<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Who doesn't want to be like Mindy Kaling? As the effortlessly cool star of The Mindy Project, her wildly popular (and powerlessly addictive) show, and author of the bestselling Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns)?, it's hard not to wonder what it's like to walk in Mindy's stylish shoes\u2014or at least ponder how she got to where she is today.\n\nAs one of the invited panelists at this weekend's annual \"It's Our Turn: Young Women's Conference\" at Brentwood School in L.A., the Emmy Award winner took the stage with her friend and fellow thespian Reese Witherspoon to discuss life passions, career goals, and nail art. We were lucky enough to steal a few extra minutes with Mindy, who graciously shared her best advice for girls today\u2014as well as a few sage words for her own 15-year old self.\n\nBe cautious\u2014like, really cautious\u2014when it comes to social media.\n\n Boasting 2.75 million Twitter followers, it's fair to assume Mindy knows her way around social media. \"It makes being a kid harder now, because I was allowed to stumble with no lasting evidence of it,\" she explains. \"Today those things can haunt you, which is tough. Be incredibly careful about how you are on social media. Less is more.\"\n\nRelax!\n\n \"I would tell my teenage self to chill out a little bit,\" says Mindy, who admits to being very ambitious and intense as a teenager. \"I have a lot of responsibilities right now, but the anxieties I felt as a 16-year old girl were much more than I do now. I was a little skittish.\"\n\nMatters of the heart should be fun.\n\n \"Romance is something I was very interested in as a high-schooler with largely no success, but I would say that was lucky for me because I was able to focus on work and friendship and extra-curriculars,\" reflects Mindy. \"While I would never be able to convince my high school self of this, I wish I had thought of romance as a teenager as just another extra-curricular activity, rather than letting it dominate my interior emotional life. I wish I had thought of it more as fun.\"\n\nHard work = success.\n\n \"A lot of people ask how to get to where I am, and the single biggest thing, which is not profound, is that I work like a dog,\" says Mindy, who graduated from Dartmouth College, and interned at the likes of Late Night With Conan O'Brien. \"And I work seven days a week. I have done that since forever. I can't stress that enough. It's a tedious thing to be successful and people, especially girls, don't necessarily think that. They think it's getting someone to do your hair and makeup, and showing up to events.\"\n\nLove yourself.\n\n \"I get so worried about girls with body image stuff,\" says Mindy, who has always been refreshingly frank about things like dress sizes, fad diets, and fitness ('Chubby for Life' and 'Revenge Fantasies While Jogging' are just a few of the awesomely-named chapters in her book). \"And I feel like I have been able to have a fun career and be an on-camera talent and be someone who has boyfriends and love interests and wears nice clothes and those kinds of things without having to be an emaciated stick. And it is possible to do it. In life, you don't have to be that way and you can have a great life, a fun life, and a fulfilling love life.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.teenvogue.com/story/mindy-kaling-advice-for-teen-girls>