Growing up can be challenging, sometimes. But you have to develop that heart to cope with the rigours and requirements that come with growing up. You have to know yourself, know what you really need and know who you really need. Fakeness and drama will, of course, have no place in your life as you continue advancing in your years. Your course of life must have that distinct texture, the one you only are comfortable with. It is no longer about making other people happy while sacrificing your own.
The age to undergo this special kind of metamorphosis is in your twenties. From 21 to 29 is actually the age where all the decisions you make will have an effect on how you settle down, with your family perhaps. Whether the decisions are good or bad, you just have to live with the results, at some point in life. Those results can be devastatingly bad or overwhelmingly good.
Well, here are the most life-changing decisions you really need to do in your twenties.
1. Just break up with ‘lovers’ you know you won’t marry
From around 26 to 29, you are actually supposed to have identified the serious people in your life or in life, quite literally. You know the people that can end up with you or the people that can never be in your life. This is not the age to continue playing games carried on from your teenage years. If you know it is impossible to have some of them in your life, just drop them and try to live a sensible life. This is really a time to build your future. The time you are supposed to have been experimenting with love and running around is from 18 to around 25, for some. Just identify the ideal partner and be serious about building that relationship to the point where you want it to be.
2. Stop doing what everybody else wants you to do
In as much as your friends and family can be instrumental to your progress, they can also be toxic to your growth and development. In your mid-twenties to your late twenties, do not really be after doing what they want. You have learnt a lot of lessons already and have a hint on how your life is probably going to turn out. You have to respect all the positive stuff they encourage or pressure you to do. That, however, does not mean that you have to forego the positive things you would want to do just to do what they think is good for you. This is an age to try and make independent decisions even if they really do hurt someone else. It is worth it. It is also your life, not anyone else’s.
3. Listen to older people’s experiences
You may have gone through a lot. You may have accumulated a lot of experience in life. But still, you almost quintessentially know nothing yet. Be still and listen to what older people in the shape of your parents or any other people have to say. They may be having a story that has glimpses of what is actually your own life. They may have gone through what you are going through. You need to know how they got out of that and how they managed to be as they are this day. Some of what they say may seem totally irrelevant because you do not imagine them happening to you. However, you do not know what life has in store for you. You therefore just have to consider every bit of past life stories important and store it somewhere at the back of your mind.
4. Drop ‘unhealthy’ habits
If you drink and lazy around, for all the seven days of the week, consider dropping that before you enter your thirties. Drinking yourself to near death is not a habit you will want to start a family or life with. You can do that when old enough or advanced in years when all your children are grown-ups and already left home to start families, which is also not advisable but palatable. Make the course of your life straight before thinking of anything else. Be who you would wish your kids to be.
5. Learn to cope with failure
Life is all about trying out new things. Trying out those new things has to come with a lot of failures. You will have to fail. You will have to fall hard and learn to get up without any help. If you think you are going to try out only the things that you are good at or the ones that you will succeed in every time you try, you will live a life filled nothing but below-par living. Learn to be yourself. Do not try your best to avoid failure just because you think people will look down upon you. The prestige is actually in how well you get back on track after a failure, not how well you can dodge activities that stretch you to the very limits of your ability.
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