Articles, Popular

What I realized in my mid twenties

8 Mai

Hello, fellow human apparently in your quarter-life crisis or mid twenties. I assume you wouldn’t have clicked this article if you hadn’t been curious about what I have to say. You’re probably also looking for some tips. At least there is hope within you.

Well, let me tell you. You’re not alone and I am struggling too right now. My life just feels very insecure at the moment. I recently moved in with my parents again. We don’t have the easiest relationship and I am just counting the days until I can move out and live my own life again. The problem I have here is that I don’t have a new flat yet and it seems that it’s not coming any time soon. So I try to channel my energy into writing and hopefully share some insights into what I learned so far.

One thing at the beginning: I hate it. Though it’s probably necessary in one’s life to go through such a phase. And I am a strong believer that things get better at one point. That there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You know: life consists of ups and downs. But the downs could be more gentle if you’d ask me.

So let’s get into what I learned so far.

Embracing individuality

This quarter-life crisis (what a boomer word btw.) usually starts with a big change. For me, it was the breakup with my former toxic boyfriend. This left me with the feeling of total loss. I felt like I lost a part of myself because all the plans and futures we thought of together, all the future lives were washed away.

What was left was the feeling of an existential crisis too. I didn’t have any solo hobbies to pursue or friends to hang out with. The challenge now is to get me started as an individual again. Finding my joys and tasks again. Finding what makes me truly happy. A hard mission to accomplish. For me at least.

In the end (caution cheesy line) we just have ourselves. But this is what you need to experience the hard way probably. Because everyone knows this but to understand what it means is a different thing.

This means making your life as enjoyable as possible. Embrace people in your life but never again lose yourself for others. You have a meaning in this world and you are here for something. So embrace yourself and rock on.

Career and ambitions

Our society says: Tell me your profession and I know exactly who you are. No wonder people lose any sense of self and feel stuck and lost when they realize the career they pursued doesn’t fit them anymore.

This puts a special pressure on humans in their early to mid-twenties. They need to decide who they want to be for the rest of their life. And usually don’t get told that changing professions isn’t that hard or that they aren’t defined by the profession they choose.

I’ve seen many friends change their main subject in Uni because what they dreamt about being in high school doesn’t suit their personality in Uni anymore. Moving out of the parent’s nest and starting new, changes you. You start to feel like yourself (hopefully) and maybe realize that the profession you chose because of the fear of changing who you are isn’t right at all.

So having a rough idea of who you are and what you want to spend your life doing is the way to start. That said it should be clear that this takes a huge amount of time. If not, then let me tell you: It takes time and there’s no shame in taking that time and deciding after or in between. I hope someone had told me that instead of me being lazy for not going to uni straight away.

Consider snagging a slightly different striped piece, one that nods to the ticking stripe, but puts a modern twist on it.

Tweet

Relationships and friendships

There are just one or two friends I still have from school in my life. And they are kinda far away and in completely different life stages. But we choose to be in each other’s life on a very rough regular basis. We see each other maybe once or twice a year. And that’s fine. With the other 98 people from my year, I don’t have any contact at all. And that’s okay too. Especially when I think of how different they are and that we probably don’t share any values anymore.

What I want to say with this is that the dynamics of friendships change. For the better or the worse. The big struggle is to acknowledge the change in the chosen family and that it’s hard to let go. Letting go is probably the hardest part and I still haven’t figured out how to do that properly.

The only tip I can give you here is that we need to deal with situations in a mature way and that setting boundaries is especially important. In the end, it’s your life and your happiness again and we don’t want to waste valuable time on useless discussions or allegations from friends of whatsoever nature.

Finances

When it comes to money I now live by the maxim: YOLO. In the past, I put financial stability first and did not acknowledge that you’re young just once. I would save and refuse to go out and hang out with friends. Just to have that extra money on the side. And to be fair I did not even save for something specific. There was just this anxiety of not having money later on.

Now, growing older and earning some money (still peanuts though), I would join friends and go out and have that one coffee. For myself, I would say that I regret being that anxious a little bit. Because looking in the past I would have had the money to at least have a little fun once in a while. The honesty with myself was missing and my angst prevented me from realizing that.

Right now I am a little more honest with myself. Seeing the opportunities to widen my social life, my passion for museums, and so on. But on the other hand, I still don’t earn enough to ignore money. Budgets and regular check-ins with my bank account are still on my agenda once a week or two.

There’s just that middle way waiting for you to be discovered.

Mental health and well-being

Nothing is further away from me than being mentally healthy and becoming a guru in well-being.

There’s still stuff I realized quite recently, which I am going to tell you now.

The first thing would be how important it is to let out your emotions. I am still very good at suppressing emotions in the long run. Ignoring the problems I might have. Though letting out the emotions and actually feeling them rather than overthinking them grants more relief and happiness later on. But I would say that this is something someone understands just after experiencing it – probably multiple times.

The second thing is tied closely to the first point from above. Knowing yourself and having hobbies to pursue. If you know yourself and know what makes you happy – or at least calm – while doing is a huge benefit. It reduces stress and in the end, you can think clearer about solutions and maybe acknowledge the mistakes being made. By pursuing hobbies you’re actively doing something for your well-being. It took me way too long to realize that and I neglected the importance of enjoying free time. But hey, now I get to try a lot of fun stuff in search of a new hobby.

Actually learning from mistakes and adaptability

There’s nothing I am more sure of than the fact that everyone has heard that you need to learn from mistakes and adapt to situations, and people too. It’s that one thing that everyone lectures you about in your mid-twenties but gets stored in one of these mental drawers like cleaning your room every day.

Nobody in that early stage of adulthood pays much attention to that. For me, it’s a concept you understand at the end of the so-called ‘quarter-life crisis’. The stage where you try to get out of that hard phase and actually work toward a future you will be content with.

Learning from mistakes is the same as adapting. You adapt to stuff that did work out or you grow out of. Finding different solutions and changing in a rather drastic way.

For me, the breaking point was when I recently moved in with my parents again. This came out of several mistakes made by me and now I need to adapt to the old family unit again Facing struggles I had as a teenager already. But it’s probably a crucial part of self-growth and the will to change. Being transported back in time makes you observe and understand what may be not for you anymore.

Conclusion

Conclusions are always hard to make on these topics I find. Individuality should be embraced so I hope you found a little something that has helped you and that gave you some insight.

Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed reading it, and thank you for sticking to it for that long.

I would love it if you would leave a like or comment to put this in front of other people.