what??

I would tell myself it would never be possible to please my mother. She would never appreciate my good points. She would just compare me to my sibling and point out where I was lacking.

I would also tell me not to bother with men who tried to change me.

In fact I would tell myself not to go to the pub the night I met my ex, my friend's friend. He was incredibly controlling, unfaithful, very critical and put me off relationships for ever. Plus he screwed me up so much I ended up losing my job.

I would tell my teenage self: " Don't assume that everyone else is smarter, cooler, more confident than you are. You are attractive, you are clever, and if you show an interest in other people they will like you and want to spend time with you. There is no rule book that they all have access to and you don't - everyone's bluffing and blundering their way through this. Don't be taken in by pretentions and bullshit. Take your place in the world - always walk into a room as if you have a right to be here!"

Not to become a parent at such a young age.

I would want to tell myself to stand up to my mother in my early twenties and not wait until I was nearly fifty to do so. Also, to have stuck by my sister when we were both young instead of being persuaded to see her through my mother's eyes.

My excuse then that as I couldn't get a student's grant my parents were paying for my further education, and I didn't think it right then to accept their money and then run counter to their wishes. And I still don't think that would have been right.

So if I had done as I pleased then, my life would certainly have been very different, as I wouldn't have the education I have.

Stop trying to please everyone but myself. Have more confidence in my own abilities. Live my own life and not be influenced by others. I could carrying and on.x

I would ask my younger self to try to always be kind. What goes around comes around. Be true to myself, I am good enough, I don't have to impress anyone. Don't sweat the small stuff and it is nearly all small stuff.

I would ask my younger self to try to always be kind. What goes around comes around. Be true to myself, I am good enough, I don't have to impress anyone. Don't sweat the small stuff and it is nearly all small stuff.

I would ask my younger self to try to always be kind. What goes around comes around. Be true to myself, I am good enough, I don't have to impress anyone. Don't sweat the small stuff and it is nearly all small stuff.

I would ask my younger self to try to always be kind. What goes around comes around. Be true to myself, I am good enough, I don't have to impress anyone. Don't sweat the small stuff and it is nearly all small stuff.

I would ask my younger self to try to always be kind. What goes around comes around. Be true to myself, I am good enough, I don't have to impress anyone. Don't sweat the small stuff and it is nearly all small stuff.

I would ask my younger self to try to always be kind. What goes around comes around. Be true to myself, I am good enough, I don't have to impress anyone. Don't sweat the small stuff and it is nearly all small stuff.

I would ask my younger self to try to always be kind. What goes around comes around. Be true to myself, I am good enough, I don't have to impress anyone. Don't sweat the small stuff and it is nearly all small stuff.

I wouldn't change a thing, so I'd let my younger self go happily blundering on.

Except....I'd have picked unlucky 13 over my birthday number the day we got the five Lotto numbers back in 1994. The £1200 was very nice, but the £3 million might have been even better!

Like others - should have made more effort to follow my heart and wish I'd known that some people do inherit their parents' behaviours

Today I tend not to worry too much what others think, but back in those days I did worry and did what I thought I ought to do and not what I wanted to do

I would tel myself not to be in such a hurry to get married and have children. I've been happily married for 50 years so turned out ok, but I should have got to know myself better before I tied myself to one person.

School - I needed to ask when I didn’t understand, not to give up. I needed to be taught how to learn, everything had come so easily in primary school.
Home - My father deserved far more love and respect; my mother was not, as I thought, always right.

I would have advised myself to train for more than one career (always wanted to work in a library as well as being a teacher), to buy lots of properties when they were dirt cheap which I could have rented out for my pension fund, to divorce earlier and look for a second relationship which was better than the first.

I cannot say, because any choice I would have made might have meant I no longer had my beautiful daughter and DGC, so, I wouldn't change a thing, despite some of the horrors I lived through!
The only advice I would give is to don't sweat the petty stuff, and don't pet the sweaty stuff!

I'd say for crying out loud don't spend so much time on bloody housework!!!

The same as mollie but in different words: ‘if you spend all your time trying to please everybody you’ll end up pleasing nobody.’

I’d have said to myself as a teenager in bobby socks in convent school at 18, if your mother won’t/can’t tell you about the birds and the bees find, beg, someone who will.

krazykat - at one with you there!

Study more at school and be confident that you can achieve your dream.....to others I am sure they think I have had a good career but.....the if onlys have kicked in atv66 years old!

I would also add don't worry so much - many things aren't worth worrying about and you often can't change them anyway.
Many of the biggest challenges you face will be things to which you rarely gave a second thought.
It's not necessarily what happens to you that counts - it's how you deal with them up here (taps forehead) that makes all the difference.

I would have told myself to pay more attention at maths as it would be very useful.
Just because you are quiet it doesn't mean that you are worth less than a noisy person.
Don't feel ugly, one day hair like yours will be all the rage.
I would have liked to have learnt the art of small talk and diplomacy - and just because you have an opinion sometimes it's better to keep it to yourself.