11 Things I Would Tell My 25 Year Old Self

Michael Le · 18 July 2026 · 9 minute read

A Roman thinker named Seneca wrote that two thousand years ago, in a letter to a friend. I read it too late. So this is my version of that letter. It goes to a kid I know well.

He is 25. It is 2004. He is a year into his first office job. He earned it with no degree, no office experience, and one finger typing at twenty five words a minute. His face goes red when people look at him in a group. He moved out of home at fifteen. He has worked since he was eight, carrying twenty kilogram bags of potatoes in his dad's takeaway shop in Kingsgrove. He thinks he is behind everyone in the building.

I am 47 now. I know how his story goes, because it is mine. Here is what I would tell him. Maybe it is for you too.

1. Nothing is permanent

Not the hard times. Not the good times either. The family dinners stopped when you were ten. You thought that pain would last forever. It did not. One day you will open a shop with Grandma's name on the sign. The line will go down the street. You will think that will last forever too. It will not. Everything you hold right now is on loan. That is not a sad thing. It is the reason to be here now. When you know nothing lasts, you stop putting off the things that matter. And you stop drowning in the things that do not.

2. Health is your true wealth

Your body keeps the honest score. It knows when something is wrong long before your mind will say it. Sleep that will not come. A shoulder that will not let go. A chest that goes tight when the phone rings on a Sunday. You will call it stress and push on. Please do not. Every dollar you ever make is borrowed from the body you make it in. At 37 you will eat clean for sixteen weeks, train before work and after close, step on stage at ANB Oceania and walk off a champion. That is not about looks. That is what happens when you treat your body like it matters. You will need it for the rebuild.

3. Protect your mind like you would your heart

You already guard your heart. You learned that at ten, when the dinners stopped. But you let anything walk into your mind and live there rent free. The voice that says that world is not for someone like you. The words of people who have never built anything. The noise. Guard the door. Pick what goes into your mind the same way you pick your friends, because you become the room you're in, and your mind is the one room you can never leave. That voice almost talks you out of walking into a modelling agency at 37. Do not listen. It has never once been right about you.

4. Familiar is not the same as safe

You will spend ten years in a kitchen that feels safe because you know every corner of it. But familiar is not safe. Familiar just means known. Safe means the thing stands up without you holding it. The kitchen cannot run without you. That is the opposite of safe, no matter how normal it feels at 2am. One day you will have to choose between the thing you know and the thing that is true. Choose the true thing. It will feel like falling. It is really landing.

5. What you avoid becomes heavier

Every talk you put off gets harder. Every system you know you need and do not build costs more later. Every truth you park for later grows while it waits. Nothing you avoid ever gets lighter. The hardest choices of your life will be the ones you spent years not making. So make the call this week. Have the talk this week. Most of the weight you carry is things you have not said and jobs you have not started. You can put half of it down by Friday.

6. Build the system, not the prison

You watched Dad become the takeaway shop. Every order went through him. Every problem was his to fix. You swore you would never live like that. Then you will build the same prison and paint it your favourite colour. Ten years in, you will see the truth. You did not build a business. You bought a job. So learn it now, twenty years early. Build it once. Write everything down. Let it run. Hard work without systems is just costly labour. The point of the work is a life, not a cage that pays.

7. Ask. The teachers appear

You know nothing about cooking and nothing about brand. One day you will ask chefs you respect and owners you look up to if they will teach you. You will expect the door in your face. Almost every one of them says yes. That is the secret nobody tells you. The asking is the school. Teachers show up when you knock. You are not being a pest by asking. You are showing respect. Twenty years on, thank your teachers out loud. And answer every knock you get, because one day someone will ask you the same way.

8. Do not wait to make her proud

Mum drives a sixteen year old car with broken wipers and no air con. She is quietly saving. One day she will hand you twenty thousand dollars and tell you she knows you can do it. Everyone else laughs at the plan. She does not. Now here is what I need you to hear, and I am sorry. She will see you open the doors. One month later she will be gone. She is fifty five. So do not save your thanks for a better day when you feel ready. Call her. Cook with her. Show her the plans early and often. The people who believe in you are not permanent either. Love them at full volume while they can hear it.

9. How you do one thing is how you do everything

The way you wipe a bench when nobody is watching is the way you will run a company. The way you finish a boring Tuesday is the way you will finish a ten year run. No rep is small. The sixteen weeks that put you on that stage are built from tiny choices between good enough and right. Keep your standard when it does not seem to matter. Then it will hold when everything matters. Because nobody claps for the boring stuff, and the boring stuff is the whole game.

10. You are not behind

You will sit across a desk from people with two degrees and ten more years than you. You will watch them stay stuck. Not because they do not know enough. Because knowing is not the same as seeing. Meanwhile you think you are behind, because your path does not look like a path. It will not look like one for another twenty years. Then you will turn around and see it was a straight line the whole time. The takeaway. The bank. The kitchen. The stage. One school. The line only makes sense when you look back. You are not behind. You are early in something long.

11. Your life is made of weeks

Here is the maths nobody shows you at 25. A 90 year life is 4,680 weeks. That is the whole thing. Every week you burn being angry at the wrong job comes out of the same 4,680. Every week you spend proving a point to people who are not even watching comes out of it too. At 47 I finally drew mine. One page. One circle for each week. 47 rows already filled in. One gold circle on the week I am living right now. I printed it and pinned it above my desk. In one look it did what twenty years of hustle never did. I stopped sweating the small stuff. I started spending my weeks on purpose. Seneca was right. The time is not short. We just spend it like it will never run out.