Has something like this ever happened to you: you're at school and it's recitation time, the teacher asked a question, everybody's wondering what the answer is, but you know. So you want to raise your hand but didn't. Maybe because you weren't sure if it was the right answer that you're thinking. Maybe because you're afraid that your classmates will think that you're Mr. or Mrs. smarty pants. Whatever reason you had for not raising your hand, you hesitated. A few seconds later, your classmate Michelle raised her hand and gave the right answer. Your teacher praised her and gave her a high grade for recitation. You probably hated Michelle for a few seconds or even a few minutes because she stole your answer, your high grade, and your praise.
I'm pretty sure something like this has happened to everyone, especially the shy ones. Unless you were a confident kid, this would happen to you.
In my own life, I regretted a lot of things in my school life. Now that I'm a working professional, whenever I look back, I can't help but think of all the things I would've done differently if I knew then what I know now. One thing I know now is to avoid procrastination. This is one of the biggest problems of people today. They put off for tomorrow what can be done today. I myself is guilty of this even to this day.
One example of this is when I took summer basketball lessons at elementary school. I think I was in 5th grade. I finished the lessons thinking that I would be a better player, but I didn't practice or play at all after that. I kept playing video games rather than basketball, and I put off playing telling that I will play tomorrow. Tomorrow then became the day after tomorrow, then turned to a few days, then next week, until I forgot to even play at all. I regret this so much because up to now I STILL can't say that I am good at playing basketball. I suck! I know how to play compared to when I started, but all that time spent I could've developed my skills were wasted. If I only did give time to practice and play basketball, I could've been good enough to play at local tournaments.
I also remember a story I read from the book Chicken Soup for the Soul. It's titled "Why Wait?...Just Do It!" by Glenn Mcintyre. The story here is about a person who wanted to ride a motorcycle but didn't know where to start. He just bought a motorcycle and started riding. At an early age of 17, he started to ride and fell in love with it. He rode until he ran out of roads years later. At the age of 23, he had a road accident and became a paraplegic. He was thankful that he rode at an early age because he wouldn't have experienced those wonderful things on the road if he hadn't started riding at that early age.
Whatever you want to do, whether it be to get a different career, try a new hobby, start a business, travel to another continent, do it NOW! The sooner, the better. Stop putting off for tomorrow what you can do now because there's no guarantee that there will be a tomorrow at all.
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