11 Life Decisions That Age Well, No Matter What
Some choices only get better with time.
olia danilevich | Pexels We see a lot of what’s scary in the world. We look back at the things we did when we were young, and sit too long in regret. Like a joke, those mistakes become part of who we are. Some don’t survive their mistakes or are scarred forever, so we can easily get lost in trying to prevent the next risk.
As a result, we spend a lot of time telling ourselves and others we will regret things in the future. Maybe we don’t understand there’s a lot of greatness to being alive: the intimacy of friendships, the intensity of love and kisses and cartwheels and connection, the wild and reckless need to explore and expand your experience.
Here are the life decisions that age well, no matter what:
1. Standing up for a friend
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Although many schools have strict anti-bullying policies, bullying is a much more complex cultural phenomenon than we previously understood. While peer intervention rarely stops bullying without support from people in power (in a school, that means administrators and teachers; in a workplace, the boss or other people in charge) as well as the community overall, interrupting bullying or targeted harassment can help de-escalate unkind behavior.
Sometimes all you need to do is be a distraction to the harrasser or simply sit next to the person being targeted to help them feel safer. Ultimately, any show of support — even after the fact — can give someone hope. Knowing that someone believes you are worthy of being treated well goes a long way, and you will never regret being the person who helped someone feel valuable.
2. Being honest
There are going to be times in your life when it will be super easy to cheat, lie, steal, or betray confidence, and you may even get away with it. It’s easy to fall into the trap of pursuing perfection.
The thing is, being who you are won’t take you to the wrong places if you’re making healthy choices. If you cheat your way into Harvard, you’re gonna either flunk out there or be miserable wherever you land afterward. The same goes for the rest of life.
"The likelihood of cheating and the extent of dishonesty" were analyzed by a study in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology to find that both were "greater when people believed that they were facing a last choice, and suggested that anticipatory regret about passing up a chance to enrich oneself drove this cheat-at-the-end effect."
You’re not going to regret being honest. You’re not going to regret having done the right thing. As a result, you’ll probably land in a place where you’re more comfortable and more able to be who you are.
3. Being your authentic self
Like cheating on a test, changing things about yourself to suit others is going to make you feel terrible somewhere deep inside. In the long run, even if you’re accepted because of those changes, you’ll never feel like the people around you are your true friends because it was never really who you were.
You’ll never look back and say to yourself, “Man, I wish I’d changed myself more to make people like me.”
4 Being good to others
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One of the most fulfilling ways to help others is to donate time to organizations that work with kids. You’ll be amazed at what helping little kids can do for your life and your self-esteem. Kids make us feel good about ourselves because they are so appreciative of what we give them. They’ll think you’re cool, and they’ll probably tell you in one way or another.
Be a good role model, and you’ll become important in their lives, even for just a day. It’s always good to be reminded you’re important. You will never regret kindness, and everyone needs an ally.
You won’t look back and wish you’d participated when your friends were making bad choices. What you’ll remember is helping the lost dog or mentoring the kid who needed a friend.
5. Buying someone coffee
Every once in a while, pick up the tab. It’s nice, and if you’re cool about it, people will simply appreciate the gesture. You can always say, “You can grab the next one.” You’ll never regret true generosity.
A 2021 study on stress reduction suggested, "Kindness and caring are prosocial behaviors that build positive interpersonal connections and can uplift both the giver and receiver. Simply seeing kindness and caring activates the neuropsychology of kindness, elevating the viewer and promoting generosity, interpersonal connection, and inclusion."
Caveat: Do it out of generosity, not out of a need to be liked or thanked. Once you start doing stuff to get something in return, you’re being manipulative, not generous.
6. Being good to the earth
I know, I know, you know all about recycling and reducing your carbon footprint. You could probably teach us a few things. But you know, you could always do more. Ride-share, stop using disposable cups, and take your water from home instead of buying it in a plastic bottle from the vending machine.
None of us knows what the future of this planet looks like, but when you’re the keepers of this earth, you’ll never regret having done what you could to keep it clean.
7. Learning to play an instrument
The same applies to the piano, drums, or whatever instrument sounds fun. First, not much is hotter than a person who can play an instrument. Second, you can start a band. Third, if you’re still in school, your parents might pay for your lessons — and trust me, that’ll never happen again in your life. Fourth, learning music can make you smarter.
8. Being the most sober person at the party
This may be super uncool for me to say, but you will never regret being the least drunk person at the party. Why? Well, consider some of the advantages:
- If the cops show up, you can get in your car and drive away without worrying about being arrested or harming someone else.
- If something dangerous is happening at the party, such as a fire risk, too many people on an upstairs balcony, or even a predator who is looking to harm people or steal from them, you will be able to assess that danger and react to it to better protect yourself and others.
- You can decide for yourself who’s sober enough to drive you home. When you’re buzzed, it’s harder to tell who’s too wasted to drive. This is for your protection and others. Take your friends’ keys if they’re too drunk to drive. You’ll never regret having intervened, but you may regret doing nothing if someone is hurt or killed.
- You don’t have to worry as much about doing something embarrassing that others will undoubtedly capture on their phones and put on the Internet for eternity.
- If you do end up hooking up with someone, you’ll be better able to assess your partner’s enthusiastic consent. Are they really into it, or are they just too buzzed to care? If you’re buzzed too, you might not make a great decision about moving forward. If you’re sober, you’ll know the person is really into you.
I promise, you’ll probably never look back and say, “Man, I wish I’d been more drunk that night!” but we’ve all heard the opposite a billion times. Even more importantly, you never want to wonder whether you had full consent from your partner.
Caveat: Just because you’re sober doesn’t mean everyone around you can take advantage of you and get drunk as skunks with the expectation you’ll take care of them. Follow your gut — being an upstander, helping others, and preventing disaster are important, but if you’re the only one doing it over and over and over, you may be enabling irresponsible or dangerous behavior.
Take yourself out of that situation. After all, friends don't take advantage of others like that, and wouldn’t you rather have friends you know you can rely upon, too?
9. Intervening for a friend
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This one you may not have heard as often, but it’s just as important. You’ve probably seen it before: You’re at a party and there’s one drunk girl on the couch who seems really out of it. A guy goes over to her and starts chatting her up. Maybe he has great intentions, maybe he has bad intentions.
You won’t regret keeping an eye on the situation to possibly help prevent someone from being taken advantage of. We all know “friends don’t let friends drive drunk”; well, it’s also true that friends don’t let friends be taken advantage of or take advantage of others.
10. Doing something dangerous safely
This means skydiving, snowboarding, kite surfing, zip-lining, skating, cliff-diving, rock climbing, surfing, or whatever other well-tested and reputable means of professionally-supervised adrenaline-inducing activities you might enjoy. You won’t regret taking well-calculated risks, and trust the old folks — as you get older, you’ll probably be less likely to do this awesome stuff.
11. Laughing uncontrollably
Every generation has its ridiculous things to laugh about, and it almost always annoys older people. My mom still talks about being in high school and laughing so hard with her best friend that she fell off her horse.
I remember floating out in Lake Michigan with my friends and laughing until I almost couldn’t swim. The older folks on the beach glowered at our racket, but obnoxious and endless laughter is a part of being alive.
Research on the effects of laughter on the cardiovascular system showed a correlation between joyous laughter and the release of hormones beneficial to the heart and vasculature.
Embrace it. I don’t know why, but something about growing older makes ridiculous laughter less common. You’ll never look back and say, “I wish I’d laughed more quietly.”
Joanna Schroeder is a writer, editor, and media critic. She is co-author of the book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men(Workman Publishing), and publishes on Substack. Her bylines include The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Redbook, and Vox.
