How to Figure Out Life In Your 20s

Most people assume that you're supposed to have everything figured out in your 20s

And by all means, with traditional thinking you should

In your 20s you're supposed to have your whole life figured out.

Have a blooming career, a stable marriage, a family and kids with a huge suburban home.

That wasn't the case for me

For most of my 20s (even now that I'm almost 29), it feels like I have no idea what I'm doing

Like I'm grabbing on to every little handhold that comes my way, to get one step further in life.

But I also can't see the rest of the path in front of me.

That's understandable because I've tried to live life in so many different ways.

Swinging from one end of the spectrum to another

From dropping out of college, moving abroad, working for big tech, to starting my own business.

This entire time, not knowing what to do.

School never taught me what to do if I don't go to college or how to start my own business.

University never taught me about building healthy relationships or developing emotional maturity.

So what happens to those who want to take the unconventional route in life?

Who do you ask for advice when you want to go down that path

well, surprise: it's not most people

There are 31 million entrepreneurs in the U.S. according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

which is about 16% of the adult workforce.

Only 16% of the adult workforce.

They also go on to mention that 55% of adults have started a business at some point in their lives.

I know this is only one statistic but hear me out:

If half the working adult population in the US have started a business but only 16% remain entrepreneurs, most of these people quit and went back to a job.

Or they fall into the same camp as me.

Starting a business with no idea what to do to make it successful

All while pursuing a lifestyle that lets me live life the way I want to.

Most of the time I don't know what I'm doing.

Even now that I've been working on it full time for a year

When I ask my friends for advice I know it comes from a good place.

But I always find that the advice is still catered to the general population

Questions like

• "how do I price my freelance work?"

• "how do I build work routines for clients in different time zones?"

• "how do I find new clients?"

• "how do I market my business?"

Most people around me don't know the answers to that

I'm closer to figuring out the answer for these questions after asking them every day for a year.

Again I wish I knew them sooner (would have saved a lot of time).

The main way to overcome the challenge of figuring out things in your 20s lies with a few options:

The first option: You have to go out and experience life

That's the unfortunate (or fortunate?) truth.

Experiencing life is the only way you will gain knowledge to overcome problems.

Gathering as many experiences, lessons, and learnings throughout the years.

Until you get to the point where you can answer all the questions you have.

Most people need an immediate solution though.

That makes sense.

Who has time to wait until they're 60 to have the answers for business, relationships, career, and life?

We have to put food on the table and pay bills.

Some of the most anxiety inducing things that happen daily.

So we default to the second option: "how do we get this information as soon as possible?"

For me, information came from books, YouTube videos, podcasts, and other educational content.

Each of these taught me how to be a freelance video creator.

These resources also helped me learn more about things in life I wanted to pursue.

And they helped me become the person I am today

But that was learning things over a year, every single day.

That's how we landed here, with me wishing I knew these things 10 years ago.

Back to the question: "How do I figure out things in my 20s?"

• What did I learn over the last 10 years?

• With the life experience gained and learnings from other resources?

How do I, if I were 19 or 20 years old again, get to the point that I am now?

This gets boiled down into a few points:

Think of what you want to do, and go do it

Don't waste time on the fence, or listening to other people's advice on what you should do.

Go do the thing that you've been wanting to do.

Go learn how to be an artist, a YouTuber, a writer, or throw clay.

Go pursue that life as a solo backpacker or digital nomad from Instagram.

If you want to do it, stop hesitating and go do it.

Don’t listen to others when they tell you how to live your life

This point goes hand in hand with the previous one.

If you want to figure out your life in your 20s you can't listen to how others tell you to live your life.

because news flash: It's your life, not theirs.

You can't be passive about this.

Go out and live YOUR life.

What does that look like for YOU?

Build great habits and routines EARLY

Every productivity guru brings up habits and what you should do to improve them.

I'm not here to give a breakdown of habit change.

but they do have a point.

When I build habits around the person I want to be, I'm usually able to find a lot of clarity.

Like I know I'm working towards something bigger.

It might not be visible now but it'll show as long as I have consistent habits and routines

Not doom scrolling on my phone.

Not sitting by waiting for life to take the reigns every day.

Habits and routines are my system, my internal software that makes me take action towards who I want to be.

When I was working in Australia and Korea, this is when my habits were the most dialed in.

Even my coworkers used to make fun of me for having a detailed morning routine before 7:30am.

But hey, it helped me build the discipline.

And that's what I'm trying to emphasize here.

Much like a gym routine for body building, I wanted to get mentally jacked in my 20s.

I wish I started even earlier of course.

But eventually I did build that routine for my mind, and it's still early enough in my life to make a decent impact.

Spend traveling, ideally solo

The most growth I've had in my 20s involve booking a plane ticket to the other side of the world.

Figuring out my own way around a foreign country, learning the culture and the language.

The idea is this: you should travel solo to understand more about yourself and the world around you.

First off, when you travel solo you develop a much deeper sense of self awareness

Especially when compared to trips with friends or family

You get to know how you behave or act in certain environments.

You understand what makes you uncomfortable.

You learn about your biases and how to change them.

By removing yourself from the comfort zone of your home town or country, you see the most raw version of you.

From there you can see which parts you want to change.

You get to do this while being in a foreign environment.

You get to see different walks of life outside of what you've experienced before.

Not everybody is chasing the 9-5 grind with the end goal of a suburban home.

Most places around the world have different priorities vastly different from your own.

Who knows, what if you see something that you would like to incorporate into your own life?

A style of living that you enjoy and see yourself in 50 years from now?

You never would've seen it until you got out and experienced the world.

Do something crazy every once in a while / switch things up

Something that most people don't know about me at first is that I flunked out of engineering school.

If you look at my junior year report card, I flunked every class except for an entrepreneurship class.

It was laziness (I didn't have good study habits)

but I was also not interested in biomedical engineering.

I couldn't see myself working in that field or job for the next 40+ years.

So I did something crazy.

I got offered a job through the nonprofit I worked with.

It didn't pay much at all, and I would have to move to Seoul, South Korea.

Instead of trying to finish university (I burned through year 5, again failing a ton of classes)...

I booked a one way ticket to Seoul.

This was to give myself a mental break but it also it gave me the chance to switch up my life.

This was at a time when things were not working.

It doesn't do you any good if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, not seeing results.

Something has to change.

Leave places/people that no longer serve you

Friends come and go, breakups happen, and life goes on.

You'll go through chapters in life, with both people and places.

When you see yourself outgrowing them, it's okay to leave.

I moved from the US to South Korea, then to Australia, then back to the US.

Each time had a different chapter and different people, new experiences to be had.

Even these past few years, I've had a falling out with some friends.

Because they weren't being truthful or good people.

And that's okay.

Those places and people no longer served the version of me that I was looking to become.

Be curious

Over the course of my 20s I spent countless hours immersing myself into learning.

I tried learning financial management and social media marketing in my nonprofit days.

Now I learn how to shoot a camera, edit a video, and run a business.

Each of these instances I've explored each new thing with a strong curiosity.

With the intent of applying this to what I was doing towards bettering myself.

You could also call this open-mindedness.

But you get my point.

Embrace the unknown and be curious how the world works.

This curiosity will take you far in your journey to figure things out in your 20s.

Take care of your mental health

I can't stress this enough.

Your mental health one of the most important things you should take care of.

I struggled a lot with my mental health throughout my 20s but I "sucked it up and powered through"

Which is not healthy by any means.

Acknowledging my depression and anxiety wasn't easy.

It took failed relationships, spoiled friendships, and fights with my parents.

All before I finally found a therapist that helped me with it.

Once I did, it was like a weight lifted from my shoulder.

I could wake up in the mornings and look forward to the day.

I actually looked forward to working on creative projects.

Sometimes that's the unlock you need to figure out the rest of your life.

Explore your passions like it’s your job

For the longest time I wanted to be a content creator.

But I always pushed it off because everyone around me said it was unrealistic.

When I moved back to the US I ignored them and dived head first into learning about cameras and video editing.

I can't tell you how many hours I've spent until now watching tutorials and courses on how to edit or use a camera.

I started treating it as a genuine hobby in 2019, and later as a job.

I would book time to edit or learn a new skill while I did schoolwork.

This gave me the confidence to quit my tech job and pursue my creative business full time.

Embrace serendipity

Most of the best times in life are not planned

I've noticed this when I started traveling more often.

Making decisions on the spot and letting the universe take over

Like when I booked a trip to Indonesia to meet up with a bunch of strangers from Instagram

I had no idea what sort of trip that was going to turn out to be

But I said screw it and left.

And it turned out to be one of the best travel experiences I've had.

I spent 2 weeks adventuring around volcanoes, waterfalls and motorbikes.

I made a bunch of life long friends and core memories.

All from embracing serendipity

Letting any plans go, as long as I trust the universe to give back good energy and experiences.

Not everybody is going to have it figured out

Even after experiencing most of my 20s I still feel like there's a long way to go

But I've definitely learned a lot as you can see.

We can't all have the answers, but I hope this gives you some idea of how to figure out life in your 20s

These are a few points I wanted to share for that 19 turning 20 year old me.

And who knows, I've still got one more year in my 20s left.

I know there's some new lessons there for me.

I'll let you know once the year is over.

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Catch you guys in the next one

Peace.