Growing up I always envisioned my young adult years to be the best. Wake up early, work out consistently, be married and have a career by 25, but now that I am in my twenties I realize that I set myself up for complete failure.
See, what nobody tells you is that when you are young, nothing falls into place. You have to work ridiculously hard for everything you have. You have to have the perfect mindset in everything you do or else, you'll fail miserably. Thus far, I have never experienced anything quite as difficult as deciding the path for my career and realizing that each and every little decision I make today, impacts my future. At 20, how is anybody supposed to know what they want to do for the rest of their life? All we have ever known is school, and having somebody else make all of our decisions for us. We have never had to genuinely face major decisions on our own. We have always had our parents beside us to make the "adult decision" for us. But, what if that was never what we wanted? What if the choices we laid in others hands was never the best for ourselves? At 20 years old we are left picking up the pieces and forced to figure out who we are, who we want to be and what we absolutely do not want to become. The unfortunate part of all of this is, however, we cannot truly know these things until we mess up enough times to learn on our own.
Your twenties are your selfish years. The years to focus on yourself, to explore your surroundings and discover what life has to offer you. Although, we are doing this with $50 in our pockets and a long to-do list that we keep putting off, we are trying our best to become the person we want to wake up every morning and be happy with the face starring back in the reflection of the mirror. We have the right to drink too much, stay up too late, mess up, and do it until we learn from these mistakes. You can beat something through a twenty year olds mind and they will not listen until they find out for themselves. It's all part of the headstrong generation we grew up in.
How are we supposed to know how to become that person? How did anybody ever become who they are without mistakes, lessons learned and a handful of forgiving people surrounding them and encouraging them to do better? They didn't. Everybody messes up. Every single person goes through confusing, hard, discouraging times. It's what you do with yourself during those hard times that matter. You can either continue to live in the uncertainty, or you can push through and become the best possible version of yourself possible.
So, if you are going through your "mid, mid-life crisis" you aren't alone. Everyone around you is scared. Nobody your age knows what their lives will become and how to make it happen. You are the writer in your own novel. No two peoples will be the same, so don't feel like you are completely alone and struggling. Everybody is, just in different ways.
