A Letter to My Younger Self

asmi ayurveda

āsME · Mindfulness · A Letter

August 30, 2026

Dear younger self,

I'm writing to you today, many years later, with knowledge you couldn't have had back then. You're just starting out — full of dreams, full of wishes, and yes, also full of fear of all that's to come. I won't tell you not to worry. I want to tell you what really happens.

It won't go as you imagined. There will be years when you feel like you're doing everything right — and yet something falls apart. There will be decisions that feel like defeats in the moment and only much later reveal themselves as the turning points on which everything else is built. You will lose people you thought were indispensable. You will find doors where you expected only walls.

There will also be easy times — more than you believe when you're in the midst of a storm. But the truth is: the highs and the lows belong together. You cannot have one without allowing the other. No one who later tells you about their maturity has evaded the truth.

What I wish for you is not a life without storms. It is the certainty I only now have: You will get through them. Not unscathed, but you will get through them.

A tree in a storm does not break because it is strong enough to resist the wind. It survives because its roots are deep enough to sway with it without losing its grip. I understood this too late. For a long time, I thought strength meant not being moved. Today I know: strength means being rooted enough to allow yourself to be moved and still stand firm.

These roots are not the grand plans or the perfect answers you wish for. They are the small, quiet things — the moment you consciously breathe in the morning before the day sweeps you away. The conversation with someone who sees you as you truly are. The taste of something familiar on a strange day. You will learn that happiness rarely lies in the big moments you are waiting for — but in the small ones you almost overlook while waiting for the big ones.

The Bhagavad Gita speaks of resting in one's own center, whether success or setback comes — Samatvam, equanimity. Not indifference, but an inner rootedness that does not depend on what is happening around you.

"Equanimity in success and failure — that is called Yoga." Samatvam, Bhagavad Gita

You won't always have the answers from the beginning. That's okay. No one does. The people you admire because they seem so sure — they have only learned to walk with not-knowing without breaking. That is the difference I wish you to learn without needing as many years as I did.

Dear young self — you will mature, not because life gets easier, but because you learn to see it differently. And above all: You are allowed to make mistakes. You don't have to have all the answers from the start. No one does. Be gentle with yourself, especially on stormy days — that's when you need your own kindness the most.

P.S. Five little things that helped me on stormy days — you don't need all of them, sometimes one is enough, exactly on the right day:

Hand on heart. If a mistake shames you, place a hand on your heart: "I did what I could with the knowledge I had at the time."
Three little things in the evening. Before falling asleep, remember three tiny good moments of the day — a warm cup, a laugh, a ray of sunshine.
The tree breath. Feet firmly on the ground, imagine roots reaching deep into the earth. Breathe in and out slowly four times.
The letter to yourself. Write yourself a letter like this once a year. Don't read it again for a year.
The question that changes everything. When you're hard on yourself, ask: "Would I say that to a friend too?" Mostly: no.