In the Journal of Social Psychology, two U. S. researchers published the first serious study of a question that seems to be troubling millions. Almost every     1     from Bill Gates to Kesha, is required to have an answer: What advice would you give to your younger self?

Robin Kowalski and Annie McCord asked more than 400 participants, all     2     over 30. They got some entertaining replies like “Don’t marry her”. But we’re little closer to making clear the     3     that has always bothered me: What, precisely, do people take themselves to be doing when they ask themselves this question?

Pretty     4    , it rests on a paradox(悖论). You only acquired the wisdom on which your advice is based by making the mistakes you’re now advising your     5     self to avoid. For example, many respondents gave some answers “Stop being so afraid” - of failure, of other people’s judgements, of life. Excellent advice, but you’ll never feel its force until you’ve first acted afraid and seen where that got you.     6    , as the saying goes, is a harsh teacher. It makes you sit the test first and only gives you the lesson afterwards.

Of course, if “advising your younger self” were just a happiness - boosting technique to remind you of what you’ve learned in life, nobody could     7    . However, browsing the replies to the study, what you sense, far more frequently, is regret. People truly wish they had not married so young, chosen a career to please their parents, or spent the money instead of saving it. And this only brings into focus on the     8     that regret is a basically self-contradictory(自相矛盾的)emotion. You’re feeling it because you’ve grown into the kind of person who can look back     9     on what you did in the past. This means that, judged by your     10     values, you’ve emerged from your life experience better than before. Therefore you ought to be happy rather than regretful.

The important thing isn’t what you might have done differently in the past, if you had been someone that you couldn’t have been back then. It’s what you’d do now. For many people, I know, this can be a huge challenge. But unlike changing the past, it has the great advantage of not being impossible.

I listened to a really interesting podcast about future careers yesterday. It said that we can expect to have     1     many jobs over the course of our lives rather than just one. Things are changing at a very fast     2     speed these days in the job market and this will continue in the future.

Although there will always be the opportunity to earn a     3     satisfactory income, if you want to really achieve great things, you should aim to become a     4     highly skilled person in one particular area. There is a strong     5     chance that people will regularly     6     train again to learn more skills until they reach     7     the time they stop working. The podcast also talked about the types of skills that will be     8     absolutely necessary in the future such as critical thinking. I can’t wait to see what the future brings!

Things have changed so much since our parents’ and grandparents’ time, especially when it comes to jobs and careers. When our parents were starting to find work, the     1     of staying in the same     2     for your entire life was very common. Nowadays, that idea would be considered really unusual!

There will be new     3     21^st century skills that we will have to have. For example, a university degree is still useful, but technology developments mean that many skills we have now are unlikely     4     in the future.     5     is one thing, but if we really want to succeed in our careers we have to be     6     thinking of new and exciting ways to do things. It won’t be enough to have only a general understanding of our area of work but we should keep learning until we become     7    . And given that people will not stay in the same career for long, we can expect that we will have to go back to education and training at some stage     8     to work in another field. In fact, we might have to do that     9    !

Jobs change at an amazing     10     these days, and if we can keep up, we can have really exciting and rewarding future careers.

I recently spoke to Ms Xue about the skills we will need in years to come and the future     1     for jobs and careers. According to Ms Xue, in the future a lot of     2     office and factory jobs will disappear. We need to have many skills which we can start developing now. One of the most important is     3    , which is the ability to analyse and evaluate information.     4     which is the ability to use our reason well, will be highly useful in the workplace, as it will help us use our knowledge     5     others.     6     will be highly valued and companies will always appreciate a     7     person who they can trust to do their job. Even outside the workplace, there are important skills we will need. For example, good     8     will benefit us greatly when we start earning money and have financial responsibilities.