Ride the wave, behold your head high,
Fall in love with living, in the hues of your passions and paint your sky.
A defining decade, an ode to your identity true,
What ignites the truest essence of success in your 20s
The decision belies to be in the hands of you!

Please don't waste your time, as it runs with every second of the clock as you live by your stance of today. How often have we heard people around us say this to us? Life in our 20s feels like a never-ending marathon, a sprint of competence and a constant urge to have it all figured out and look polished and put together all the time. I often find myself in the lost conundrums of thought, contemplating what my next move would be, how I can be more intentional and purposeful in every day that I spend on the journey towards finding myself, and achieving my highest success.

Navigating our 20’s while dealing with comparison, envy and FOMO

It is often a bumpy road, one filled with resentment, anger, angst and most abundantly, a looming sense of self-doubt and rumination and when all seems to be going well, the silent footsteps of imposter syndrome creep in their precipice only to magnify their essence in one’s being. How I wish our 20s would come with an instruction manual on how to find joy, success, peace and meaning, being tailor-made for each one of us!

The ones in their defining decade would be lying if they said they have never felt the need to escape our daunting realities every once in a while. Daunting in its brevity, navigating life in my 20s feels like being a newborn who is just learning to walk. In our first strides as an adult, we often stumble on our words, get hurt by the consequences of our actions, fall deep into the trap of procrastination and perfectionism and trip over the illusion of comparison and FOMO.

There is a constant need to be everywhere, to be on every trip, to have pictures embodying the very booming wave of trend, to have couture that is appealing to the masses and most importantly to have an aesthetically pleasing and flawless social media feed that fabricates the lies from the bareness of our truth so meticulously that even we cannot spot the difference. Striding through the lane of our 20s is like living in the constant paranoia of being left out, of being left out by the group of friends, of being behind the standardised set of laid-out career progression, of not having the perfect partner or the most swoon-worthy and alluring lives laid out to be awe of. I would be inauthentic if I would deny that I have not desired to have all this once.

Finding ourselves - A quest of reflection and searching for our authentic truths

But as I went on with my life, I pondered over the underlying and echoing question, “ Is the chase of all of this in our 20s a choice of us within or a projected reality and a sense of conditioning that is enforced and normalised onto us by society? Our twenties are a pivotal period in our lives when we feel completely lost after graduating from college. All of a sudden, we lack identity and find it difficult to cling to something steady, like a job. For a variety of reasons, your first job after college might not be the company you identify with, but it will still be an exciting adventure. As a result, a lot of people our age will change jobs frequently in search of a place that will feel like home.

You will be concerned that you might not be in the same stage of life as your parents were when they were your age. Or perhaps you'll observe your friends who are launching new careers, receiving promotions, and seeming to be doing very well in life. Ignore it all, and you'll do yourself a great favour. Recognize that everyone has their schedule after college. We've all been on the same page, at the same level, and going at the same speed throughout high school and college, you see. Everyone is free to do anything they want, at any speed.

While it is amazing to need to achieve milestones and career marvels in our 20s, the truth is that one would only find true joy if the driving force to achieve any success or wealth is a byproduct of your inner drive and not a false sense of self. You could get your dream apartment, your dream car, have the perfect occupation, your ideal body, a flawless partner and yet be thirsty for more and never feel a sense of gratitude for all that you are bestowed with.

It is essential for us in our 20s to question our core and ask these questions:

• What makes me feel happy?
• What fuels me with a sense of purpose?
• What are my core values in life?
• What motivates me the most?
• How do I envision my highest self?
• What makes up my definition of success?
• Does my current lifestyle serve me to my highest good?
• What defines me as a person aside from the labels of my accomplishments, career, money and relationships?
• What are the parts of me that still need healing?
• What experiences shape me the most? What is something that I am most proud of?

In the end, I've figured out something cool: I can now set my own goals and try to achieve them, and that will define how successful my year has been. This isn't particularly novel or groundbreaking; I feel like I've seen a lot of feel-good posters online that tell us, "Compare yourself to your past self and not others." However, you can forget it sometimes, so here's me reminding you of it once more. I spent the majority of my adolescence silently comparing myself to the rest of my successful friends and feeling awful about it.

Conclusion

Even though our twenties can be difficult, it's crucial to keep in mind that the most successful people never give up. Our ability to save money will be put to the ultimate test at this point. Compared to paying thousands of dollars for college, this will be our first time earning thousands of dollars, and we will be tempted to spend it all on entertainment, dining, and shopping. But don't! We will be well on our way to preparing ourselves to be financially independent at a younger age if we can save that money and develop that discipline now. After that, you can spend the large sum of money you have saved!

Cheers to our twenties, which are undoubtedly the most challenging yet enjoyable years of our lives!

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