11 Things I wish someone told me when I was 18

Bill gates mug-shot at Albuquerque, NM police station for traffic violation. Source

A while back I had penned this to a few super-smart individuals aged almost 18. As I was going through the email today, I realized it has to be published to a wider audience. Of course, I edited out things in it which were about them and modified the article for a rather generic audience. However, the core message and gist is as -is

• Travel as far as you can and as much as you can: In Aug’15, me and my wife, took a career break for a year. We quit our corporate jobs and backpacked for 10 months and did a full Round the World trip across 6 continents and 35+ countries on Indian passport. We still are probably the first couple who have done a strict Round the world on Indian passport. We stayed with locals in each region and tried to understand their culture as much as we could by asking lot of questions to our hosts and other travellers. It changed my perspective. It made me a completely different person. I have penned my thoughts here and please do read.
• Find great mentors and respect them: In the Indian culture, there is a lot of emphasis on “Guru”. In India, we never had Father’s Day/ Mother’s Day but we religiously celebrated “Guru Pournima” (You can say Teacher’ day) in…