Look at your old photos with kindness. That kid was doing their best with what they knew.

Hindsight is unfair by design. You are judging a younger person with information they did not have, in a style you have since learned, about choices made under pressure you have already forgotten. The haircut and the pose were reasonable at the time, and so were most of the decisions that embarrass you now.

Scroll back through something old this week and try to see it the way you would see a photo of a cousin at that age. Pick one thing that version of you was brave about. Kindness backwards is practice for being kinder to yourself today.