This is what I learned from my 20s.
Learn patience.
In all areas of your life, personal, professional, school, family, people and yourself. Patience brings you through all the events you will encounter (most probably for the first time) and will bring along its trusty friend, introspection. It must appear slightly weird, but taking a breather in the middle of a stressful moment or a crisis situation, will help take you away from the middle of the action and give you a different perspective, which will help you find additional solutions or coping mechanisms.
School. Learn. Read.
It is during your 20s that the basis of your profession is being laid. Go to school, make the most of it. Find the elements that appeal to you even in the most dreary of subjects. Read and learn about the world and about other people's ideas and passions. Reading should be fun and should be the one activity where you feed yourself information that will help you grow continuously after you finished a book.
Learn the history that was build for you and learn how to further improve that history.
Use the school to find a career you will love and further learn about it.
Self education.
There are things you have been taught within your family and there are things you learn in school. But without individuality we would all be robots, therefore now is the perfect time to think about the principles that apply to you and that you resonate with. Research on those principles and bring more shape to them as you study about them. Learn about their pros and acknowledge and accept their cons as well.
The same goes for additional foreign languages or skills you wish to develop.
If you can travel, then that will also help you
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| Flowers I received on my Birthday |
This is probably the most complicated and scary part when you are in your 20s.
You will get your first job and you will have to learn to budget by yourself, because your parents won't be there to do it for you and if you spend all the money as soon as you receive your paycheck, will probably not help you at all. The best way to do it, is to put on paper the monthly costs (food, utilities, rent, school fees, clothes, a.s.o.) and then calculate what you have left over. Ideally from the money you have left you should put some aside (to have a constant fallback budget equally to 6 months salary) and some you should allocate to fun activities (going out with friends, books, movies, music concerts, sport activities, a.s.o.).
If you parents are helping, then you are lucky and you should see their contribution as an addition to your salary and not as "money that are not money" and spend them all at once.
No bank loans.
One thing you should never-ever do in your 20s is to acquire a loan from the bank. If the object/ gadget you wish to purchase is too expensive for your budget, then you'd better save up money for it and buy it, but don't go all credit-frenzy (like the marketing campaigns in Romania urge you to), just because you wanted that product now and you don't want to wait out some months until you save up the money and can afford to buy it. You might have the surprise that in some months that product's price decreased and you can afford it sooner than you thought.
Saving for a product will also have the added benefit, that you will enjoy and not throw it away after the first weeks of using it.
This being said, keep in mind saying that has been demonstrated to me time and again - (regardless of your income) we are to poor to buy cheap things. Which means that by buying something just because it is the cheaper version of something more expensive, you might end up paying more: the cheaper, reparations and the more expensive thing, than you would have, if you would have purchased the more expensive product from the beginning.
Rent. Housing.
Living on your own without your parents and not within the Uni housing facilities might be expensive. Therefore renting a flat together with room mates might actually be a good idea. Given, living with unknown people might be weird at first, but if you move in with people you know or with whom you have something in common (school, work, hobbies, a.s.o.) it might be easier.
Another thing you must learn to so in these situations is to be open and free about any topics you want to discuss with your room/ flat mates. If it is a difficult discussion you feel you need to have, try to explain to yourself the reasoning behind that discussion and then to the other person. All with calm and patience.
When you look for a place to rent, look at the various areas, prices are established based on areas. If you fee unsure about the place you will rent, especially if for the first time, bring someone who can advise with you.
Lifestyle.
Regardless of what you were used to do during high school, you should try to adopt a healthy diet (learn to cook at home - it might be difficult at first, but no food is better than home made food and it has the added benefit that it will also help you lower your food budget), have a regular workout routine (which will also help clear your mind) and sleep a lot (brain cells need sleep even during exam periods). If you always wanted to learn a sport, now you should try.
When you will have eventually survived your 20s, then you will see that an organized lifestyle is really good for your health and that dreaded slowed metabolism after 26-30 years is not that slow.
Social media.
In recent years the development of social media brought with it a cult of self fulfillment. Let's be honest, who doesn't want to pose in the perfect life, with the perfect significant other in various marital statuses and with or without a rising number of kids and/or pets?
But these photos or posts or events you see on social media are just the condensed version of the life of its protagonists and their life is not yours. You should not feel pressured in getting married (especially if you are single - running desperately after beautiful strangers on the street might get you in trouble of the Police kind) or having a baby (refer to previous parenthesis). You should live your life and populate your social media page with the events, people, things and emotions that you feel represent you. And if you don't it is fine to. There isn't a rule set in stone (like the three rules of Thermodynamics) that everyone must post their lives on social media. If you don't feel comfortable posting on Facebook every meal your cat or dog has, then I think nobody will blame you in any way.
Milestones.
Have a plan. I don't mean an exact plan with what you will do every day, detailed to the second, but a general idea of the milestones you want to achieve. With time frames and what you have to do to get there added to them would be even better!
Most jobs have a career path attached to them and most companies set goals for their employees in their various jobs.
And when you get there - Celebrate!
These are my advises on how to survive your 20s. The most beautiful and scary of the decades.
I hope they help you as they helped me as I discovered them in the past 10 years.
Does this help you? Do you think I missed something?
Let me know!
Live long and prosper!
Alex.
Find me on Goodreads and Instagram.
Snapchat alex-andreea.
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