Unlock Financial Success Through Mindset Change

How does your mindset affect your financial success?

How Does Your Mindset Affect Your Financial Success?

Okay, pull up a chair. We need to talk about money, but not in the boring, spreadsheet-lecture way. I want to talk about the stuff nobody tells you: the mindset stuff. Because here’s the truth I learned the hard way: you can have every budgeting app, every side hustle, every “get rich” tip in the world and still stay broke if your mindset about money is broken. I know because I used to be that person. Back in the day, I had a friend,d and we would joke we was broke, phi broke. After a few years, I realized that saying that was cursing me. I had the wrong relationship with money for a long time before I realized it; I couldn’t unsee it. When I changed my mindset, my money and ability to manage it changed.

Let me give you a little background to my life. I didn’t grow up in a typical household. I grew up in a generational house, and if you’ve never heard that term, it means multiple generations under one roof at the same time. In my house, it wasn’t just my mom and me. It was my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and me four generations, sometimes five once you counted my little cousins- who practically lived with us during the week. Pause: my little cousins had two working, loving parents, and my grandmothers always offered to watch them so their parents never had to miss work. Money was tight, and family helps in times of need.

Growing up like that changes how you see money. You watch it move differently. You watch people pool resources, cover each other, stretch a dollar as a family instead of as one person on an island. It gave me a different understanding of how money actually works when people work together instead of white-knuckling it alone. When I started working at a specific fast-food restaurant, I did my part by bringing home food to help ease dinner costs.

I believe in pooling resources for the family’s greater good. I don’t think everyone is meant to move out and “do it on their own” just because that’s what we’re told success looks like. Now, if you come from an abusive or toxic household, that’s different: protect your peace, get out, build your own foundation. And if you’re just a hyper-independent person who genuinely needs your space and your privacy, I respect that too;o that’s what works for you.

But if you came from a stable, loving home with parents who are willing to show up, contribute, help with the bills, help with the kids, help with life? There is no shame in building together. Personally, if things line up the way I hope, I wouldn’t mind my own mother living with me, my partner, and my kids one day. I know she’d help watch the babies. I know she’d help around the house. She’s not going to pretend she can do everything; ng her mindset has always been “I can’t promise the world, but I’ll do what I can.” And honestly? That’s enough. That’s what family is supposed to sound like.

What I Had to Unlearn

I say all of that to explain why my money mindset was the way it was. I saw money handled in a very specific way growing up, and when I hit my twenties and stepped out into the real world, I realized I had to unlearn a lot of it and relearn how to think about money for myself.

There were five things I had to work on. I’m not going to pretend I mastered them overnight; honestly, it’s only been in the last five years or so that I’ve actually gotten good at putting them into practice consistently. But the very first one, the foundation underneath all the others, is this:

You have to be willing to Change Your Mindset

This is step one because nothing else works until this shifts.

If you are constantly telling yourself “I’m broke,” “I can’t afford that,” “this is too expensive,” “I don’t know where I’d even find the money for this” that mindset is running your life. It’s not just a thought, it’s a pattern. And when you keep feeding that pattern, you keep proving it right. You start making decisions from a place of lack instead of a place of possibility, and that keeps you stuck in the same cycle: no money, no plan, no way out.

Here’s the part that stings a little, but I say it with love: a negative money mindset doesn’t just describe your situation it creates your situation. When you walk around convinced you’ll never have enough, you stop looking for the opportunities that could actually get you there. You talk yourself out of the job application, the investment, the conversation about a raise, the side hustle idea before you even try. That negativity becomes the thing standing between you and the life you actually want. Once your mindset shifts, the rest of the work actually has somewhere to land. Here’s what came next for me.

Get Educated For Real This Time

Step two: take an actual personal finance class, or find someone who has genuinely walked the walk and learn from them directly. Not a random person online who just talks about money someone who has actually built something with it. I remember getting into my local credit union and honestly feeling a little embarrassed because I didn’t know half of what they were asking me. I didn’t know how to do basic things I felt like I “should” already know. I fell off track for a while after that, and I struggled for a few more years because of it. But once I actually sat down and committed to learning personal finance for real, everything started clicking differently. There’s no shame in not knowing. There is a cost to staying that way on purpose.

Know Your Financial Personality

Step three, and this one might be my favorite: figure out your financial personality type. I know that sounds like a quiz you’d take for fun, but stay with me it’s real, and it matters. Some people are natural savers. Some are budgeters. Some are investors who are wired to think long-term and end up retiring early because of how they move with money. And some people are a mix, and that’s okay too. The point isn’t to shame yourself into one category or beat yourself up for not being “the investor type” naturally. The point is to actually identify who you are with money so you can stop fighting your own nature and start working with it. A saver trying to force themselves to be an aggressive investor overnight will burn out. A spender trying to white-knuckle extreme frugality without a real plan is going to fall off. Know your type. Build from there.

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Help

Step four: if you get to a point where you genuinely don’t know what to do next, don’t be too proud to bring someone else in. Find a real financial professional, someone who can look at your actual numbers and help you optimize instead of guessing. I know it can feel intimidating, or even embarrassing, to admit you need that kind of guidance. But trying to figure it all out completely alone, with no outside eyes on your situation, is one of the easiest ways to end up stuck living paycheck to paycheck without even realizing how you got there. You wouldn’t try to represent yourself in court with zero legal knowledge just to prove a point. Money deserves that same respect. Bring in help when you need it.

Build the Discipline and the Schedule

Step five: discipline. This is what ties everything else together. It’s one thing to understand your finances; it’s another to stick to a plan week after week, even when it’s boring and nothing exciting is happening. Put yourself on an actual schedule. Track it. Revisit it. The people who look like they’ve “got it together” financially aren’t magic; they’re consistent. That’s really the whole secret.

Listen, I’m not telling you any of this to make you feel bad about where you are right now. I’m telling you because somebody needed to tell me, and it took me way too long to figure it out on my own. Your upbringing shapes how you see money, but it doesn’t have to be the final word on how you handle it.

So here’s the full list, all in one place:

1. Change your mindset. Stop talking yourself into “broke” before you even try.

2. Get educated. Take the class. Find the mentor. Ask the “embarrassing” question.

3. Know your financial personality. Saver, spender, budgeter, investor: work with your nature, not against it.

4. Don’t do it alone. A real professional can save you years of guessing.

5. Build the discipline. Consistency beats intensity every single time.

You get to unlearn the parts of your money story that don’t serve you. You get to build something different, whether that’s a household full of people who show up for each other, or a mindset that finally believes you’re capable of more than “just getting by.” Start with the mindset. Everything else builds from there.

Trying to get use to posting the ko-fi link–> Ko-fi.com/chemichelletales

September 11, 2026 0

Hitchhiker Chronicles

Comic scene: “Huh? A ride to the train station? I’m just the trivia host, mate...” “Excuse me, I know this is a trivia night, but is there a way I can get a ride to the train station? My Uber canceled!” Signs read “TRIVIA NIGHT!” and papers read “ANSWER”; sound effects say “BUZZZ!”, “CHEER!”, and “MURMUR.” — A trivia host tries to help a stranded guest reach the train station during trivia night.

Another WordPress writing prompt from August 2026 that I saved for this 30-day challenge. Question: What’s the weirdest coincidence you’ve ever experienced?

There is a massive neon sign invisible to the naked eye that must be tattooed directly across my forehead. It doesn’t say Welcome, and it certainly doesn’t say Sensible Adult. No, it clearly reads: Designated Shepherd of the Lost, the Confused, and the Mildly Terrifying. I have a fatal flaw. I possess a heart entirely too big for the Mid-Atlantic region, paired with a dose of Catholic guilt to prevent people from accidentally orchestrating their own demise.

Take, for instance, a rainy night at Stan and Joe’s in Annapolis back in 2024. I was hosting trivia, a respectable side hustle, that requires intense focus, reading comprehension, and the ability to ignore drunk people arguing over the capital of Nebraska. ( The Capital of Nebraska is Lincoln.) Enter a woman from the Northeast with a dream, zero grasp of Maryland geography, and a plot straight out of a low-budget indie thriller.

Between my trivia questions, she casually announced she was taking “the night bus” to Washington, D.C., to finalize paperwork on a house she didn’t want to live in. In a torrential downpour. From downtown Annapolis. At 8:00 PM. Now, anyone with a single functioning brain cell knows Annapolis public transit clocks out when the sun goes down. (I have been schooled that their transit system does not clock out at sundown, but it does not head to DC.) There is no magical night bus. No secret subway tunnel links historic dockside pubs directly to the Washington Monument. When I broke the news that she was stranded, she looked at me like I had personally canceled the transit grid. Naturally, her backup plan was to “just catch the train.” Honey, what train? I thought to myself, my left eye starting to squint.

Because the universe decided I was her court-appointed guardian angel, I had her call her friend and verified she wasn’t completely hallucinating a friend who lived in DC. Once verified, we struck a bargain: wait until I finish yelling about pop culture to the midshipmen and millennial players. I would drive her all the way to Baltimore Penn Station so you can catch an Amtrak to DC. She agreed, and since the rain still hadn’t stopped, it was a decent deal.

Did she wait quietly? Absolutely not. While I was on the mic, she peppered me with her entire lifetime backstory, eventually announcing, unprompted, “You know, I’m a Libertarian.” Pulling out her pocket-sized Constitution. Ma’am. I am reading a question about The Golden Girls. I do not care about your stance on America’s fiscal policy; I care that you don’t freeze on West Street.

I finally loaded this mysterious runaway into my car. I thought to myself: Was she an undercover spy? A time traveler? An alien seeking safe passage out of Anne Arundel County? Was a black SUV full of syndicate hitmen pulling up to the bar ten minutes after we left? The drama my brain created was better than any Netflix drama. I navigated construction traffic, listened to a podcast-worthy monologue about her existence, deposited her safely at Penn Station by 11:00 PM, and sped off to pick up my mother from work, wholly accepting that I am a giant sucker.

That was Hitchhiker Number One: a woman who weaponized sheer helplessness.

Hooded pedestrian standing in a rainy street viewed from inside a car — A driver watches a hooded pedestrian through a rain-streaked windshield on a neon-lit street.

Hitchhiker Number Two, however, skipped the paperwork and went straight for vehicular assault.

Cut to a recent evening on Edmondson Road out in Beltsville. For those unfamiliar, this is not a well-lit suburban boulevard. This is a narrow, twisty, ditch-flanked road cutting through farmland. It screams mystery episode.

I’m driving along, minding my own business and stressing about closing out tasks before starting my new job, when a man materializes out of the rural ether. Work boots, blue jeans, silver-white hair, a blue Haines T-shirt, and the pièce de résistance: a crinkly white plastic grocery bag.

He didn’t stick his thumb out like a polite 1970s nomad. He stepped into the road and aggressively lunged toward my moving vehicle, eyes locked on my door handle with the absolute determination of a zombie who missed the last commuter rail. He was getting in that car, with or without my permission.

I don’t have the calendar availability to get murdered on a country back road. I slammed the gas, violently swerved away from him, nearly pitched my entire car sideways into an agricultural ditch, and peeled out like an extra in an action franchise. The windows went up immediately.

So that is where we stand. On one end of the spectrum, I am a freelance chauffeur rescuing wandering souls from their own logistical ignorance. On the other, I am evading ambush attacks in the Beltsville brush.

I’ve since adopted a strict self-defense mechanism: I keep the passenger side of my car littered with enough junk that offering anyone a seat is physically impossible. My windows stay up, my doors stay locked, and my inner bleeding-heart Samaritan has officially clocked out!

If you would like to donate to the hitchhiker prevention fund à https://ko-fi.com/chemichelletales

I have another one I will post in a few days.

September 9, 2026 0

Moments of Kindness: How Strangers Impact Our Lives

Illustrated woodland pond with ripples, golden reflections, and berry branches — Golden reflections ripple across a quiet woodland pond surrounded by berry-laden branches.

Side note: Another Daily prompt I saw on WordPress. I can’t find the draft of this original prompt, but I still wanted to post it and try to keep up with my 30 days of posts. I should have labeled which day was which. What’s a Moment When a Stranger Completely Restored Your Faith in People?

There are so many moments I could talk about that renewed my faith in people, because I am a fortunate person. I won’t sit here and pretend otherwise. Throughout my life, people have always helped me, been there for me, listened, and offered sage wisdom. I want to talk about a few of those times.

The first happened during my first year of graduate school. I was in my twenties. I was dumb, in the way we all are in our twenties. I was in love with a man I thought I’d marry. We had just broken up. He wanted to date other people, and I told him I understood, and then I threw myself into school. I studied. I worked. Then, after a final exam, on a day when I was already emotionally drained, I saw him kiss another woman.

My brain couldn’t process it. I thought I’d failed the exam. I thought I was wasting my time and my money, that maybe everyone who ever doubted me was right. I sat on the green line train and cried, silently, trying not to let anyone see.

A young man came up to me He must have been younger than I was; he looked barely twenty-five Heck, he looked like he was in his early 20s I guess witnessing a grown woman cry on the subway made him pause He asked if I was okay I told him I was going through a lot And without knowing anything about what had happened to me the exam seeing my ex, he spoke life into me He told me that no matter what I was going through, it would be okay, and that someone out there would show up for me and be there for me I don’t remember every word. Still, I remember what it did It poured kindness back into a place that had gone empty.

Then he said something I still think about. He said, “You passed that test.” I hadn’t told him about the exam, and he said, “That man’s not your man. Everything’s gonna work out.” My train came; I thought he’d get on with me. Still, he told me to have a good life and stayed on the platform. When I looked back through the window, he was gone. I went back to that train around that same time for days afterward, hoping to find him, just to say thank you, just to buy him a cup of coffee. I never saw him again. I don’t know his name. Still, I carry him with me, and I thank him in my spirit to this day. I did pass that class. That relationship ended, and it turned out to be the freeing thing he told me it would be.

I used bitmoji this time. Gotta keep you on your toes.

Another time, I went whitewater rafting with friends. I was thrown from the raft into the water. I swam to a rock to wait, just as I’d been told to do if that ever happened A group of strangers, people who didn’t know me at all, pulled me into their raft and carried me back to my own group I was so grateful someone was willing to help a person they had never met If they hadn’t stopped for me, I don’t know how long I would have been stranded on those rocks Probably not long, we were with a tour group, and they had a raft behind us on purpose to save anyone who became hurt, injured, or stranded.

The last is something that has happened to me more than once: car accidents I’ve been in accidents that, by all rights, should have been much worse than they were Each time, whether it was an EMT, a police officer, or a bystander who stopped, someone has told me I was okay before I even knew to believe it myself One told me I needed to understand how fortunate I was, that she had seen people walk away from far less My cousin once saw the wreckage of one of my accidents and broke down crying, because she couldn’t understand how I had walked away from it Another time I was hit by a car going nearly ninety miles an hour. I had the green light and they ran the red light. You can only imagine the boom, it was epic like God sending a bolt of lighting to earth. I don’t remember getting out of the car, but i got out of the car and stood on the side of the street until EMTs showed up. People kept asking me how I did it , because the door was sealed shut. I didn’t have an answer I still don’t.

I think about all of this, especially the man on the green line. He poured life into me on a day I thought I had hit rock bottom. He did it without asking for anything back. I will never see him again. I pray he is well, successful, and loved. I hope, somehow, he knows that I thank him from the bottom of my heart. These moments remind me that humanity is still capable of good, and I hold onto them with gratitude.

Would you like to fund my next whitewater rafting trip, or maybe my return to grad school? –> Ko-fi.com/chemichelletales

Also I need to do better editing. Sorry for the typos.

September 8, 2026 0

Canceling Subscriptions? Blame Gas Prices!

I’ve cracked the code for escaping subscriptions. No more pretending your card was stolen. What I found is simpler, rooted in the chaos of modern life.

Gas prices.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You’re welcome. But stay with me, because this is where it gets interesting.

Now hear me out before you close this tab, because I know what you’re thinking. What does gas have to do with my Netflix? The answer: everything. In today’s world, filling a tank costs as much as a car payment, and I refuse, and I mean refuse for the folks in the back to also be paying $21.99 a month just for a giant corporation to cancel every show I actually like. Suddenly, these seemingly unrelated things are intertwined, and I have connected them.

So how does this play out in real life? You call up whatever subscription has been quietly bleeding you dry for the past eight months the gym you joined in January, the meal kit service you forgot existed, the meditation app with the audacity to charge you for stress. (I’m already stressed about living in America; your little bird isn’t helping me relax!) When customer service asks why you’re canceling, you answer with full conviction: “Gas prices.” If canceling online, when they ask for a reason, type in full caps: GAS PRICES!

Not “I don’t use it anymore.” Not “I’m trying to save money.” Gas. Prices. Deliver it with the gravity of congressional testimony. Speak it as if each word costs you.

For example, you can call and say, “Hi, I’d like to cancel my gym membership.”

Customer Service Rep with a deadpan: “Can I ask why?” You think you don’t care, but you know this game. In your best political voice: “Gas prices. I can’t afford to drive there. I’ll be walking now. My commute is my workout. The sidewalk is my treadmill. God gave me legs, lungs, and allergies to challenge my breathing.”

And if they offer you a discount? You look at that discount dead in its eyes, and you say, “I need a discount at the pump. Can you do that? No? Then we’re done here.”

The brilliance of this approach is that it’s impossible to argue against. No one can claim gas prices are low or that they don’t matter. Gas prices are universally hated, affect everyone, and serve as a neutral, non-personal explanation for cutting costs. By using them as your reason, you’re making a logical and widely relatable argument.

Best of all, this strategy isn’t limited to gym memberships. It scales beautifully.

Canceling a podcast app subscription? “I can’t tell the difference between real humans and AI anymore, and I am not financially supporting the robot takeover.” Done. Cancelled. Goodbye.

Energy bill too high? Call Netflix and tell them you’ll be sitting in the dark meditating on your life choices, and you can do that for free. For free. Netflix cannot compete with free darkness.

Planet Fitness? “I’ll be walking everywhere. Gas is six dollars a gallon. My legs work. We’re done.”

Some of you are out here concocting elaborate lies, fake moves, fake financial hardships, even fake deaths of distant relatives to cancel subscriptions. Meanwhile, a far simpler explanation is right there, loud and obvious, at $5.89 per gallon. Use it! Say it with your chest! “I cannot afford this because everything costs too much, and I am one grocery trip away from an existential crisis!”

That is a complete sentence. That is a legitimate reason. That is, frankly, a political statement.

Because here’s the thing

And I mean this sincerely amid all the chaos: if enough of us start citing gas prices every single time we cancel something, we become more than individuals; we collectively challenge how unaffordable everyday life has become. We become a movement. Imagine the “Rent Is Too Damn High” Party, updated for the 2020s: now it’s about endless subscriptions and the 13 streaming services that never seem to offer anything worth watching on a Friday night.

Americans deserve a functional transit system. The American people deserve affordable energy. We deserve, at minimum, to cancel our gym memberships without a 20-minute guilt trip from a stranger named Derek. So, next time a company asks why you’re leaving, look Derek in the eye and simply say: “Gas prices.” Derek will understand. Derek, too, drives to that underpaying job.

If you would like to donate to my gas tank you can check out this link—> ko-fi.com/chemichelletales

Until Next Time,

Che Michelle

September 3, 2026 0

What My Retail Job Taught Me About Finding Lost Treasures

What’s the best thing you’ve ever found randomly on the street?

Shopper finding a sparkling ring on the floor beneath a clothing rack — A shopper discovers a sparkling ring beneath a clothing rack during a busy sale.

Whenever you ask people what the best thing they’ve ever found on the ground is, they inevitably say money. It’s always money. “Oh, I found a crisp twenty in a puddle once!” Good for you, Jeff Bezos. A long time ago, I worked retail, which means the ground is less a venue for windfall cash and more an archaeological dig site of human despair. Over the years, my broom has swept up stray toy parts, pocket lint, and, on one unforgettable Saturday morning, an actual, literal intrauterine device. An IUD. Just chilling by the impulse cookie section- the irony. Was it a runaway medical anomaly? A dropped OB-GYN demo model? Did someone shed it in a fit of retail rage? Don’t ask me how I recognized it; retail transforms you into a forensic scientist whether you like it or not.

So, my broom pushed me to sweep the floor in the morning. I heard a CLANG against the store’s baseboards on a Saturday morning. Anything is better than that rogue piece of birth control was my baseline expectation. Instead, I found an absurdly demure diamond engagement ring. To understand how this happened, you first have to understand the sacred incompetence of the retail night shift. I was only in the store at 8:30 AM because my coworkers had sent a text saying, “Sorry! It was so slam-packed last night we couldn’t sweep!” Naturally, being a busybody, I checked the register logs. Their last sale was clocked at 8:01 PM. The store closed at nine. They had an entire hour of paid stillness to push a broom, stock the Snack display, and reflect on their life choices. Instead, they stood around people-watching and did the bare minimum, leaving the store looking like an abandoned storefront after Christmas.

So, I’m aggressively sweeping up their dust bunnies when the broom hit the ring, like a hockey play; I swept it into the baseboard—a real, diamond ring. I did what any reasonable, underpaid 25-year-old would do: I ran it down to a jeweler for an appraisal. The jeweler studied it, looked up at me with dead seriousness, and said, “This is exquisite. Maybe God is trying to tell you that you’re about to get married!”

Now, 25-year-old me had an immediate existential crisis over the fact that my boyfriend at the time was completely wrong for me, meaning God’s retail delivery system had severe targeting issues. Also, not that anyone asked if it slipped onto my ring finger like it had been molded in a laboratory specifically for my hand. Common sense returned and slapped me back to reality. I quickly took it off, placed it in a tiny paper envelope labeled “Customer’s Ring Found on Floor,” handed it to management, and watched it disappear into our bolted-down steel floor safe.

And there it stayed.

For five entire years!

We checked local lost-and-founds. I stalked early Craigslist boards. Silence. The ring sat in the dark behind a combination keypad, totally forgotten, until our store hired a new manager who possessed the specific, greasy energy of someone who views inventory sheets as creative writing. One day, the safe opened, the safe closed, and the diamond was… evaporated into thin air. A few weeks later, half the staff got fired over a cocktail of phantom discounts, register shorting, and the grand theft of a Diamond Ring rock (not quite; it was really people shorting the register that got them fired). The ring was gone, the statute of limitations was ticking, and we all moved on.

Until the ghost of retail past walked through the front doors. Five years after that fateful morning sweep, a woman strolled into the store. She was glowing, thriving, and happily reminiscing about our discontinued caramel nut mixes while visiting from out of state. Then she dropped the bomb: “You know, I actually lost something here right before I moved away years ago.” My broom’s hand twitched. “What did you lose?” “My engagement ring,” she sighed. “It never fit my finger right. I came in on a Thursday night to get snacks for my drive…”

A Thursday. Thursday. My brilliant, hardworking colleagues hadn’t just blown off Friday night’s cleaning duties; they hadn’t touched a broom for forty-eight straight hours. That diamond had been kicking around the carpet through two full business days of foot traffic, surviving purely because our staff was allergic to physical labor. She told me she had retraced her steps on Friday, found nothing, and realized the universe had handed her an exit ramp. Two weeks prior, her boyfriend had proposed, and she’d been harboring immediate, sickening regret from saying yes. When she confessed she lost the ring that weekend, the man utterly detonated, screaming, cursing, and revealing every toxic red flag he owned in one explosive tirade.

The dropped ring was her ticket out. She didn’t want to marry the man; she knew it wasn’t right. After that nasty argument that weekend, she decided to flee the state and start a glorious single life in Ohio. “Ohio,” my brain thought, but I let it go because she looked amazing. She smiled and asked, “Did anyone ever end up finding it?”

I paused, looking at this radiant, completely unburdened woman who had successfully escaped a terrible engagement because of the wrong ring size.

“Oh yeah,” I told her casually. “I found it that Saturday morning. It sat in our safe for five years until a shady manager stole it and got sacked by corporate. Her face was pure, unadulterated relief. The ring had ruined a thief, dodged a toxic marriage, survived two days of retail neglect, and paid for nobody’s wedding. Sometimes the best things you find on the floor aren’t meant to be kept; they’re just dropped so someone else can finally run.

This was a dramatic retelling of me finding a ring on the floor at work. A lot of factors changed, times changed, and memories aren’t always accurate.

I am always going to ask: if you would like to help me get a right-hand diamond ringà Ko-fi.com/chemichelletales

September 1, 2026 0

If I Figured Out Time Travel, This Is What I’d Send Back to my 20-year-old-self

Daily writing prompt

What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?

View all responses

Note: Two days in a row I am doing the Daily Writing Prompt….

Love Letters & Hard Lessons An Essay by Che Michelle

If I Figured Out Time Travel, This Is What I’d Send Back

Things I wish I could tell my 20-year-old self — about the plan, the light, the Ford Focus, and the Midol.

By Che Michelle · Thriving, and Still Going

Dear You — yes, you, reading this in what I can only assume is mild confusion — I mean you just found this letter while your 20, young and going to school.

If you are reading this, it means I figured out time travel. I cannot change what happens, the timeline doesn’t work like that, but I can emotionally prepare you for what’s coming so you can navigate it better, smarter, and with significantly fewer financial failures. What you do with this information is up to you. If you think it’s nonsense, throw it away. If something in your gut says pay attention and it will, because your gut has always been smarter than your logic, then use it. Use every word.

And if I suddenly get new memories? I’ll know you changed something. Let’s hope it worked.

On Your Family and Your Friends

Your family is right about some of your friends. I know that’s not what you want to hear. I know it feels like interference, like they don’t understand, like they’re being over-protective to the point of suffocation. But here’s the truth that it took me longer than it should have to accept they have simply lived longer than you, and they can read signs you haven’t learned to recognize yet.

They’re not jealous. They’re not trying to isolate you. They want you to have friends, real ones. The kind that builds you up instead of quietly chipping away at your confidence while smiling at your face. And honestly? For a family that could have been much harsher about it, they were incredibly gentle with you. Gentler than you realize and with more patience than you ever offered back. Listen to them when the advice is not in an authoritative tone, but a softer, loving tone. It’ll save you from an existential crisis that, otherwise, is going to land right on schedule at 39 and feel entirely like your fault. Some of it will be your fault. I can’t help you with that part (Bonus advice, take accountability and change your bad behavior). Just listen to the family about your friends, they have your best interest at heart especially when those friends show their true feelings in front of them.

On the Plan You Had for Your Life

I know about the plan. You get married at 28, first kid at 30, second at 32. Tidy. Organized. It’s you, planning your life down to the date. I need to tell you, with all the love I have in my heart: That plan got blown up to absolute smithereens, and it is the best thing that ever happened to us.

You were not emotionally ready to be anybody’s wife at 28. You did not have the resources to be anyone’s mother at 30. And the life you actually get to live in the space where that plan used to be? It’s going to make you smile in ways you cannot currently imagine. You still end up with love. You still end up with the things you want. Just not when you think. And the version of you who gets there will be so much more prepared to actually receive it and reciprocate it to person who deserves it.

“You may have dreamed about being a wife. But you’re going to live a life so much bigger than that dream. Let the dream go so the best version of your life can find you.”

Do Not Buy That Ford Focus

I am completely serious. The blue one. You brought it either in 2015 or 2016, I don’t remember when, but don’t buy it! You’ll know when your then boyfriend suggested for you to get that car and not the Two-door Honda Accord, that you like. He will make it sound like an it’s good idea, has great value. It is not a good idea. That car is a money pit on wheels, and it is going to cost you in ways that will make you say words you didn’t know you knew. Find someone you trust, go to a different dealership, and buy something else. Better yet, don’t take that man with your car shopping! Anything else will be a million times better than that of the Blue Devil. This is the most logistical piece of advice I can offer you and I need you to take it personally. No BLUE FORD FOCUS!

On People Who Try to Dim Your Light

They’re coming. I want you to be ready. People are going to try to dim your light, and they’ll do it for one of three reasons. The first is jealousy, pure and simple, from people who have never learned to believe in themselves. The second is desire: they want what you have, and because they can’t figure out how to build it for themselves, they’ll try to dim your light by making you doubt your light, your intelligence. The third is the strangest one, they’ll try to dim your light to protect you from other people who want access to it. Fear dressed up as concern. They will tell you about doing events, cause it is not the norm. These people will use logic, and concern to convince you not to try, or not to put yourself out there for people to know who you are. It looks like love. It isn’t, its fear and it will confuse you. Stand strong in your belief and do it!

Here’s how you handle all three: practice your affirmations. Write your dreams down in blue ink in a notebook. Make a plan and execute the plan. The life you’re building will not be out of someone else’s paranoia, but out of your wisdom, your intuition and your vision for your life. You don’t owe everyone a front row seat to your becoming. Let people who try to imitate you do it. They’re too unoriginal to sustain it. Walk away and let them figure that out without your help and energy.

Also, I mean this does not let anyone talk you out of your intuition. Your intuition has kept you alive, when your survival skills were lacking. Your Spidey sense has kept you out of rooms you had no business being in. When you get goosebumps along your arm, it is usually a no, and you need to act accordingly. Trust your gut every time.

On Dreams Changing (and That Being Good, Actually)

You are a jack of all trades, and people are going to say it like it’s an insult. It is not. The full quote which people conveniently cut short is “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one”. When people cut the quote short, they want to diminish someone to only be good at one thing. You contain multitudes and should explore all of your different layers. Each of those layers will, lead you to a new dream, a better dream. Your dreams are going to shift from your 20s to your 30s to your 40s, and every single shift means you’re growing; you’re seeing more of what’s possible, you’re becoming someone bigger and better than the person who made the original plan. Don’t let anyone shame you for evolving. That’s the whole point of life is to evolve.

On Your Health — Please Listen to This Part

Keep working out. I’m going to say it again because I need you to hear it: keep working out. Protect your body now so it can carry you to places you haven’t dreamed of yet. Your health is your wealth in a way that isn’t a cliché, it is a literal, practical, logistical fact. The other side of not protecting it is not somewhere you want to visit. Stay active. Watch what you eat. Still enjoy your life. Those things are not mutually exclusive, I promise. Also, take care of your damn teeth, we like you have a beautiful smile so you need healthy teeth to smile. ( I bet you started sing Shanice-“I love your Smile”, if so good.

And take the Midol. I’m going to give this its own section because it matters more than it sounds.

Take the Midol (No, Really)

There is a friendship in your life, one of the truest, most generous, most genuinely loving friendships you will experience. There is going to be a moment when you are in real physical pain, the kind that makes you pass out after your shift, and you are going to say something to your friend, while in that pain that you cannot take back. And that person is not going to want to hear that it was the pain talking or that your sorry. It will be too late, and they will walk away from this friendship.

I am telling you now, Take the Midol. Eat something before going to work that day. Listen, don’t speak as they talk to you. If you can save that friendship, save it. It is worth more than whatever you’re about to say in that moment. And if you lose it anyway it was always meant to be a season of friendship in your life and not a lifetime friendship. I want you to know that it was still real, it still counted, and you will carry the best parts of that relationship with you longer than you know. But try to watch your mouth. Take the Midol and listen with no response.

On Death, and the Things People Say Near It

You are going to lose people. Some of those losses will come quietly and you’ll be okay. Others are going to tear something open in you that makes you rethink everything and somehow, in that rethinking, you’re going to find a clarity about your own life that you couldn’t have gotten any other way.

Here is what I need you to know about people who are close to leaving this mortal realm will do, they sometimes say things near the end that sound like rejection of you, erasure of a friendship, erasure of your meaning to them. They will rewrite the entire relationship either as more positive than it was, or that you were just strangers in the night who only said hi once a day. Don’t hold onto those words. I think something happens when a soul is getting ready to leave the mortal realm, like they’re trying to serve as many ties as possible so they can leave more freely. I am telling you to hold onto the dinners, the conversation with nuggets of wisdom. The times they fed you knowledge, praised your skills, and gave you the game of life. Let the last words go, if they sound unlike them. They were not the truth of what you meant to each other.

“Their life was never in vain. And neither was your love for them. Hold onto that and let the rest dissolve.”

The Rules (In Order)

Rule 01 Don’t let anyone take your shine. Not negotiable, not situational, not up for discussion. Your light is yours. Guard it accordingly.

Rule 02 Stop looking for love and start loving yourself. The love you’re searching for outside of you is being built inside of you right now whether you feel it or not. Trust the process.

Rule 03 Take the trip. Go to Japan. Go wherever you’ve been telling yourself you’ll go when things calm down, when you have more money, when it makes more sense. It will never be the perfect time. Save the money quietly, tell no one, and go. You will not regret a single stamp in that passport.

Rule 04 Get the accountant. Do not tell your family. Do not tell your friends. Just find one, pay the fee, and let them help you build the financial life you deserve. This is one of the best decisions you will ever make, and it’s going to feel so adult and so right the moment you do it.

Rule 05 Protect yourself always! Protect yourself enthusiastically, without apology. Your body, your energy, your peace, your destiny. All of it. Energy transfers are real, and some people come into your life specifically to take what’s yours. You are not obligated to make it easy for them.

What I Most Want You to Know

You are not living the life you dreamed. You are living the life you desired, and those are two very different things. You dreamed of being a wife. You became someone who poured love into people who needed it, on your own terms, in your own time. You dreamed of being a mother you have mentored and loved and invested in more children and teenagers more than you can count, and they carried pieces of you whether they know it or not. When it’s time for the rest, it will come.

The people who show up for you the real ones, the ones who love you exactly as you are going to amaze you. You don’t have to beg for their love and acceptance. You don’t have to change yourself for it. You don’t have to wonder if you’re worth it. You are. Full stop. The friendships you have to chase were never yours to begin with, and the ones that stay without being chased are going to be some of the best things in your life.

You have held down two jobs for twenty years simultaneously. You have built something real, quietly, without anyone handing you anything. You are funny, brilliant and more creative than the people who tried to convince you otherwise.

I love you at 20. I will love you in your 30s, and I love you now as we head into the mid-40s. I love every version of you that happened in between, including the ones who made the mistakes that this letter is trying, gently, to help you avoid or at least prepare your for. You are an adventure worth living. Stay healthy so we can keep going.

With everything I’ve got —

Your future self
(Who is doing great, by the way. You’re going to be so proud.)

PS No I didn’t give you lottery numbers. No stock tips. We were never meant to win that way, and honestly? What we built ourselves is better. You’ll see.

P.P.S. — The Ford Focus. I cannot stress this enough. Do not buy that car if you do trade it in as soon as your credit is better.

★ Che Michelle is a writer, cultural commentator, and person who writes her dreams in blue ink and on real paper if you know, you know.

June 16, 2026 2