20 Little Reminders To Help You Navigate Through Your 20s

1. You don’t have to figure everything out now. I put this insane amount of pressure on myself to figure everything out and to be honest, it hasn’t got me very far. It’s good to have goals but you don’t need to have your whole life planned out in your 20s and you also don’t need to accomplish everything on your list in your 20s. You have time. Just breathe.

2. You are going to be okay. Even if it feels like your life is falling apart right now things will be okay. You won’t feel like this forever. It’s an adjustment phase in your life and it’s normal to feel lost. Your 20s are full of learning, making mistakes, of feeling like you’re on top of the world one minute and the next crying on the floor. It’s all going to be okay, through the highs and the lows. You will figure it out.

3. You are worth so much more than ‘likes.’ Your worth is not defined by your ‘likes’ or your followers or your friends. You are enough even if you only get 7 likes. We’ve become so obsessed with having likes and gaining followers that we often forgot to live in the moment and instead are only focused on taking a good photo. Likes don’t determine your worth, I swear, so just start living.

4. It’s good to question your life and your decisions. Questioning your life is good for you. It means you care, it means you want to know if you’re on the right path or doing the right things. Questioning holds you accountable and makes you realize you could be doing more, or that maybe you need to take a step back and do less.

5. You don’t have to know all the answers. It’s not even possible to have all the answers. You will mess up, you will forget things, you will need to ask for help and that’s okay. Asking for help is a good thing, it does not make you weak.

6. Always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Surround yourself with people you can learn from. Learn as much as you can from mentors, parents, friends, speakers, coaches – absorb all the knowledge you can and never stop learning.

7. Let go of the people who don’t make you a priority. Stop hanging on to friendships that wouldn’t be existent if you stopped trying. You shouldn’t keep putting that pressure on yourself. You have people who love you for you and you should cherish those people instead of worrying about the people who no longer worry about you.

8. Cut the toxic people out of your life. Just like letting go of the people who don’t make you a priority, get rid of the toxic people. Don’t hang around with people who drain you more than they fulfill you. Those people are toxic, they don’t care if you succeed and they’d actually rather see you go nowhere in life so things don’t change.

9. Save your damn money. Saving money sucks, but it’s so so important. As much as you might hate money, it’s a necessity and needed to live. It’s important to have a savings account (you don’t touch) because you never know when things are going to go south and it’s better to be prepared than completely screwed.

10. Try everything you can. As you may have heard plenty of times, your 20s should be your selfish years. Do what you can, do what you want, do what makes you happy. These are your years to live your dreams out, to set the foundation for your future. Try working jobs you hate, work at a coffee shop, travel, move until you find a city you like. Do what is going to make you happy and enjoy your life.

11. Give a fuck. Everyone is obsessed with having an ‘idgaf’ attitude, but please, give a fuck. It’s important to care, it’s important to care and be empathetic. The world needs it. Please give a fuck, about yourself, your friends, your family, animals, strangers. The world needs more people who care.

12. You can’t hate yourself into someone you love. You really, truly can’t because I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. You have to treat yourself with the respect you want other people to give you. You have to love yourself and you have to take care of yourself. Self-love is hard, but it’s important and it’s something you should spend time on.

13. You’re the only one in control of your future. This is your life and you can blame other people for your situations in life but that won’t get you anywhere. At the end of the day it comes down to you and your decisions about your life. This is the time of your life where you get to decide what you want to do. Your parents no longer have say, neither do your friends or your significant other. You get to decide how you want your life to go.

14. Take care of yourself. Self-love is so important! I can’t emphasize it enough, you can’t help other people if you aren’t helping yourself. You need to take care of yourself first. You need to make sure you are full of love and then you can share that love with others who need it.

15. Learn how to forgive yourself. You’re going to mess up and have regrets, it’s all part of life. You are easy to forgive other people but you’re so cruel to yourself. Stop beating yourself up over missed opportunities isn’t going to help get you anywhere and instead start forgiving yourself to help you move forward.

16. Be kind to yourself and enjoy your own company. Life rarely leads you down the path you envisioned. Maybe the person you planned to spend your life with broke your heart. Maybe you got fired from your dream job. The possibilities are limitless, but at the end of the day you need to be kind to yourself and learn to enjoy your own company because you’re all you got. You’re going to be the only person you’re always with so you need to spend some time getting to know who you are.

17. ‘No’ is a complete sentence.  Don’t be afraid to say no when you don’t want to do something, when you don’t want to go on a date, when you don’t want to go out with you friends. No is a perfectly acceptable answer and it doesn’t need to be followed by any explanation.

18. It’s okay to feel bad for yourself, but only for a limited amount of time. Maybe you did get fired, it’s normal to feel sad, but you have to pick your feet up and keep moving because at the end of the day the only person who truly cares you got fired is you, everyone else’s life is still moving. Maybe you got your heart broken, it’s natural and normal to feel pain, but at some point you have to stop dragging out your pain and move on. You have to let go and you have to be willing to attempt to heal – it’s the only way it will get better.

19. You will grow apart from your friends. There was a time your friends were the most important part of your life and in those moments you swore it would always be like that. But as your 20s go on you realize more and more that it won’t be like that and your friendships will fade. It’s normal, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. Sometimes you have to know when enough is enough and let them go, even though you don’t want to.

20. Appreciate all the small moments in life. Appreciate when all your friends are together, even if it’s only for a meal. Appreciate the sun rises, the people you meet on the road, the strangers who help you out when you’re struggling. Appreciate all the little things and it will make your life a lot more enjoyable when you choose to see the good.