12 Things I’d Tell My 20-year-old Self That I Know For Sure
And would have made life more fun.
You will have many careers, focus on habits
Changing careers a few times during your working life is not unusual. The average person will change careers 5–7 times during their working life, according to statistics.
You don’t have to be one thing or another.
You can be a lawyer for five years and then start a company. You can go get your MBA and then study to be an acupuncturist. Do one great thing at a time; there is plenty of time to pursue your passions.
You can develop a myriad of complementary skills that turn you into the person you become.
Every experience in life modifies your self-image.
While you won’t become an expert in any skill from practicing it one time, as you repeat the action over and over again, the evidence accumulates, and your self-image begins to change.
The effect of one-off experiences tends to fade away while the effect of habits gets reinforced with time, which means your habits contribute most of the evidence that shapes your identity.
The process of habit building is the process of becoming yourself.
For most of my life, I didn’t consider myself a writer. I wrote, but I wouldn’t have called myself a writer. It wasn’t until I started to write every day and publish an article five to seven times a week that I identified with being a writer. As my output (evidence that, hey, I’m a writer, look at all these words I write) grew, so did my identity as a writer. I didn’t start as a writer; I became one through my writing and publishing habit.
So, the process of habit building is the process of becoming yourself.
Don’t commit. Just investigate your interests
Unless you’ve had a singular dream since you were five, don’t commit to one thing.
Some have a burning desire to be a horse trainer. They may have spent every waking moment at stables, riding horses, and obtaining whatever degree a horse trainer requires. But if you don’t know what you’re thing is yet, don’t commit to following a career or course of study you’re lukewarm about.
Instead, investigate what interests you, try them on for size. Go all-in on those things that capture your focus and attention, and give you joy while doing.
Don’t practice or follow one thing you know won’t interest you for very long.
Fail often
The most important task in your 20’s is to explore who you are. When we take risks, put ourselves in the game of life, part of that daring will end in what some people call “failure.”
Failure is a good thing.
It means you stepped outside your comfort zone and dared to dream a bigger dream than you currently are living. Failure develops character, our greatest lessons come from failure, and failure often makes one more interesting.
There’s a saying in LA that if you haven’t been sued yet, you’re nobody. While that isn’t true, you get the idea. How we handle failure and whether we press on despite it makes for a great story and a great life.
If you don’t know what you want to do for a living, one way to find out is to fail, it means you’re reaching for growth because you tried something that didn’t come with guaranteed success, but you gave it your best shot anyway.
Find a path and a pursuit where you’re determined to succeed, no matter how many failures come before it.
You are forging your own path
I thought I was old in my 20s. I had to figure everything out by 30, or I’d be a total loser, but by society’s standards. Who cares where everyone else is on the life-career-family trajectory. You are on your journey, and your journey has nothing to do with anyone else’s.
A rigid mindset filled with comparison chatter will cause you to make choices for the wrong reasons — fear being the main one.
The two times I made decisions based on fear turned out to be the worst decisions.
Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves and not look at life as an exploration of self and learning what most excites us?
While focusing on one career choice does get results, continuing down a path toward something that bores you or makes you dread getting out of bed, I say, don’t do it anymore.
Make a bold choice and switch gears. Find something that makes you feel like you can’t wait to start the day.
When you start down a one path and realize this was a mistake, that is valuable information. And sometimes that information is, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” It’s useful information because as soon as you stop doing things you aren’t meant to do, you can start exploring new things you were meant to do.
Money won’t make you happy
I knew this, but not really. Money, things, a great career, even people can’t make you happy. Happiness is an emotion. It comes and goes. People mistake happiness as a constant state of being when it’s never permanent.
Happiness is finding those little things in life that surprise you with feelings of joy, contentedness, presence, etc. If you have lots of those moments, you are on the right track. But you alone are responsible for bringing those moments into your life. No one else is; we’re all working on finding what brings us small moments of joy.
Focus on the quality of your thoughts. That is what determines the quality of your life.
Get a law degree, it doesn’t mean you have to practice law, but it will help you be a better entrepreneur
Law school teaches you how to think critically using the Socratic method, debate and argue well, write well, and read large volumes of text for the most pertinent information. Skills that come in handy for entrepreneurs.
According to Harley Finkelstein, the COO of Shopify, a mentor told him he should go to law school because “law school is like finishing school for entrepreneurs.”
The Socratic method (which is what the method used to teach law) teaches you to acquire large amounts of information/content so that you can regurgitate it and repeat it quickly. In law school, you have to think on your toes and be ready to answer a question that substantiates, for the professor, that you know what he or she is asking you to explain.
I didn’t realize how much I loved the law until I had to go through a messy divorce. My money went so fast I ended up having to write my declarations to submit to the judge, file motions, and fill out a lot of forms. It was like an orgasm for my brain. You have to follow the rules and write within the bounds of predetermined parameters.
Writing numerous declarations sharpened my writing skills. I had to take out anything that took away from the argument. My lawyer coached me and repeatedly said to include, “only facts that you can prove.”
Because the law doesn’t care about emotions, it only cares about provable facts. I love dealing with facts, way more than emotions.
Develop a writing habit and take a yearly writing class
Similar to having a law degree knowing how to write well will increase your success in any area of life.
In the age of social media, we are all writers, whether we write an email or a 280-character tweet.
If you can write well, your options for making money increase. You’ll be able to write a convincing letter to gain employment. You can write a persuasive letter to the owners of a home you want to purchase (I’ve done this successfully).
A good writer is a better entrepreneur and business person. If you can write well, you can make a full-time income online. The options are limitless for those of us who write well.
Knowing how to write well is an asset in your successful career/life arsenal.
Get therapy to assist in knowing yourself
I scrounged together whatever money I had to talk to someone about my family history when I was in college. I wish I had done it sooner and more often. It would have saved me a lot of pain, misery, time, and money later on.
If we don’t face what triggers us, what is encoded in our psyches, the tracks that were laid down by our primary caregivers, they will show up anyway.
You can’t run from them or bury them without negative consequence or get over them without naming and claiming them first. Even if you stuff them with Oreos, alcohol, weed, overworking, or Netflix, they will find a way to come to the surface in some area of your life when you least expect it.
Emotional upsets will show up in the first intimate relationship you have. And if you manage to stuff negative emotions triggered during marriage, I assure you your children will get them to surface just by being themselves.
Nip that shit in the bud.
If you understand yourself and what triggers you, and why, you’ll have healthier relationships with the people you choose to love and more success in whatever career you follow.
If you understand why you operate on the emotional level you run on, the less drama you’ll have in relationships, all relationships, whether they are business or personal. Less drama means more time to focus on the good stuff life has to offer.
As Esther Perel often says,
The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life.
Figure it out in your 20s. Our brains are still growing into our mid 20’s. You have a better chance to rewire your inner critic in your 20s than in your 40s or 50s.
Pay yourself first, lady
Whatever small amount of money you’re making, make 10% less by paying yourself first. Even before the water bill gets paid. Because the value that comes from compound interest is related to the time you have for your money to compound.
I have to pay myself a lot more than 10% because I’m not in my 20s anymore.
*sigh*
The more time you have to save, the less you have to pay yourself because of compound interest. Time is what you need to build a robust and healthy portfolio. The more time, the better.
Don’t make it complicated. If you work for a company, participate in your company’s 401K plan. If your workplace doesn’t offer one, open an account at a brokerage firm, pick a mutual fund, set up an automatic payment of 10% (20% is much better), to go to that account each paycheck.
If you never see the money to hit your account, you won’t miss it. Make it automatic.
Slow down
Kid, you are not old at 20 or 28 or even 34. Slow down.
You don’t have to figure everything out in your 20s but start to. No pressure.
Just start figuring it out while having fun. You have to pay attention and pursue something, but you would be surprised at how much time you do have to set up the life you want. Don’t put pressure on yourself to have everything figured out by the time you hit 25. You won’t.
Enjoy life more, live in the moment, work hard, but have fun while doing it.
Slow down, but think long term
This is a tightrope act. You are young, live in the moment while thinking long-term even if you only think long term every Tuesday night. Decide what you want your life to be like 30 years from now. How do you want it set up? Do you want to live paycheck to paycheck, or do you want more freedom to choose the life you desire?
Money equals freedom. Whatever that means for you.
For me, money in the bank means when I place my head on the pillow at night, I’m free from worry and anxiety.
Money in the bank is my best night-time ritual. It means I don’t have to worry about paying the bills or if I’ll have enough money to cover an emergency.
If you want more freedom, what do you have to do right now to get it later? Make a list, revisit it often to make sure you are taking the necessary actions to manifest the life you want in the future. Get specific, how much money do you need for peace of mind? Set your life up so you’re taking the action you need to take now, to have the life you want in the future, for your future self.
Think about your future self often, because she will be here sooner than you know.
Make your relationship with work fun
Yes, you have to do things in life sometimes that aren’t “fun” and require a whole hell of a lot of work to get to your goals and aspirations, but you can’t follow a dream that makes you want to yack in the morning from the thought of it.
Your relationship with work should be one of great passion, great love, and great fun. Whatever you put your hours into during your day, find it fulfilling — the challenges, the satisfaction of learning new skills.
If you are miserable and have a knot in your stomach when thinking about going to a job, work, or a project you are pursuing, that is a sign. A sign life is too damn short, find another way. Find meaningful work that you want to do and doesn’t make you dread getting out of bed.
Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less said this to Boing Boing,
Discover what you are best at doing and enjoy that is different from what all your peers are doing and that requires relatively little effort from you. Then put huge effort into honing that skill, so that it becomes monstrously greater than anyone else’s. Keep demanding that each year you make your peculiar talent more peculiar and much more potent. Use the skill to make the world a more interesting place. Don’t care about making money. If you have a fantastically different and useful skill, everything else you want will follow.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
Or follow me here.
