The thing that comes only with age is: to not give a fuck.

When we learn that it doesn't matter we can all be little old people who are purple mohawk headed, wearing clashing neon adidas jumpsuit with zebra primted boas.

The sunk cost fallacy is a very easy way to get stuck being miserable.

Sometimes a drastic change might be painful at the time but will be much better for you overall.

To just invest in broad index funds instead of trying to play the stock market.

Bogleheads

Brushing teeth regularly, and flossing , is more important than I ever realized.

I'm a perfectionist and I realized I've been making life too hard for myself. Choosing a low bar for success but keeping the ceiling high has felt like a much healthier approach.

People just don't care about you that much, if you go into the street wearing nail polish as a a male presenting person no one will care if you don't act weird about it. Same thing for shaving your legs.

Family might care though, what helped me was understanding that I spend a few days per year with my family maximum, but I spend that whole time with myself. So who cares what they think be yourself.

This helped me start transitioning at 19

"Fake it till you make it" doesn't mean pretend to be happy until you are happy. I committed to a relationship I wasn't happy in, a career I wasn't happy in, and hobbies I wasn't happy doing, all because I wanted the approval of others. A divorce, career change, and hobby swap made me much happier.

I was never going to "find myself" and so I should have just gone to college with my friends for computer science and made the good money when jobs were easier to get even though I had no interest at all in it. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz. Now I'm a worthless schmuck in a factory living in someone's garage paying their mortgage in rent prices.

All my interests are hobbies, some of them even too expensive for me to do lol they're nothing you can monetize.

The things that don't kill you, do not always make you stronger, but leave you wounded forever.

• Any work or study done during an all-nighter is a waste.

• If you meet someone and all they do is talk about themselves, they won't be a good friend.

• Nobody really cares how you look or what you wear. And anyone who does has bigger issues they would rather not deal with.

That it doesn't matter what other people think of me as long as I'm happy.

Your high school diploma. Nobody ever asks for it. No job I have ever held has asked for proof that I completed high school which I didn't. My last job had a class they wanted me to take at a night school and that's when they realized I didn't have it after 7 years of competent, exceptional work, so they just shrugged and got me in there anyways

Your own happiness is more important that somebody else’s happiness.

Not to say you shouldn’t be nice or help people, or invest in other people’s growth.

But don’t do it to the detriment of your own.

You can just ask people out. You can just ask to kiss someone. I was in my mid 20s when someone told me the first one, and late 20s when someone told me the second one. Dating got a lot easier after each revelation.

At 50 I learned I’d been tying my shoes wrong my entire life.

https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

That there's a opensource version of reddit!!

Not too late but later than I should have:

• To seek professional mental health help
• To understand that Bisexuality really exists. Growing up and in my teens in media and pop culture it’s seemed that you either were gay or straight, no other option.

Compound interest.

Relationships can be anything you want them to be. I wish I spent less time trying to figure out if someone liked me and just tried to have fun with everyone I met.

Stoicism. The philosophical ideas of how to live a purposeful and good life.

Manage your finances. Know where every penny goes. Budget as best as you can - plan for all of the things you know you spend money on through a year. It doesn't mean you can't spend money on things you like, but it does mean that you know when you can afford it. It gives you confidence and control no matter how much you are making.

When someone is abusive or hurtful to you, 90% of the time it's not your fault. It's that there is something wrong or something broken in them. They are malfunctioning and it's necessary to understand that.

The other 10%.... Well, own that and fix your mistake.

But a very large majority of the time, it's them being broken and wrong.

That it's never too late!

Basic necessities arent a given and one should b grateful for em

That I have moderately severe to severely severe ADHD and I'm on the autism spectrum.

Makes functioning as an adult quite difficult.

My family is never going to return the favor. Should've gone to school instead of taking care of them.

Empathy, Hurt people hurt people.

Lying can get you ahead in the immediate, but then you’re a liar, and liars lose friends and alienate people.

It's OK to only do what you KNOW you are capable of doing. Too many people hurt themselves trying to push themselves too hard, when they just aren't ready yet.

Go to therapy.

Being a good person is a weakness in capitalist civilizations.

Take it sleazy. Not for everyone, but for some people the most productive way of getting stuff done is doing it with less effort. Don't go too fast and burn out

Probably would’ve been nice to know I was trans a few years younger but I started hormones at 20 as did a friend my age who came out at 16, so like it probably would’ve been less consequential than much.

The importance of studying. And related, calculus and how electricity works. Both would’ve saved me a lot of money to have learned 6 months earlier.

Also how to say no to someone trying to negotiate your boundaries and use your kindness to push you into a relationship. I should’ve walked away the second she said she wanted to negotiate my no and that she wasn’t going to give up on pursuing me. That situation fucked me up and wasn’t even the first time someone with insufficiently controlled bpd wound up pressuring me into romantic/sexual situations I wasn’t comfortable with by making it harder to say no than to give what they wanted.

Dad was not lying on top of mum to squash her.

No matter how much 6yr old me was complaining after entering their room early one morning.

you don't have to make a living from the thing you enjoy most in life, in fact it's sometimes better not to.