Take it from a Gen Xer: midlife regrets are no fun. But what if it were possible to learn from our elders and avoid making the same mistakes? We’ve reached a moment when Gen X (and, frankly, some Millennials) has entered its silver age of wisdom and is ready to pass it on to the next generation.

In a Reddit thread titled “Middle-aged people, what advice would you give a young person to avoid going through a mid-life crisis later in life?” there have been more than 400 responses in less than a week. They range from beautifully earnest to highly practical, with none crossing into judgmental territory. Here are some of the best:

View this post on Instagram A post shared by John Kotrides (@genxjono)

A post shared by John Kotrides (@genxjono)

Don’t let others decide what your life should be

“Don’t spend your 20s and 30s becoming someone else’s idea of successful and then wonder at 45 why nothing feels like yours.”

“Try and become what you want to be, rather than what you think you should want to be.”

“This is it. I followed my parents’ idea of a career and success and I’m lost at 40. I should have followed my own path.”

Decisions have consequences

“Every decision you make can have life-altering consequences later on. Watch your diet, exercise, money, and mental health and constantly keep tabs on them and generally speaking, you should avoid most of the common pitfalls.”

“A good way to try to teach yourself these habits is to just make a list of brand new things you’ll do for ten minutes in a day, then track them for a week. So, say, ‘I’ll do ten minutes of walking, ten minutes of writing, and ten minutes of reading.’ At the end of the day, after doing these things, you’ll notice they were easier each time and you even felt like you could go longer in the next session. It just shows how habits are built pretty quickly and doing something only once isn’t pointless because it’s starting a whole new act.”

Reflect and ask questions

“Spend time alone, reflecting on your thoughts. I know, it seems scary. But trust me. Go to a park or some outdoor space where you can be alone. Don’t look at your phone, don’t listen to music, no distractions. Just try to be there in the moment.

Consider and reflect on any thoughts that pop into your head. Good or bad, ask yourself what are the origins of these thoughts and the meaning of them? The point of this exercise is to become more attuned to yourself and your unique life that you may not realize because we rarely give ourselves time to reflect.

Figuring out ‘what you want to be’ requires a deep understanding of yourself, and this comes from spending time reflecting on who you are.”

“The best way to self-reflect is by asking questions:

What causes you to feel fulfilled?

Where do you want to see yourself in 5, 10, or 20 years from now?

What’s holding you back?

What can you change now?

As you keep digging, you start to notice questions you don’t know the answers to, or try to avoid.

Those are usually the things that you slowly have to work on, maybe with a therapist, a friend, or by yourself to become a better person.”

“Build a life that actually feels like yours—keep growing, take risks you believe in, and don’t postpone living for ‘someday.’”

“Everything you want to do and everything you want to be is just on the other side of embarrassment. Don’t be afraid to be bad at something, we all start somewhere.”

Music, community and joy drive real change

In a small village in Pwani, a district on Tanzania’s coast, a massive dance party is coming to a close. For the past two hours, locals have paraded through the village streets, singing and beating ngombe drums; now, in a large clearing, a woman named Sheilla motions for everyone to sit facing a large projector screen. A film premiere is about to begin. 

It’s an unusual way to kick off a film about gender bias, inequality, early marriage, and other barriers that prevent girls from accessing education in Tanzania. But in Pwani and beyond, local organizations supported by Malala Fund and funded by Pura are finding creative, culturally relevant ways like this one to capture people’s interest. 

The film ends and Sheilla, the Communications and Partnership Lead for Media for Development and Advocacy (MEDEA), stands in front of the crowd once again, asking the audience to reflect: What did you think about the film? How did it relate to your own experience? What can we learn? 

Sheilla explains that, once the community sees the film, “It brings out conversations within themselves, reflective conversations.” The resonance and immediate action create a ripple effect of change.

Across Tanzania, gender-based violence often forces adolescent girls out of the classroom. This and other barriers — including child marriage, poverty, conflict, and discrimination — prevent girls from completing their education around the world. 

Sheilla and her team are using film and radio programs to address the challenges girls face in their communities. MEDEA’s ultimate goal is to affirm education as a fundamental right for everyone, and to ensure that every member of a community understands how girls’ education contributes to a stronger whole and how to be an ally for their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, friends, nieces, and girlfriends. 

Sheilla’s story is one of many that inspired Heart on Fire, a new fragrance from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection that blends the warm, earthy spices of Tanzania with a playful, joyful twist. Here’s how Pura is using scent as a tool to connect the world and inspire action.

A partnership focused on local impact, on a global mission

Pura, a fragrance company that recognizes education as both freedom and a human right, has partnered with Malala Fund since 2022. In order to defend every girl’s right to access and complete 12 years of education, Malala Fund partners with local organizations in countries where the educational barriers are the greatest. They invest in locally-led solutions because they know that those who are closest to the problems are best equipped to solve and build durable solutions, like MEDEA, which works with communities to challenge discrimination against girls and change beliefs about their education. 

But local initiatives can thrive and scale more powerfully with global support, which is why Pura is using their own superpower, the power of scent, to connect people around the world with the women and girls in these local communities. 

The Pura x Malala Fund Collection incorporates ingredients naturally found in Tanzania, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Brazil: countries where Malala Fund operates to address systemic education barriers. Eight percent of net revenue from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection will be donated to Malala Fund directly, but beyond financial support, the Collection is also a love letter to each unique community, blending notes like lemon, jasmine, cedarwood, and clove to transport people, ignite their senses, and help them draw inspiration and hope from the global movement for girls’ education. Through scent, people can connect to the courage, joy, and tenacity of girls and local leaders, all while uniting in a shared commitment to education: the belief that supporting girls’ rights in one community benefits all of us, everywhere. 

You’ve already met Sheilla. Now see how Naiara and Mama Habiba are building unique solutions to ensure every girl can learn freely and dare to dream.

Naiara Leite is reimagining what’s possible in Brazil

In Brazil, where pear trees and coconut plantations cover the Northeastern Coast, girls like ten-year-old Julia experience a different kind of educational barrier than girls in Tanzania. Too often, racial discrimination contributes to high dropout rates among Black, quilombola and Indigenous girls in the country. 

“In the logic of Brazilian society, Black people don’t need to study,” says Naiara Leite, Executive Coordinator of Odara, a women-led organization and Malala Fund partner. Bahia, the state where Odara is based, was once one of the largest slave-receiving territories in the Americas, and because of that history, deeply-ingrained, anti-Black prejudice is still widespread. “Our role and the image constructed around us is one of manual labor,” Naiara says. 

But education can change that. In 2020, with assistance from a Malala Fund grant, Odara launched its first initiative for improving school completion rates among Black, quilombola, and Indigenous girls: “Ayomidê Odara”. The young girls mentored under the program, including Julia, are known as the Ayomidês. And like the Pura x Malala Fund Collection’s Brazil: Breath of Courage scent, the Ayomidês are fierce, determined, and bursting with energy.

Ayomidês take part in weekly educational sessions where they explore subjects like education and ethnic-racial relations. The girls are encouraged to find their own voices by producing Instagram lives, social media videos, and by participating in public panels. Already, the Ayomidês are rewriting the narrative on what’s possible for Afro-Brazilian girls to achieve. One of the earliest Ayomidês, a young woman named Debora, is now a communications intern. Another former Ayomidê, Francine, works at UNICEF, helping train the next generation of adolescent leaders. And Julia has already set her sights on becoming a math teacher or a model. 

“These are generations of Black women who did not have access to a school,” Naiara says. “These are generations of Black women robbed daily of their dreams. And we’re telling them that they could be the generation in their family to write a new story.” 

Mama Habiba is reframing the conversation in Nigeria 

In Mama Habiba’s home country of Nigeria, the scents of starfruit, ylang ylang and pineapple, all incorporated into the Pura x Malala Collection’s “Nigeria: Hope for Tomorrow,” can be found throughout the vibrant markets. Like these native scents, Mama Habiba says that the Nigerian girls are also bright and passionate, but too often they are forced to leave school long before their potential fully blooms. 

​​“Some of these schools are very far, and there is an issue of quality, too,” Mama Habiba says. “Most parents find out when their children are in school, the girls are not learning. So why allow them to continue?” 

When girls drop out of secondary school, marriage is often the alternative. In Nigeria, one in three girls is married before the age of 18. When this happens, girls are unable to fulfill their potential, and their families and communities lose out on the social, health and economic benefits.

Completing secondary school delays marriage, and according to UNESCO, educated girls become women who raise healthier children, lift their families out of poverty and contribute to more peaceful, resilient communities.

To encourage young girls to stay in school, the Centre for Girls’ Education, a nonprofit in Nigeria founded by Mama Habiba and supported by Malala Fund and Pura, has pioneered an initiative that’s similar to the Ayomidê workshops in Brazil: safe spaces. Here, girls meet regularly to learn literacy, numeracy, and other issues like reproductive health. These safe spaces also provide an opportunity for the girls to role-play and learn to advocate for themselves, develop their self-image, and practice conversations with others about their values, education being one of them. In safe spaces, Mama Habiba says, girls start to understand “who she is, and that she is a girl who has value. She has the right to negotiate with her parents on what she really feels or wants.”

“When girls are educated, they can unlock so many opportunities,” Mama Habiba says. “It will help the economy of the country. It will boost so many opportunities for the country. If they are given the opportunity, I think the sky is not the limit. It is the starting point for every girl.”  

From parades, film screenings to safe spaces and educational programs, girls and local leaders are working hard to........

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