What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should they ignore?

My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever.”

Life doesn't offer you the perfect opportunity at the perfect time. Opportunities come when you least expect them ... Rarely are opportunities presented to you in a perfect way. In a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. ‘Here, open it, it's perfect. You'll love it.’ Opportunities -- the good ones -- are messy, confusing and hard to recognize. They're risky. They challenge you.

Learn by doing, not learn first, then do. The way you discover what it is you like to do in life is by doing first, then learning about it.

So take the time to find the thing that excites you more than anything else in the world. Not the thing your parents want you to do. Or the thing that all your friends are doing. Or that society expects of you.