Read This If You Feel Like You Are Barely Surviving Your Early 20s

Being in your 20s, no matter if you’re turning 21 or 26, is just plain hard. It’s an uphill mountain climb that keeps on growing steeper. It’s a ten year battle between what you really want to do with your life and what everyone around you wants.

I always thought being a teenager would be the worst of it all. You’re full of raging hormones and angst, and you whole heartedly believe that the entire world is against you. But, alas, your 20s come quicker than you think and you’re hit by so much anxiety and worry that you don’t know what to do with yourself.

Graduating college seems like a celebratory moment at the time, right? You survived four years of homework and tests and you have a degree to prove it. I remembering feeling proud of myself for a brief moment, until I got bombarded with questions about my five year plan and about my future.

I’m only 23 and I feel like I have worried enough in my life to be at least 40 by now.

I know that if you are reading this, you are struggling. You feel like you aren’t good enough to get that great job you want. You feel like everyone else around you is killing it, while you still live with your parents.

I know you probably feel scared that you won’t amount to anything. And you are feeling unworthy of any success you might have already gotten by now. And I know, it’s easy to put yourself down. It’s easy to log onto Facebook and stare at your friends with envy while they brag about their cool new jobs, or newly rented apartments.

But, here’s the truth. Everyone, and I mean everyone, feels this way sometimes.

You are not alone in your anxiety. You are not alone with what you are worrying about and with what keeps you up at night. Everyone is scared. Everyone has dark thoughts about their future and where they are headed. Everyone is just as petrified as you are.

Everyone has to go through terrible jobs to get to the ones they love.

Everyone this age has to walk on several different paths and turns to get to the one they are meant to be on. And everyone you meet is fighting the same battle as you, just with different timing.

And what you need to realize is, you don’t need to always move in fast motion. You don’t always need to run until you are out of breath. Work at your own pace. Live at your own pace and what is comfortable for you. Stop comparing everything to everyone else.

Stop looking at other people’s lives instead of your own.

Being in your twenties is hard. It’s downright exhausting at times. But, I promise you, you will survive this. You will survive the hardships and the terror of the ‘unknown’. Life is going to hand you lots of challenges. It’s going to give you lots of obstacles that you will be forced to run on, and it’s not going to be easy. But it’s going to be so, so so worth it.

Because one day, you will look back on this time in your life and smile because it all worked out. And one day, you will look back on this time in your life and know that you were moving in the right direction all along, whether you realized it or not.