5 Lessons to Help You Navigate Through Your 20s
#1 Nothing to lose, everything to gain
Your 20s are everything but easy.
Questions about your future keep you awake at night.
You like sleeping, so do I.
Don’t be like me and wait years for someone to mentor you. This is going to sound harsh, but nobody cares about you and your problems.
Now, you might be an exemption and have found someone who guides you through your 20s and has all the answer to the big questions. But the truth is, that most people are not that freaking lucky.
I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to wait for anyone. Everything you’re looking for is already out there — The means of learning are abundant. If you’re in your 20s and seek advice, you will find it literally everywhere and on Medium.
I too desperately craved for life advice but nobody showed up. I was pissed.
I didn’t cry myself to sleep. Instead, I got my lazy ass moving and started to study the worlds best.
Now, you don’t need to read hundreds of autobiographies. Neither did I. This has already been done for us, or similar.
Author Timothy Ferriss reached out to hundreds of impressive world-class performers for their life advice for a smart, driven college student. While most people think your 20s are easy, he understands the questions that concern us. His 500+page book, Tribe of Mentors is crammed with valuable advice for you and me.
In the past months, I’ve deliberately worked myself through all answers and spotted reoccurring patterns.
Let’s dive into 5 lessons that will help you navigate through your 20s.
1. Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain
Everybody is striving after social proof. I know it will be tempting to live a life that impresses others.
Go against the crowd and figure out what success means to you. The less you follow conventional wisdom, the more creative your ideas become.
If you’re a millennial like me, you don’t have significant responsibilities that hold you back: No mortgage, kids, wife or in my case girlfriend (but that’s an entirely different story). Take risks while young. The worst thing that could happen is that you move back to your parents.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should drop out of college to start your own business. Risks are not always financially related.
I took a significant risk by studying a year abroad in Spain. Usually, engineering courses are not easy. It certainly doesn’t help if they’re taught in Spanish, and you don’t speak the language. I could have failed all my exams. In the end, I surprised myself by being successful.
2. Steppingstones Will Not Make You Happy
All sorts of people will give you this or that approach to your job. First, relax and get out of your hyper-competitive frame of mind. Explore the world and connect with yourself. Being decent, civil, and kind is the foundation for everything else.
Don’t take the next job as a stepping stone to something else, when you are not invested. You have one life to live. If you are using steppingstones, you are likely relying on someones else’s path or definition of success. If you strive to be happy, create your own.
The traditional career pyramid is dead. If you want to succeed, you’ll have to reinvent yourself regularly. Consider Peter Guber’s advice:
“Conceive your future as an expanding opportunity horizon where you can move laterally across the spectrum of career opportunities”
In really simple terms, never be afraid to change your course. No matter how much you’ve already invested in it.
3. Genuine Interest Over Money
If you are struggling to figure out what you are passionate about, pay attention to ideas, activities, and areas where you love the process, not just the results or the outcome. The depressing reality is that most people never find a career that they’re genuinely passionate about.
It requires time and work to find work that you love and that pays. Money alone will not make you happy in the long-term. If you find something where you love the process, the results will follow.
However, for many, pursuing your passion is terrible advice.
In your 20s, you might not really know what your best skills and opportunities are. And that’s fine. Don’t stress too much about having a plan. It’s much better to focus on personal discipline and growth. At some point, your passion will appear unexpectedly to stay forever. Until then, pursue genuine interests over money and choose opportunities based on the quality of people you will get to work with.
4. The Desire to Learn is Scarce
If you want to stay in the game, don’t waste all your energy on finding an area of expertise.
Instead, learn how to learn.
This way, you can always figure out the next thing you will need to know. Cultivate the desire to learn by reading what you want, not what you’re supposed to. You already know — the means of learning are abundant.
5. Persistence Matters More Than Talent
Failure is part of the process, but most of the game is about persistence. It is the most important trait.
In the past, I’ve seriously struggled to carry on and finish projects. I would initially get super excited but soon lose interest until I walked away from it ultimately, only to start something new that I wouldn’t finish.
Raising awareness of the progress I made has helped me to keep my vision. I now have a daily journal where I dump my thoughts and display my journey. I still don’t finish everything I set out to do, but I’ve gotten better.
If you take one thing away, let it be that each story is unique, and there is no universal path to success. Seek out dissenting opinions and try to find people who disagree with you. Especially when it comes to advice. To quote philanthropist John Arnold:
“For every successful individual who designed a master plan for life, there is another who was deliberately spontaneous”
Takeaway
Your 20s are everything but easy. If you’re looking for a mentor, don’t wait for someone to show up. The advice you’re looking for is already out there.
- Go against the crowd and figure out what success means to you. The less you follow conventional wisdom, the more creative your ideas become.
- Don’t take the next job as a stepping stone to something else, when you are not invested. You have one life to live. If you are using steppingstones, you are likely relying on someones else’s path or definition of success.
- It requires time and work to find work that you love and that pays. Money alone will not make you happy in the long-term. If you find something where you love the process, the results will follow.
- Cultivate the desire to learn by reading what you want, not what you’re supposed to.
- Seek out dissenting opinions and try to find people who disagree with you. Failure is part of the process, but most of the game is about persistence.
Whatever you are looking for, chances are, if you’re reading articles like this, you’ll succeed.
