Once I became a self-help “expert”

Once I became a self-help “expert,” people started asking me, “If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self?” My answer is always the same: “ You don’t have to be perfect.” (Though if I could give my younger self a second piece of advice, it would be, “In fifteen years, that $29 tongue piercing is going to cost you $700 in dental work, so you might wanna reconsider this decision.”) Unfortunately, we don’t live in a Robert Zemeckis movie, so Young Me will never receive Future Me’s hard-won counsel on the dangers of perfectionism and metal mouth jewelry. But I bet that Current You could benefit from at least one of these lessons, so I’ve taken the liberty of drafting a letter. 【微創植髮】什麼是FUE植髮? 有何好處? - Feel free to tear it out and mount it in your locker, cubicle, or bathroom, or inside your underwear drawer—wherever you’re likely to see it on a daily basis. (I really hope you open your underwear drawer on a daily basis, BTW.) And do share it with anyone else in your life who loses sleep over their GPA, their colleagues’ opinions, or being the glue that holds an entire team together. Dear Young Me, Doing your best—performing to your maximum capacity, always—is not sustainable. You’re going to have bad days and slow days and hungover days, and if you beat yourself up over all of them and don’t allow yourself time to recuperate, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening one day in oh, say, 1997. Barely a semester into your freshman year of college, you will get sick. It will start as a common cold, sinus infection–type thing, and despite your burning forehead and throbbing glands, you will soldier on. You will show up for every class and do all the reading and turn the papers in on time. You will remain convinced that it’s possible to get straight A’s at one of the country’s premier universities just like you did at your tiny public school in the thirty-ninth largest state in the union. You will keep setting your alarm in the morning and studying late into the night. (You’ll also HANDWRITE all of your English lit essays before typing them up, because computers are still new to you and you’re a glutton for punishment.)