Lisa O
At 30, you think you’re just beginning to understand the world. You’re not wrong. But decades later, you realize how little you actually knew about what matters. You learn it the hard way — through loss, love, failure, and quiet mornings that suddenly make sense. Here’s what Boomers wish they could go back and whisper to their younger selves before life started speeding by.
Stop Rushing Through Everything
You’ll spend your thirties in constant motion, like something terrible will happen if you slow down. You’ll call it ambition, but most of it is fear — fear of being left behind, fear of not being enough. You’ll chase one milestone after another, thinking happiness waits on the other side. It doesn’t. It’s sitting in the chair you never sit in, watching the sun go down. You’ll understand later that the race was never real.
You Don’t Have to Prove Anything Anymore
The desire to be impressive will eat up entire years. You’ll measure yourself against friends, coworkers, and even strangers. You’ll keep trying to prove your worth through effort and titles. But it will never be enough — because you’re chasing a finish line that keeps moving. Nobody’s actually keeping score. When you’re older, you’ll realize that most people weren’t thinking about you at all; they were too busy judging themselves.
Take More Pictures — and Get in Them Too
You’ll take hundreds of photos of your kids, vacations, sunsets, and dinners. But almost none with you in them. You’ll say you hate how you look. You’ll say you’re too tired or not camera-ready. Then one day, your kids will go through old albums and ask why you’re never in them. You’ll have no answer. You’ll realize you erased yourself from the story. Take the picture. Don’t worry about the angle. Nobody will care about your wrinkles later.
Apologize Faster
You’ll let stubbornness ruin some of the most important connections in your life. You’ll replay arguments long after they end, defending yourself in your head instead of picking up the phone. The words you didn’t say — I’m sorry, I miss you, I was wrong — will echo louder than any fight ever did. Pride feels powerful in the moment, but it’s a cheap substitute for peace.
The Perfect Time Never Comes
You’ll keep waiting for a season when things finally calm down — when you’ll have enough money, enough clarity, enough courage. That season never arrives. You’ll blink and twenty years will be gone. The kids will be grown, your body will ache in new ways, and you’ll still be telling yourself, “maybe next year.” You’ll wish you’d gone to Italy when you could still walk all day. You’ll wish you’d said yes to the road trip instead of working overtime. Life doesn’t send invitations. You have to crash your own party.
Learn How to Rest Without Feeling Guilty
You’ll wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. You’ll measure your worth by productivity and treat rest like weakness. It will take decades to understand that the body isn’t a machine — it’s a friend asking for mercy. Rest doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you want to last longer. When you’re older, you’ll crave the afternoons you used to fill with busyness. You’ll realize that stillness isn’t laziness; it’s self-respect. You’re allowed to rest and still matter.
The People You Love Need Your Time, Not Your Advice
You’ll spend years trying to fix everyone. You’ll offer solutions, lectures, and wisdom no one asked for. Most of the time, they’ll just want your presence. Your grown kids won’t remember your instructions; they’ll remember the evenings you sat and listened without judging. They’ll remember how it felt to be seen, not corrected. Love doesn’t always need to speak. Sometimes it just needs to sit quietly in the same room and stay there.
Don’t Let Fear Make Your Choices
Fear will disguise itself as logic. It’ll convince you that playing it safe is responsible. It’ll whisper, “you’re not ready yet,” and you’ll listen. You’ll stay in jobs that drain you and relationships that shrink you. You’ll say no to things that might’ve changed your life. The funny thing is, fear doesn’t vanish when you avoid it — it grows. The risks you didn’t take will haunt you longer than the ones that didn’t work out.
You Can’t Save Everyone
You’ll love people who refuse to love themselves. You’ll give them second, third, and tenth chances. You’ll convince yourself that patience equals rescue. But saving someone isn’t the same as loving them — and sometimes, it’s the opposite. The hardest thing you’ll ever learn is when to stop trying. Not because you stopped caring, but because you realized you can’t carry another person’s pain without losing yourself in it.
The Body You Have Deserves Gratitude, Not Criticism
You’ll look in mirrors and see everything that’s wrong. You’ll compare yourself to people who don’t even look like that in real life. And then, decades later, you’ll look back and ache for that same body — the one you thought wasn’t good enough. You’ll wish you’d treated it with more kindness. That body carried you through love, work, laughter, and loss. It deserved to be celebrated, not punished.
Small Moments Add Up to a Life
You’ll be so focused on chasing “big” things that you’ll miss the small ones — and those will turn out to be the most important. The smell of morning coffee. The sound of kids running down the hallway. The light on the floor through the kitchen window. These are the moments you’ll crave later, not the promotion, not the vacation photos, not the new car. The small moments are the story. They’re the life you’ll remember when everything else fades.
Don’t Carry Other People’s Expectations
You’ll build a life around standards you never agreed to. You’ll buy the house because someone said it’s what success looks like. You’ll take the job because it impresses other people. You’ll spend years chasing approval you didn’t even want. Then one day, you’ll realize that all those expectations were just noise — and that the peace you’ve been searching for lives on the other side of disappointing a few people. Live the life that makes you feel alive, not the one that makes you look good in a photo.
Money Buys Options, Not Happiness
You’ll spend decades chasing stability and call it freedom. Then you’ll realize that once the bills are paid, money stops mattering as much as you thought. It’s useful, but it’s not fulfilling. You’ll meet people with less who smile more. You’ll meet people with more who never stop wanting. Security is good; obsession is poison. Spend wisely, save when you can, but never trade your soul for a bigger paycheck. You can’t buy your way to peace.
Let People See Who You Really Are
You’ll try to fit the mold — the perfect parent, the loyal employee, the agreeable friend. You’ll spend years pretending to have it all together. It’ll exhaust you. Then one day, someone will open up and you’ll realize how much strength it takes to be real. You’ll wish you’d been braver sooner. Authenticity doesn’t push people away. It draws in the right ones. Vulnerability is the quiet superpower you never realized you had.
You’ll Miss Ordinary Days More Than Anything
You think you’ll miss the big moments — the weddings, the trips, the celebrations. You won’t. You’ll miss the Wednesday nights when everyone was home, the half-finished conversations, the sound of the washing machine, and someone laughing in another room. You’ll long for one more ordinary day that didn’t seem special at the time. You won’t know they were the best days until they’re long gone. Slow down. Look around. You’re living the memories you’ll ache for someday.