing myself for my teens.

I'd quit the thing you're only doing because you started it.

Three more years on a degree I'd stopped believing in after four months.

I'd listen to understand, not to reply.

I won arguments with people I loved and lost the people.

I'd go to sleep. Whatever you're staying up to finish will be better tomorrow.

A promotion I nearly lost to a mistake I made at 3am.

I'd move somewhere that scares you once, before life makes it harder.

Nothing, and that's the point. I nearly didn't go.

I'd stop explaining yourself to people committed to misunderstanding you.

Hours of careful messages to someone who had already decided.

I'd learn to be bored without your phone. That's where your own ideas live.

Most of my thirties, scrolled away in five-minute pieces.

I'd let your kids see you fail at something and try again.

My son thought I'd never struggled, so he thought struggling meant something was wrong with him.

I'd ask the stupid question. Everyone else in the room is wondering too.

A year of nodding through meetings I didn't understand.

I'd say yes to the invitation you're about to turn down.

A decade of quiet weekends I told myself I preferred.

I'd keep one friend who knew you before you were anyone.

I let mine go when work got busy. Nobody since has known the old me.

I'd forgive them for your sake, not theirs. It doesn't mean letting them back in.

Nine years carrying a grudge the other person had forgotten.

I'd get the lump, the mole or the pain checked this week, not next month.

Six months of "it's probably nothing" that turned an easy fix into a hard one.

I'd take the photo with you in it.

Hundreds of family pictures and almost none that prove I was there.

I'd write down what you're grateful for when things are good. You'll need the list when they aren't.

A hard winter when I couldn't remember one good thing, though there had been plenty.