Think about what you’d tell your twelve-year-old self. Then notice you probably need to hear it too.

Advice is far easier to see for somebody else, even when that somebody is a younger version of you. You would be patient and clear with a twelve-year-old in your position, and what you would tell them is usually sitting in plain sight, applying just as neatly to you now. The hard part was never knowing. It was extending yourself the same treatment.

Write one sentence you would say to twelve-year-old you. Read it as though a friend had said it to you today. Then do the first small thing it obviously implies.