# If I'd Known Then What I Know Now by J.R. Parrish: 3 Ideas Worth Keeping

> Source: [https://icharles.com/articles/if-i-d-known-then-what-i-know-now-by-j-r-parrish-3-ideas-worth-keeping](https://icharles.com/articles/if-i-d-known-then-what-i-know-now-by-j-r-parrish-3-ideas-worth-keeping) (canonical)
> Author: Chuck — iCharles, https://icharles.com
> Published: 2014-11-18 · Updated: 2026-07-07

## Why I Picked It Up

I grabbed this one because the premise is simple: the author is 55, retired in Hawaii, and he walks through every stage of life — birth to 7, 7 to 15, 16 to 25, and on up — saying what he'd have done differently at each one. He also writes it from the parent's side, so if you've got a kid at that age, there's something for you too. I liked the structure because you're constantly checking it against your own life. I'm 29, so I read it thinking about where I've been and where I'm headed.

I'll be honest — a lot of it is obvious. Pay attention in school. Listen to your parents. Look up to older people. If I'd been handed this at 15, I wouldn't have listened either. I wasn't exactly the son who took advice well. But a few sections were genuinely sharp, and those are the ones worth talking about.

## Don't Always Be Available

The dating section, which covers the 16-to-25 window, was the best part of the book by far. The line that stuck with me: don't always be available. Anything that's constantly there, you stop appreciating. He's not saying play games — he's saying be a little unpredictable, keep growing, keep a life outside the relationship. Think about people who travel for work a couple weekends a month. You appreciate them more when they're home because they're not always there.

He ties this straight to why relationships fail. When people say a relationship "just ran its course," what they usually mean is they stopped growing together. Growing is conquering a new stage of life, and if you're not doing that as a couple, you're stagnant — and stagnant reads as boring, which reads as unappreciated. That's a mindset shift for me, not just dating advice.

A few other things from that chapter I'm keeping:

- Be the man, or be the woman — know what role you're actually playing and own it
- Don't rush into marriage — it's the biggest decision you'll make, full stop
- Have your own friends, your own life, outside the relationship

I know two people this hit close to home for. One friend got engaged after six months. Another got engaged after two years, moved states, bought a house — and then called it off because it didn't feel right. That second one takes real strength. Ending something that looks right on paper because it isn't right in practice is one of the harder calls a person can make, and I respect it.

## Thoughts Drive the Whole Chain

The biggest idea in the book, and one I don't see enough authors hit directly, is about thoughts. Your thoughts affect your feelings. Your feelings affect what you do. What you do affects your outcomes. If your thoughts are bad, you won't feel good, and if you don't feel good, you won't take risks — you'll just cruise through life. And you can't cruise through life right now. It's too competitive. You have to consistently choose to be positive, on purpose, in your work and your family, or the whole chain breaks down before it starts.

## Where the Book Falls Short

My real critique: he goes an inch deep on every stage instead of going deep on one. I'd rather he took the 7-to-15 chapter and made it its own 150-page book, then did the same for 16-to-25, and so on. As it is, you get a fast overview of a lot of ground and not much depth on any of it.

## Who Should Read It

It's a quick read — I finished it in about three days, 130-some pages, and it's cheap on Amazon. I'm giving it three out of five. If you read a lot in this space already, skip it — there's not much new. But if you don't read much, or you want a broad, practical overview of how to think about the decades ahead of you, it's a solid starter. The dating chapter alone made it worth my time.