July 24, 2025 • 42 mins
Over the past 6 months I've been asking people: what is the biggest mistake you made in your 20s? I've heard from over 5'000 people, some of them 21, some of them 80 and I have combined all their responses to make the ultimate list of the 20 biggest mistakes people make in their 20s, for the people, by the people.
From love, to career, to finances, going to college, friendship, taking risks: today we talk through the most common responses we received and what we can learn from these moments and regrets. Listen now!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever
you are in the world.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Thank you so much for joining us. Back here for
another episode as we break down the psychology of our twenties.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I have a.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Bit of a different episode for you all today. I
know you all love our deep dives and our really
in depth searchers for the science behind obviously the experiences
of our twenties, But today I want to do something
a little bit different and not just focus on one
topic for this episode, but talk through a bit of
(01:00):
a list, in fact, a list that I have been
working on for the past month, basically just outlining the
biggest mistakes that people make in their twenties, from people
still in their twenties all the way up to people
who I've spoken to in their seventies and their eighties.
I've talked to so many people just kind of sliding
(01:22):
in this question into conversation and writing down their answers,
what's the biggest mistake that you made during this decade.
I even put up a bit of a question box
on Instagram. Over five thousand of you responded or emailed
me or DMed me or dropped a comment in an episode,
and having curated and putting together that whole list, I
(01:47):
want to share some of my very basic findings and
take that list out of my Excel spreadsheet and just
share this little personal research project with you guys, the
twenty most common mistakes that people say they made in
their twenties. You know, in doing this I kind of
(02:07):
had to stop and pause a few times and be like, huh,
is this a mistake that I'm maybe currently making? Like
what can I learn from this? What can I learn
from these people's experiences? I feel like we're in such
a confusing decade of life, and all we really want
is someone to give us the answers, or for someone
to give us, you know, some kind of reassurance that
(02:29):
we are doing the right thing and that we're on
the right path. Unfortunately for us, obviously, no one can
tell you if what you're doing is correct, and they
can't tell you what's going to happen next, And they
can't tell you that you're not going to have regrets,
but they can share their own mistakes and their own
misturns and kind of hope that you learn from them.
(02:52):
What really inspired me to do this was actually a
twenty twelve publication titled The Five Regrets of the Dying,
and these regrets were I wished I'd had the courage
to live a life true to myself. I wish that
I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd had the
courage to express my feelings. I wish I'd stayed in
touch with my friends, and I'd wish I'd let myself
be happier. These were the regrets of people reflecting on
(03:15):
their whole entire lives. But I wondered if we could
make kind of like a decade specific list to learn
from as we go along. So this is that kind
of preliminary list. Without further ado, my lovely listeners, there
is so much to cover, so much info and of
(03:35):
course a little bit of psychology. Thank you to every
single one of you who shared their regrets, shared their mistakes,
whether I talk to you in person, whether you dm
to me, however, you got the information across it has
been truly valuable. I can't wait to get into it.
So let me start by clarifying that this list is
(04:00):
by no means like a peer reviewed study. Like if
I submitted this very basic research to like any journal
or any publication, you know, I would be rejected in
a heartbeat.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
This was more of a personal interest project for me
that kind of turned into this much bigger thing because
I spent obviously a lot of time thinking about my twenties.
But what I've found does kind of seem to line
up with what I thought I was going to find basically.
So I do think that although I wasn't able to
(04:34):
get you know, a sample or like a random sample,
and I wasn't able to talk to even more people
than I would have wanted, and I wasn't able to
you know, apply for an ethics application or do anything
like that, this list still has a lot of value.
But take it with a grain of salt. If you
don't necessarily agree with some of the things on this list,
that's totally okay. If you think that we've missed things
on this list, also, please feel free to leave a
(04:56):
comment below, because yes, it's not as comprehensive as I
would liked it to be, but still very very fascinating.
With that in mind, I want to begin by talking
about mistake number one, the biggest mistake that people talked
about time and time again. I'm going to give you
a second to guess what that was. So by far,
(05:19):
the biggest mistake that I heard that people made in
their twenties was prioritizing a romantic relationship over my friends,
over my career, over my personal growth. Essentially, people talking
about how they had put romantic attraction at the center
of everything that they did and kind of realized later
along down the line that it meant that a lot
(05:41):
of the other things that mattered to them kind of
got pushed to the sidelines. I heard this so often
in so many different forms as well. Someone talked about
how they had left a job that I loved for
a man who dumped them five days later, or people
who had lost friends because they didn't make time for
them when they were with their ex, or being so
(06:03):
focused on finding love at twenty one, twenty two, twenty
three that they never spent time growing as a person
and learning what they really loved about themselves. These were
just a few kind of versions of this same mistake
that I heard, And you know what, I relate to
this very very deeply. I remember being nineteen twenty just
(06:24):
like desperately wanting to be chosen by someone you know,
at a club, at a party, on a dating app.
It became such an obsession that what I thought was
love became my only priority, and everything else in my
life kind of suffered. I just wish I could tell
that version of myself, you know, from only like five
(06:45):
seven years ago, just to slow down a little bit,
like just to have some fun. Treat dating like an experiment.
Treat dating like your studying humankind and figuring out what
you like and what you don't and what works for
you and what kind of person and elevates your life,
rather than just kind of, to use this analogy, jumping
in the first cab off the rank and hoping that
(07:06):
it's the right one and kind of later on finding
that it probably wasn't. You guys know that I did
a bit of a dating detox in my early twenties
where I didn't date, I didn't have dating apps, I
didn't think really about men for almost half a year.
And it was during that time that I can firmly
say my career took off. I made more friends and
(07:28):
incredible friends.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
More than I really think i'd ever had.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I really fell in love with myself. And now that
I am in a relationship and we live together, we
have a dog together, it feels like the right thing,
and it feels like, actually that relationship is not my
whole world when I used to make relationships my whole world.
How I think about it is like, here's this separate
universe for me that I can step into and enjoy
(07:55):
alongside and in parallel to this life that I've built myself.
My whole world is a life that is more than
just love. So if you want to avoid what seems
like a very big regret or mistake for many people,
treat love as something that is fantastic if it finds you,
(08:16):
but not everything, especially during this decade, should revolve around it.
I heard this analogy the other day that I love.
If you knew you would meet the love of your
life in six months, how would you live those next
six months to the fullest as a single person. And yes,
you might not actually meet them in six months, but
(08:36):
aim to live like every single day, every single week,
in that same mindset and with that same perspective for
as long as you can. That's mistake number one. Similar
to that mistake, another one that was very closely related
and came in second was people who talked about staying
in a relationship when they knew it wasn't right for them.
(08:57):
That was the second biggest mistake that I heard. This
isn't so much about centering the pursuit of love in
your life. It's more so about people who found a
love that they thought worked and held on to it,
perhaps for longer than they should have. A lot of
these people talked about either a knowing very early on
(09:20):
that this person wasn't for them and not acting sooner,
or be you know, not even knowing that and not
even knowing how to act at all, not knowing and
having doubts, whether like doubting your doubts, doubting whether your
perception of this person was correct for so long that
by the time you knew that they weren't, you really
(09:41):
didn't know even how to change things. You were living together,
you had pets together, maybe you even married, you had
kids together, and just not knowing how to pull out
of that relationship when things finally end. Quite a number
of people spoke about how it felt like they had
kind of wasted their youth, they have to start all
over again, and how they you know, maybe didn't completely
(10:04):
regret the relationship, but definitely kind of wanted some of
those years back. You do have to give yourself a
lot of grace in these situations, though, because whether someone
is right for you or not is actually a really
tricky question to answer, Like how do you really know?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
How can you really.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Trust that that instinct isn't just relationship anxiety or relationship
OCD or just general anxiety. Personally, I think it's really
really hard because relationships are tricky sometimes, Like every single
relationship is going to have its trials, and knowing whether
that's a deal breaker or just something that you have
to get to get through is kind of difficult to understand.
(10:46):
When maybe this is like your first relationship, or you know,
you haven't had the most healthy examples of what healthy
love looks like, you kind of just assume that this
must be it. Also, just to add to this, if
you're someone who has always had a specific timeline for
your life kind of imposed upon you by society, by parents,
(11:06):
by culture, if you're someone who struggles being alone, it
can be a lot easier to settle for good enough
in order to fill that void or fill that expectation,
and only realize, like a lot later down the line,
that you've made a mistake. Okay, we're going to move
on from the romance and love mistakes and talk finances.
(11:29):
A big number of the mistakes that people relayed that
they made in their twenties related to money. Here are
the three that came up the most, in no certain order,
just the three that were very, very common. The first
one was not saving, the second one was not investing sooner,
and the third mistake was getting a credit card. The
(11:52):
savings one was huge. One quote from a listener that
really stood out was this, Yes, money does come and go,
but experiences last forever, and that matters. But you also
need to support yourself to have those experiences. The stress
I put myself through to go to festivals, to have
a euro summer when I couldn't afford it, to go
out for dinner, to buy new clothes was not worth it.
(12:15):
I wish I knew what I knew now and had
saved more. We can learn a lot from that when
it comes to saving and investing. I beg of you
please just choose like one day this month to sit
down and freshen up on your financial literacy. You don't
have to have a lot of money to know how
your money works and what it can.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Do for you.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
You don't have to have a lot of money before
you start, Like you don't actually have to invest, you
don't actually have to do anything with that information. It's
just important that you know this stuff early in your twenties,
when it's easier to learn and to kind of decide
what you want financially for your future. I'll be honest,
I put this off for so long, but it was
(13:00):
only a couple of months ago that I did really
have to say to myself, like enough, I have to
get my money together. I have to learn how investing works,
what budget is best, which bank to be with, how
to use different accounts and points systems and high interest
accounts and whatnot. And I just dedicated like two days
across like a two month period to just learning and
(13:21):
listening to podcasts and reading articles and following people who
talked about this, and it did make me feel so
much more secure and knowledgeable. It definitely eased a lot
of anxiety that I had around my future with my money,
and I'm going to express that same sentiment that that
woman had, Like the woman who DMed me said, I
(13:41):
definitely wish that when I was twenty three.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Or even younger I knew what I knew.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Now, because it definitely could have saved me a lot
of money and saved me a lot of stress and
probably impacted my future in a way that I'm probably
not ready to even think about, like having that extra
money in my savings or in my super account, my
retirement fun I try not to think about the opportunities
that I missed out on not doing that earlier. There
are also so many different ways to budget, Like some
(14:08):
people use the fifty to thirty twenty methods, so fifty
percent for needs, thirty percent for once, twenty percent for savings.
Others like the seventy twenty ten method. Some people give
themselves like a maximum amount each month that they can
spend and everything else goes into savings and they don't
touch that.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Find something that works and start even when it feels intimidating.
As for that third financial mistake, I regret getting a
credit card. Take that advice. Seriously, credit cards are great
for building a credit score and finding ways to get
money back and perks and travel points. But my rule
(14:47):
has always been, and it will continue to be, if
I don't need it and I can't afford it, I
don't need it. Only buy things with a credit card
that you can hopefully pay off immediately. Obviously there's some
big purchases like buying a house or a car, or
it's a bit different. But in terms of just like
every day once like clothes, like travel, like homewares, like
(15:10):
whatever it is, if you don't need it and you
can't afford it, you don't need it. I actually found
a study that concluded around two thirds of people in
their twenties have credit card debt, and another publication was
saying that the average amount of that debt is around
six K, six thousand dollars. That's scary stuff, and if
you don't know what you're doing to get that debt down,
(15:32):
that can follow you. If you don't know how to
correctly use a credit card as a tool rather than
as a lifeline, it can get you into a lot
of danger. So reflect on those mistakes, do what you
wish with that knowledge, Moving on. There was another group
of mistakes that I heard time and time again, and
they have to do with how we let others thoughts, opinions,
(15:55):
and actions affect us. Mistake number six was putting people's
needs above my own. Another one high up on that list,
not learning to say no, and finally worrying too much
about what people thought of me, all kind of in
the same vein. I would say, let me say this,
(16:15):
how you think about yourself, how you treat yourself, what
you learn to tolerate and not tolerate when it comes
to other people's behavior. That has a much bigger impact
than we think, and it definitely snowballs. Like it may
be small in the moment to just say yes and
to just kind of be passive in the face of
(16:36):
someone else's assertions. We may not even notice it, but
it can shape our whole life if we end up
being steered in a direction that we didn't want to
go to make other people happy. Maybe that's like choosing
a certain career. Maybe that is earlier, like choosing a
certain partner that you think will meet your parents' expectations.
Maybe it's just letting friends treat you badly that does
(16:58):
something to your soul does something to your sense of
self that can be harder to repair the older we get.
And I also think the older we get, the more
we realize that life is really, really finite and you
only really get one shot, and you owe it to
yourself to be fierce and to really stand up for yourself.
You know, at the end of the day, when you're
looking back, you want to feel like you were in
(17:20):
control and you didn't continuously sacrifice your own happiness for
someone else's comfort, especially especially when they don't even end
up appreciating it. Let me say, a lot of the time,
these reactions are instinctual, so I don't want you to
feel like there's shame around having done this or this
being something you want to unlearn. A lot of the time,
(17:43):
these actions aren't just instinctual. They were also conditioned over
many years since we were children to be you know, good,
and to be agreeable and to just let others have
their way or have their say. It is your job
to deliberately unlearn these mechanisms. It is your job, at
(18:05):
some stage in your life to unloaran your tendency to
shrink or to make yourself small, and it will be
uncomfortable at first. You know, it is uncomfortable to upset people.
It is uncomfortable to hear mean things, or to disappoint people,
or to say no. Of course, it's uncomfortable because you're
not used to doing it. But on the other side
(18:26):
of that discomfort is a life that's just you know,
the only word I have for it is lighter.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
There's like no better word for it. It's lighter.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
You just feel like you can move through like the
waves of life, with a lot more ease. You know,
we've talked about financial investments, learning that your opinion and
your needs should come first. This is the kind of
personal and emotional investment that pays dividends and will bring
you so much more happiness. I have a whole episode
(18:58):
on this if you want to learn more about how
to do that, titled how to care Less About what
People think about you. It really breaks down an exact
strategy that you can go about doing this. So go
there after this if you need more tips. As we
move down this list, when was halfway through now, this
next one sticks out to me particularly because it's probably
one of my mistakes and probably one of my biggest
(19:19):
regrets from this decade so far not keeping up with
old friends.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
It's true you cannot keep every single friend that you
have ever made, but there have certainly been times when
I've realized, you know, far too late, that I really
should have messaged that person back. I really should have
answered their calls. I really should have kept in touch.
(19:46):
And at some stage you kind of I guess, like
months past and you kind of wake up and you're like, wait,
whatever happened to that person? And Wow, they were a
really good friend. I wish that I had appreciated them more.
You know, you miss them, You're at this weird point
where you don't really know how to invite them or
invite yourself. I guess back into their life. Friends as
(20:07):
well kind of hold pieces of who we are and
therefore as well who we used to be. So losing
touch with them does sometimes feel like losing part of ourselves,
and that can hit especially hard during periods of loneliness
or transition that obviously very synonymous with this decade. I
remember when I first moved to Sydney. I've spoken about
this before. I lost a lot of friends and I
(20:29):
didn't really like appreciate how hard that was until later
on and now I'm at a stage where I really
want to reflect back on that time when they were present,
and I don't, you know, they're not there to do
that with me, and they're not there for me to
learn from or to talk to, and it's kind of
lonely and it's kind of sad. We have so much
research out there I couldn't even begin to cite it
(20:51):
that tells you that long term social bonds are just
as crucial for your emotional health and your physical health
as so many the lifestyle decisions that we make. So
when we let those bonds fade, you know, it's not
just about missing a friend, it's about really missing a
grounding presence in our life and kind of missing out
on all these health benefits.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
And like the.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Secret to longevity, the secret to longevity is having people
around you who love you and care about you. Please
don't forget about that in the pursuit of your career,
or in your pursuit of love, or in the current
busyness of the life and the decade that you are in.
Right now, okay, we are over halfway through this list.
Now we're going to touch on one more mistake that
(21:39):
made the list. The early parts of the list before
taking a break. And it's different from everything we've kind
of talked to. It's different from friendship, it's different from money.
It has to do with our health. The biggest health
mistake on the list was smoking. I wish I'd never
smoked my first cigarette. I wish I hadn't started vapor.
(22:00):
I wish nicotine had never entered my life. That was
repeated time and time again. One person wrote in who
was in their fifties, and the way she found the
podcast was that she'd listened to a few episodes with
her daughter, and she wrote in to me when I
was asking people for their biggest mistakes, saying how she'd
started smoking at twenty to impress a guy, she got
(22:20):
addicted and as everyone else around her, slowly quit when
they left for college, when they had kids, when they
got married, she didn't and I have permission from her
to share this, but she basically said, I've never been
able to run more than a kilometer. My kids have
asked me multiple times, so many times to quit, and
I know in my heart one day I'll get an
unthinkable call from the doctor and it will be cancer.
(22:43):
If only I was twenty again, and I could reverse
it all and reverse this decision. That kind of left
me a little bit speechless, you know, hearing from someone
this big reflection in their life and almost this call,
it almost felt like she was like begging people in
their twenties to just take their health more seriously as
(23:04):
someone who could see what happens when you don't. And
we can learn so much from stories like that. And yes,
smoking is highly addictive.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
It's calming, you know, it.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Looks cool, it's cultural, it's social. It's also a habit
that does damage that time cannot repair. And when you're
young and healthy, you have the benefit of not having
to think about that, but your older self is begging
current you to think about them, to think about the future,
(23:35):
to think about how you're going to feel when you
really start to see the very dangerous side effects of
this habit nowadays as well. You know, it's not just smoking.
I also heard a lot about vaping. You know, for
the first time in decades. I was looking at this
research the other day. The use of nicotine has like
shot way up, Like there was this very steady trajectory
over the years of like nicotine intake going down, going
(23:57):
down with education with people learning the consequence and says.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
But when vaping was.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Introduced, you know, it's like this new thing, and with
any new thing, there's not long term research into the
health consequences, and it was definitely marketed as like a
healthy alternative and like something that wasn't as bad for
you as smoking. This is what I think about that
when people say, like, oh, but smoking up, but vaping
(24:22):
is so much healthier than smoking, I think, like, that's
like saying getting stabbed is a healthier alternative to being
shot with a gun, Like it might be true, but
a knife still isn't gonna feel great, and it's still
gonna hurt, and it's still not particularly good for you.
So I would really encourage people who do vape and
want to stop just to read up on the health consequences.
(24:44):
We now are seeing studies come out. There was a
twenty twenty three study titled E Cigarette Harms Aggregate Evidence
that shows damage to biological systems. If you want to
get nerdy and read that study, it's one of the
first long term ones that shows what is really happening
to your lungs and your body when you vape. Wow,
I feel like I'm I feel like I'm like a
(25:05):
health advertisement right now. But I'm going to take a
short break. Now that I've kind of drilled into you
a number of mistakes, I'm going to let you process
some of them. Get a cup of tea, get a
glass of water. When we return, we're going to talk
about mistakes related to family taking risks, and why seemingly
more people are seeing college as a mistake these days.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So stay with us.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
So our careers are probably I'm going to say this,
our biggest source of stress and anguish in our twenties,
you know, big questions to do with our careers? What's
our dream job? Will I ever find something I care about? Like?
How can I create the lifestyle that I want? Will
I ever have a sense of purpose? Big questions, my friends.
A lot of that starts with should I go to college?
(25:55):
Should I get an education? Or should I get my
foot in the door career wise and get ex experience
and kind of not get a degree right now, but
go back. The interesting thing that I found is that
there was almost a fifty to fifty split just in
the people that dmned me or reached out to me
between the people who said college was a mistake and
(26:16):
it was a waste of money, and people who said
I regret not going to college and not prioritizing my education.
It's very interesting, and I think obviously you're probably listening
to this being like, well, that doesn't help me. But
let's have a little bit of a discussion around why
people said college wasn't worth it, and the people who
said that they wish they had done it. I think
(26:36):
these days, going to university just kind of seems like
the necessary next step for a lot of us. But
having a degree, we all know this, like, it doesn't
necessarily guarantee you a job, even having a master's, even
having a PhD. You know, it's incredibly costly, it's a
huge time investment. It doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going
(26:58):
to be further ahead or have more opportunities. That is
why I think a lot of people are starting to
question its kind of necessity. Personally, I think education is
always valuable. It is an asset, even if it's an
asset that more and more people have. It gives you
more than just skills just being in that environment. You know,
(27:18):
it gives you a network, It gives you mentors, it
exposes you to ambitious people and just people who will
become your friends and will help you get ahead.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
But if you.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Don't have a specific thing that you want to do,
and you're just going to college or university to take
it off the list, and you're not being present in
your classes, you're not paying attention, you're not really getting
involved in that experience, you feel like you have no
motivation at all, it might actually not be worth it.
And that's what some people are saying to me. Instead,
(27:50):
like going into the workplace, taking a gap year, those
might be more valuable in giving you maturity and experience
and more of a direction. And they should be presented
as things that are valuable to do at any stage.
But also straight out of high school. It should be
just as normalized to go and get an apprenticeship or
to go on work, or to go and you know,
(28:12):
travel abroad after high school as it is to just
like jump straight into university otherwise. And I've spoken to
people who feel this way. You know, you wake up
at twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, you've just graduated university,
and you realize that you have spent nineteen to twenty
years being in school like this was a realization I
(28:32):
had when I graduated from UNI. I was like, oh
my god, this is the first time in my life
that I'm going to spend more than three months not
studying or not like being in a classroom. And if
you haven't done some soul searching during that period, like
and if education is all you've ever known, like you,
(28:52):
you're going to feel quite lost and you're going to
feel a bit scared. So it is something to consider.
Is this necessarily the best thing for me to do
right now? I can't answer for you, but just take
that wisdom and do what you want with it. I've
also been loving this idea recently of people who take
(29:13):
their retirement throughout their life rather than just at the
end of their life, you know, normalizing not needing to
save up all your experiences for your sixties, but having
them throughout your career and throughout your professional life, taking
little mini gap years, taking like mini sabbaticals.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
And you know, anything can happen.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I always remember this story I was told of this
couple who were in their sixties and they were nearing retirement.
The wife had retired, the husband hadn't, and he kept saying, oh,
let me just one more year, we could just get
a little bit extra money, one more year, one more year,
and then and then we can go and finally have
all the money that we want for this big, amazing trip.
(29:57):
And she had a heart attack and she died before
they could do that. You know, he was six months
out from like finally saying like I'm done, and she'd
been retired for six years and she never got to
do those things. And that can happen, Like life is
very unpredictable. So do what you want to do whilst
you have the youth, and whilst you have the time,
(30:21):
and whilst you have the desire to do it. So
this kind of relates to three other common mistakes that
I heard, which were people regretting not having a gap year,
people making the mistake of jumping right into work and
feeling too and messed with their professional identity so that
it made it very hard for them to quit a
job or quit a career or take a step back.
And number three, people feeling like they haven't traveled enough
(30:44):
and they haven't explored and now they're in a period
where they're settling down and they regret that we live
in a current state of the world in a current
society that is very much dictated by what your resume
looks like, what you've achieved, your job title, your medication
to the hustle, what you can present is successful to others,
(31:04):
and that can be very hard to step away from.
It can be very hard to step away from because
often we there's this implicit idea that if you take
a break or you do something for your personal development,
you're going to miss out on a critical formative, formative
period for your professional development. And by the time you
come back like you've missed the boat, you're never going
to get that time back. You are falling so far
(31:27):
behind you'll never.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Be able to catch up.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
It's a common myth. Here's two things that I'll say
to that. Building your career is not linear. People can
get somewhere in five years, and it's going to take
someone else thirty years to get to that same place.
It's what happened during those years in terms of your
life experience that matters more and will matter more at
the end of the day. Secondly, if we think back
(31:52):
to that list from people on their deathbeds, people who
have their whole life to kind of survey and examine
the number two regret, they say, not just people in
their twenties, people like in their eighties and nineties, I
wish I hadn't worked so hard. These are people who
have every reason, to be honest, who have years more
of life lessons than we do, who would probably give
(32:15):
anything to have a second shot to live a life
with the wisdom they have now, and they have gifted
us that wisdom. We want wealth, we want success, and
the reason many of us want that is so at
the end of the day, we can travel, we can
sit and enjoy life. We can have nice things. You
can also have them now. This is actually the best
(32:35):
time to travel. It's the best time to explore. You
might not have the big budget that you want, but
you do have your youth, and you do have the
opportunities to make really great stories and develop experiences and
skills that will impact you for longer. No, you are
the youngest, you will ever be the healthiest. Most likely,
you have this stamina. You don't have obligations. Older people
(32:56):
may have the money, but they don't have all that
you have now. Another is people felt that they made
was not taking risks, not chasing their dream and in
a similar vein wasting time thinking rather than doing. This
really reminds me of another story that I was told
by someone recently about her mother and how her mother
(33:19):
trained to be an accountant and she spent all of
these years working her way up being an accountant, and
then like thirty years into the career, she was like
had a complete mental breakdown and was just like, I've
wasted so much of my time. I feel so unhappy.
She read The Artist's Way. If you know that book Dough,
SHEI references a lot. It's incredible she read The Artist's
Way and she dropped everything.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
And became an artist.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And now she's an incredibly successful artist. And the real
moral of the story is something that she said to
my friend, which now feels permanently kind of seered into
my brain. The safe option is the safe option for
a reason because it will always be there, because you
can always go back to it. People can't always say
the same about their dreams. It's something I've definitely seen.
(34:04):
Big dreams that you have for your life, big dreams
that are really calling out to you, they don't always
wait around, and it becomes harder and harder to do
them the older you get. If you want some research
to back this up, because obviously I can't just go
a whole episode without citing at least one paper. You've
got to hear about this study that they did at
(34:25):
Core now. So this team of research is they recruited
hundreds of participants to share their regrets kind of like
what I'm doing now, but professionally, and they then divided
all of these regrets and their answers into two different categories.
Those involving the ideal self i e. What you dreamed
you'd be or what you felt and in a drive
to become, and regrets involving the ought to self i e.
(34:50):
Those that dealt with not meeting expectations or the ideals
of others. Which type of regret do you think was
most common? Ideal self regrets one by a landslide. Participants
had more regrets around their ideal self and around things
that they wish they'd done to make their dreams come
(35:12):
true over regrets around things that they wish they'd done
to impress others, or regrets over things they wish they'd
done because they ought to have done them. So the
math is on your side, like, if you want less regret,
aim higher for yourself, do more to become your ideal self,
take further risks, and it kind of seems like logically, scientifically,
(35:32):
I could even say, like, you will die a happier
person with a happier life. Okay, we have three final
mistakes in our list, and they're all very different, and
they were all kind of hard to put into any
of these other categories. They were standalone regrets. The first
mistake was not getting help for my mental health. Soon
(35:53):
I heard this quite a bit, and oh my gosh,
if I personally could only go back in time and
tell myself this, I think I would have saved myself
a lot of suffering. Your mental health is your most
precious asset. People say it's physical health, it's your mental
health by far because it comes from the mind, and
the mind really does control a whole lot. It controls everything.
(36:16):
If your mind is suffering, everything else will suffer. It
controls who you are, what you think about yourself, your beliefs,
your dreams, your interests, your relationships, everything. So please tend
to this part of you like it is the precious
asset that it is, especially when you're young, because you
(36:36):
can learn so many skills that will carry you through
and give you a healthier life mentally. If you learn
them earlier, know that as well. No matter how stuck
you feel, how hard it is right now, people train
for years to be able to help you through this,
and they will be able to help you through this.
They have thousands of tools to help you feel better
(36:56):
and more like yourself. One of them will work. So
if you have been putting you off, if you've been
waiting for the right time, thinking that you can get
through it on.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Your own, basically, no, you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
The second kind of standalone regret that I heard a
lot or mistake was not asking my parents important questions
and not spending.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
Time with them.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
When we're in our twenties, we go through a very
natural period of separation from our families.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Everyone does.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
It's an important stage in our development. It's known in
developmental psychology as individuation.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
You have to be able to form.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Your own independent identity away from the safety and the
structure of the family. But at some stage you do
emerge from this period and you kind of come back
to your parents and come back to your family members
and see them differently. And I think the way you
see them now is not equals, but as the adults
that they are with complex lives the same way that
(37:54):
you have a complex internal life, and you want to
know more about them. You want to know more about
who they were before they were a parent, who they
were before they were a partner, who they were as
a child, all these things. Don't miss that opportunity and
don't miss that window. I've been doing this with my
own grandparents.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
A lot recently.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I feel very lucky that, you know, I still have
three very healthy and a live grandparents who have incredible stories,
and every time I see them, I really make an
effort to just say, you know, what was like the
snacks that you liked when you were my age, or
what was your best friend's name? Or what did you
learn from your first job? Just like small questions, because
they are literally like a textbook on how to live
(38:34):
a good life, and they're a textbook that I have
access to that is like literally right there and open
and ready for me to learn from. A lot of
people spoke about having lost their parents or you know,
things happening that has meant that they can't really stay
in touch with them, and the mistake that really feels
like and how that weighs heavy the final mistake on
(38:57):
this list, and I feel like it is the best
place to end, not spending more time alone getting to
know myself. An interesting thing about this one was that
this was one that I heard a lot more from
older people, a lot more from people over the age
(39:18):
of forty. It feels like an important one to finish with.
I say this in my book, I say this on
my podcast so many times that if you're a frequent listener,
you're probably going to be annoyed that I'm saying it again,
and I apologize in advance. But there is only one
relationship that you will have your entire life. There is
one person you will spend more time with than anyone
(39:40):
else in existence, and that's you. You are always there,
You will always be with you. There's a quote I
love from Carl Jung, which is the privilege of a
lifetime is to know who you truly are. And that
starts with really being able to spend time alone, to
(40:00):
put a mirror up to your soul and your sense
of self and examine it. Explore the parts of you
that feel uncomfortable, try new things, be present with your thoughts,
go on dates with yourself. Just know what you want
from life and who you are. It is the foundation
upon which all other stuff is built. I know how
easy it is personally to fill up your social calendar
(40:22):
and to never have a Friday or a Saturday off,
to feel like you're failing. If you are, I'll have
this intense pomo or to always be dating people. The
quiet moments that you end up having when you do
that will feel very scary, when in fact, when you
practice having time alone, you'll realize that it's very fulfilling
(40:44):
and that it is the key to living a good
life if you can really hone in on what you
actually want from life, what you want from your relationships,
and also what you want from yourself. And that's important
work that you shouldn't put off, that should be your
number one priority. That's where the list ends. That is
our final mistake from this list. I hope that you've
(41:07):
taken something away from this. I hope that you've learned
from this. There are definitely probably there were a lot
more mistakes that people mentioned, Like by no means was
was I able to include every single little thing that
people said was a mistake. Some of them were very specific,
but if there is one that you think we haven't
touched on that is important that you have learned from
(41:28):
through your own life experience. Leave a comment below. Leave
a comment in just below the episode description. What is
the biggest mistake you feel like you have made in
your twenties and what do you think people.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Can learn from that. This kind of.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Wisdom is the kind that feels really really important. And
I really loved being able to investigate this and just
like you know, I don't know, kind of like revive
my research days. So I hope you enjoyed it. I
hope you liked this episode. Share it with a friend
who you think may benefit from it as well. Leave
a comment like subscribe all those things. Leave a five
(42:00):
star review as well if you feel cool to do so.
It really does help the show grow and expand and
reach new people. And make sure you're following me at
that Psychology podcast as well on Instagram if you want
to contribute to further episodes. A lot of what I
learned and what I shared in today's episodes came from
dms and came from people who follow me on Instagram
(42:20):
who were able to contribute. So I hope to see
you over there. But until next time, stay safe, be kind,
be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever
you are in the world.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Thank you so much for joining us. Back here for
another episode as we break down the psychology of our twenties.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
I have a.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Bit of a different episode for you all today. I
know you all love our deep dives and our really
in depth searchers for the science behind obviously the experiences
of our twenties, But today I want to do something
a little bit different and not just focus on one
topic for this episode, but talk through a bit of
(01:00):
a list, in fact, a list that I have been
working on for the past month, basically just outlining the
biggest mistakes that people make in their twenties, from people
still in their twenties all the way up to people
who I've spoken to in their seventies and their eighties.
I've talked to so many people just kind of sliding
(01:22):
in this question into conversation and writing down their answers,
what's the biggest mistake that you made during this decade.
I even put up a bit of a question box
on Instagram. Over five thousand of you responded or emailed
me or DMed me or dropped a comment in an episode,
and having curated and putting together that whole list, I
(01:47):
want to share some of my very basic findings and
take that list out of my Excel spreadsheet and just
share this little personal research project with you guys, the
twenty most common mistakes that people say they made in
their twenties. You know, in doing this I kind of
(02:07):
had to stop and pause a few times and be like, huh,
is this a mistake that I'm maybe currently making? Like
what can I learn from this? What can I learn
from these people's experiences? I feel like we're in such
a confusing decade of life, and all we really want
is someone to give us the answers, or for someone
to give us, you know, some kind of reassurance that
(02:29):
we are doing the right thing and that we're on
the right path. Unfortunately for us, obviously, no one can
tell you if what you're doing is correct, and they
can't tell you what's going to happen next, And they
can't tell you that you're not going to have regrets,
but they can share their own mistakes and their own
misturns and kind of hope that you learn from them.
(02:52):
What really inspired me to do this was actually a
twenty twelve publication titled The Five Regrets of the Dying,
and these regrets were I wished I'd had the courage
to live a life true to myself. I wish that
I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd had the
courage to express my feelings. I wish I'd stayed in
touch with my friends, and I'd wish I'd let myself
be happier. These were the regrets of people reflecting on
(03:15):
their whole entire lives. But I wondered if we could
make kind of like a decade specific list to learn
from as we go along. So this is that kind
of preliminary list. Without further ado, my lovely listeners, there
is so much to cover, so much info and of
(03:35):
course a little bit of psychology. Thank you to every
single one of you who shared their regrets, shared their mistakes,
whether I talk to you in person, whether you dm
to me, however, you got the information across it has
been truly valuable. I can't wait to get into it.
So let me start by clarifying that this list is
(04:00):
by no means like a peer reviewed study. Like if
I submitted this very basic research to like any journal
or any publication, you know, I would be rejected in
a heartbeat.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
This was more of a personal interest project for me
that kind of turned into this much bigger thing because
I spent obviously a lot of time thinking about my twenties.
But what I've found does kind of seem to line
up with what I thought I was going to find basically.
So I do think that although I wasn't able to
(04:34):
get you know, a sample or like a random sample,
and I wasn't able to talk to even more people
than I would have wanted, and I wasn't able to
you know, apply for an ethics application or do anything
like that, this list still has a lot of value.
But take it with a grain of salt. If you
don't necessarily agree with some of the things on this list,
that's totally okay. If you think that we've missed things
on this list, also, please feel free to leave a
(04:56):
comment below, because yes, it's not as comprehensive as I
would liked it to be, but still very very fascinating.
With that in mind, I want to begin by talking
about mistake number one, the biggest mistake that people talked
about time and time again. I'm going to give you
a second to guess what that was. So by far,
(05:19):
the biggest mistake that I heard that people made in
their twenties was prioritizing a romantic relationship over my friends,
over my career, over my personal growth. Essentially, people talking
about how they had put romantic attraction at the center
of everything that they did and kind of realized later
along down the line that it meant that a lot
(05:41):
of the other things that mattered to them kind of
got pushed to the sidelines. I heard this so often
in so many different forms as well. Someone talked about
how they had left a job that I loved for
a man who dumped them five days later, or people
who had lost friends because they didn't make time for
them when they were with their ex, or being so
(06:03):
focused on finding love at twenty one, twenty two, twenty
three that they never spent time growing as a person
and learning what they really loved about themselves. These were
just a few kind of versions of this same mistake
that I heard, And you know what, I relate to
this very very deeply. I remember being nineteen twenty just
(06:24):
like desperately wanting to be chosen by someone you know,
at a club, at a party, on a dating app.
It became such an obsession that what I thought was
love became my only priority, and everything else in my
life kind of suffered. I just wish I could tell
that version of myself, you know, from only like five
(06:45):
seven years ago, just to slow down a little bit,
like just to have some fun. Treat dating like an experiment.
Treat dating like your studying humankind and figuring out what
you like and what you don't and what works for
you and what kind of person and elevates your life,
rather than just kind of, to use this analogy, jumping
in the first cab off the rank and hoping that
(07:06):
it's the right one and kind of later on finding
that it probably wasn't. You guys know that I did
a bit of a dating detox in my early twenties
where I didn't date, I didn't have dating apps, I
didn't think really about men for almost half a year.
And it was during that time that I can firmly
say my career took off. I made more friends and
(07:28):
incredible friends.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
More than I really think i'd ever had.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I really fell in love with myself. And now that
I am in a relationship and we live together, we
have a dog together, it feels like the right thing,
and it feels like, actually that relationship is not my
whole world when I used to make relationships my whole world.
How I think about it is like, here's this separate
universe for me that I can step into and enjoy
(07:55):
alongside and in parallel to this life that I've built myself.
My whole world is a life that is more than
just love. So if you want to avoid what seems
like a very big regret or mistake for many people,
treat love as something that is fantastic if it finds you,
(08:16):
but not everything, especially during this decade, should revolve around it.
I heard this analogy the other day that I love.
If you knew you would meet the love of your
life in six months, how would you live those next
six months to the fullest as a single person. And yes,
you might not actually meet them in six months, but
(08:36):
aim to live like every single day, every single week,
in that same mindset and with that same perspective for
as long as you can. That's mistake number one. Similar
to that mistake, another one that was very closely related
and came in second was people who talked about staying
in a relationship when they knew it wasn't right for them.
(08:57):
That was the second biggest mistake that I heard. This
isn't so much about centering the pursuit of love in
your life. It's more so about people who found a
love that they thought worked and held on to it,
perhaps for longer than they should have. A lot of
these people talked about either a knowing very early on
(09:20):
that this person wasn't for them and not acting sooner,
or be you know, not even knowing that and not
even knowing how to act at all, not knowing and
having doubts, whether like doubting your doubts, doubting whether your
perception of this person was correct for so long that
by the time you knew that they weren't, you really
(09:41):
didn't know even how to change things. You were living together,
you had pets together, maybe you even married, you had
kids together, and just not knowing how to pull out
of that relationship when things finally end. Quite a number
of people spoke about how it felt like they had
kind of wasted their youth, they have to start all
over again, and how they you know, maybe didn't completely
(10:04):
regret the relationship, but definitely kind of wanted some of
those years back. You do have to give yourself a
lot of grace in these situations, though, because whether someone
is right for you or not is actually a really
tricky question to answer, Like how do you really know?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
How can you really.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Trust that that instinct isn't just relationship anxiety or relationship
OCD or just general anxiety. Personally, I think it's really
really hard because relationships are tricky sometimes, Like every single
relationship is going to have its trials, and knowing whether
that's a deal breaker or just something that you have
to get to get through is kind of difficult to understand.
(10:46):
When maybe this is like your first relationship, or you know,
you haven't had the most healthy examples of what healthy
love looks like, you kind of just assume that this
must be it. Also, just to add to this, if
you're someone who has always had a specific timeline for
your life kind of imposed upon you by society, by parents,
(11:06):
by culture, if you're someone who struggles being alone, it
can be a lot easier to settle for good enough
in order to fill that void or fill that expectation,
and only realize, like a lot later down the line,
that you've made a mistake. Okay, we're going to move
on from the romance and love mistakes and talk finances.
(11:29):
A big number of the mistakes that people relayed that
they made in their twenties related to money. Here are
the three that came up the most, in no certain order,
just the three that were very, very common. The first
one was not saving, the second one was not investing sooner,
and the third mistake was getting a credit card. The
(11:52):
savings one was huge. One quote from a listener that
really stood out was this, Yes, money does come and go,
but experiences last forever, and that matters. But you also
need to support yourself to have those experiences. The stress
I put myself through to go to festivals, to have
a euro summer when I couldn't afford it, to go
out for dinner, to buy new clothes was not worth it.
(12:15):
I wish I knew what I knew now and had
saved more. We can learn a lot from that when
it comes to saving and investing. I beg of you
please just choose like one day this month to sit
down and freshen up on your financial literacy. You don't
have to have a lot of money to know how
your money works and what it can.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Do for you.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
You don't have to have a lot of money before
you start, Like you don't actually have to invest, you
don't actually have to do anything with that information. It's
just important that you know this stuff early in your twenties,
when it's easier to learn and to kind of decide
what you want financially for your future. I'll be honest,
I put this off for so long, but it was
(13:00):
only a couple of months ago that I did really
have to say to myself, like enough, I have to
get my money together. I have to learn how investing works,
what budget is best, which bank to be with, how
to use different accounts and points systems and high interest
accounts and whatnot. And I just dedicated like two days
across like a two month period to just learning and
(13:21):
listening to podcasts and reading articles and following people who
talked about this, and it did make me feel so
much more secure and knowledgeable. It definitely eased a lot
of anxiety that I had around my future with my money,
and I'm going to express that same sentiment that that
woman had, Like the woman who DMed me said, I
(13:41):
definitely wish that when I was twenty three.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Or even younger I knew what I knew.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Now, because it definitely could have saved me a lot
of money and saved me a lot of stress and
probably impacted my future in a way that I'm probably
not ready to even think about, like having that extra
money in my savings or in my super account, my
retirement fun I try not to think about the opportunities
that I missed out on not doing that earlier. There
are also so many different ways to budget, Like some
(14:08):
people use the fifty to thirty twenty methods, so fifty
percent for needs, thirty percent for once, twenty percent for savings.
Others like the seventy twenty ten method. Some people give
themselves like a maximum amount each month that they can
spend and everything else goes into savings and they don't
touch that.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Find something that works and start even when it feels intimidating.
As for that third financial mistake, I regret getting a
credit card. Take that advice. Seriously, credit cards are great
for building a credit score and finding ways to get
money back and perks and travel points. But my rule
(14:47):
has always been, and it will continue to be, if
I don't need it and I can't afford it, I
don't need it. Only buy things with a credit card
that you can hopefully pay off immediately. Obviously there's some
big purchases like buying a house or a car, or
it's a bit different. But in terms of just like
every day once like clothes, like travel, like homewares, like
(15:10):
whatever it is, if you don't need it and you
can't afford it, you don't need it. I actually found
a study that concluded around two thirds of people in
their twenties have credit card debt, and another publication was
saying that the average amount of that debt is around
six K, six thousand dollars. That's scary stuff, and if
you don't know what you're doing to get that debt down,
(15:32):
that can follow you. If you don't know how to
correctly use a credit card as a tool rather than
as a lifeline, it can get you into a lot
of danger. So reflect on those mistakes, do what you
wish with that knowledge, Moving on. There was another group
of mistakes that I heard time and time again, and
they have to do with how we let others thoughts, opinions,
(15:55):
and actions affect us. Mistake number six was putting people's
needs above my own. Another one high up on that list,
not learning to say no, and finally worrying too much
about what people thought of me, all kind of in
the same vein. I would say, let me say this,
(16:15):
how you think about yourself, how you treat yourself, what
you learn to tolerate and not tolerate when it comes
to other people's behavior. That has a much bigger impact
than we think, and it definitely snowballs. Like it may
be small in the moment to just say yes and
to just kind of be passive in the face of
(16:36):
someone else's assertions. We may not even notice it, but
it can shape our whole life if we end up
being steered in a direction that we didn't want to
go to make other people happy. Maybe that's like choosing
a certain career. Maybe that is earlier, like choosing a
certain partner that you think will meet your parents' expectations.
Maybe it's just letting friends treat you badly that does
(16:58):
something to your soul does something to your sense of
self that can be harder to repair the older we get.
And I also think the older we get, the more
we realize that life is really, really finite and you
only really get one shot, and you owe it to
yourself to be fierce and to really stand up for yourself.
You know, at the end of the day, when you're
looking back, you want to feel like you were in
(17:20):
control and you didn't continuously sacrifice your own happiness for
someone else's comfort, especially especially when they don't even end
up appreciating it. Let me say, a lot of the time,
these reactions are instinctual, so I don't want you to
feel like there's shame around having done this or this
being something you want to unlearn. A lot of the time,
(17:43):
these actions aren't just instinctual. They were also conditioned over
many years since we were children to be you know, good,
and to be agreeable and to just let others have
their way or have their say. It is your job
to deliberately unlearn these mechanisms. It is your job, at
(18:05):
some stage in your life to unloaran your tendency to
shrink or to make yourself small, and it will be
uncomfortable at first. You know, it is uncomfortable to upset people.
It is uncomfortable to hear mean things, or to disappoint people,
or to say no. Of course, it's uncomfortable because you're
not used to doing it. But on the other side
(18:26):
of that discomfort is a life that's just you know,
the only word I have for it is lighter.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
There's like no better word for it. It's lighter.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
You just feel like you can move through like the
waves of life, with a lot more ease. You know,
we've talked about financial investments, learning that your opinion and
your needs should come first. This is the kind of
personal and emotional investment that pays dividends and will bring
you so much more happiness. I have a whole episode
(18:58):
on this if you want to learn more about how
to do that, titled how to care Less About what
People think about you. It really breaks down an exact
strategy that you can go about doing this. So go
there after this if you need more tips. As we
move down this list, when was halfway through now, this
next one sticks out to me particularly because it's probably
one of my mistakes and probably one of my biggest
(19:19):
regrets from this decade so far not keeping up with
old friends.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
It's true you cannot keep every single friend that you
have ever made, but there have certainly been times when
I've realized, you know, far too late, that I really
should have messaged that person back. I really should have
answered their calls. I really should have kept in touch.
(19:46):
And at some stage you kind of I guess, like
months past and you kind of wake up and you're like, wait,
whatever happened to that person? And Wow, they were a
really good friend. I wish that I had appreciated them more.
You know, you miss them, You're at this weird point
where you don't really know how to invite them or
invite yourself. I guess back into their life. Friends as
(20:07):
well kind of hold pieces of who we are and
therefore as well who we used to be. So losing
touch with them does sometimes feel like losing part of ourselves,
and that can hit especially hard during periods of loneliness
or transition that obviously very synonymous with this decade. I
remember when I first moved to Sydney. I've spoken about
this before. I lost a lot of friends and I
(20:29):
didn't really like appreciate how hard that was until later
on and now I'm at a stage where I really
want to reflect back on that time when they were present,
and I don't, you know, they're not there to do
that with me, and they're not there for me to
learn from or to talk to, and it's kind of
lonely and it's kind of sad. We have so much
research out there I couldn't even begin to cite it
(20:51):
that tells you that long term social bonds are just
as crucial for your emotional health and your physical health
as so many the lifestyle decisions that we make. So
when we let those bonds fade, you know, it's not
just about missing a friend, it's about really missing a
grounding presence in our life and kind of missing out
on all these health benefits.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
And like the.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Secret to longevity, the secret to longevity is having people
around you who love you and care about you. Please
don't forget about that in the pursuit of your career,
or in your pursuit of love, or in the current
busyness of the life and the decade that you are in.
Right now, okay, we are over halfway through this list.
Now we're going to touch on one more mistake that
(21:39):
made the list. The early parts of the list before
taking a break. And it's different from everything we've kind
of talked to. It's different from friendship, it's different from money.
It has to do with our health. The biggest health
mistake on the list was smoking. I wish I'd never
smoked my first cigarette. I wish I hadn't started vapor.
(22:00):
I wish nicotine had never entered my life. That was
repeated time and time again. One person wrote in who
was in their fifties, and the way she found the
podcast was that she'd listened to a few episodes with
her daughter, and she wrote in to me when I
was asking people for their biggest mistakes, saying how she'd
started smoking at twenty to impress a guy, she got
(22:20):
addicted and as everyone else around her, slowly quit when
they left for college, when they had kids, when they
got married, she didn't and I have permission from her
to share this, but she basically said, I've never been
able to run more than a kilometer. My kids have
asked me multiple times, so many times to quit, and
I know in my heart one day I'll get an
unthinkable call from the doctor and it will be cancer.
(22:43):
If only I was twenty again, and I could reverse
it all and reverse this decision. That kind of left
me a little bit speechless, you know, hearing from someone
this big reflection in their life and almost this call,
it almost felt like she was like begging people in
their twenties to just take their health more seriously as
(23:04):
someone who could see what happens when you don't. And
we can learn so much from stories like that. And yes,
smoking is highly addictive.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
It's calming, you know, it.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Looks cool, it's cultural, it's social. It's also a habit
that does damage that time cannot repair. And when you're
young and healthy, you have the benefit of not having
to think about that, but your older self is begging
current you to think about them, to think about the future,
(23:35):
to think about how you're going to feel when you
really start to see the very dangerous side effects of
this habit nowadays as well. You know, it's not just smoking.
I also heard a lot about vaping. You know, for
the first time in decades. I was looking at this
research the other day. The use of nicotine has like
shot way up, Like there was this very steady trajectory
over the years of like nicotine intake going down, going
(23:57):
down with education with people learning the consequence and says.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
But when vaping was.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Introduced, you know, it's like this new thing, and with
any new thing, there's not long term research into the
health consequences, and it was definitely marketed as like a
healthy alternative and like something that wasn't as bad for
you as smoking. This is what I think about that
when people say, like, oh, but smoking up, but vaping
(24:22):
is so much healthier than smoking, I think, like, that's
like saying getting stabbed is a healthier alternative to being
shot with a gun, Like it might be true, but
a knife still isn't gonna feel great, and it's still
gonna hurt, and it's still not particularly good for you.
So I would really encourage people who do vape and
want to stop just to read up on the health consequences.
(24:44):
We now are seeing studies come out. There was a
twenty twenty three study titled E Cigarette Harms Aggregate Evidence
that shows damage to biological systems. If you want to
get nerdy and read that study, it's one of the
first long term ones that shows what is really happening
to your lungs and your body when you vape. Wow,
I feel like I'm I feel like I'm like a
(25:05):
health advertisement right now. But I'm going to take a
short break. Now that I've kind of drilled into you
a number of mistakes, I'm going to let you process
some of them. Get a cup of tea, get a
glass of water. When we return, we're going to talk
about mistakes related to family taking risks, and why seemingly
more people are seeing college as a mistake these days.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So stay with us.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
So our careers are probably I'm going to say this,
our biggest source of stress and anguish in our twenties,
you know, big questions to do with our careers? What's
our dream job? Will I ever find something I care about? Like?
How can I create the lifestyle that I want? Will
I ever have a sense of purpose? Big questions, my friends.
A lot of that starts with should I go to college?
(25:55):
Should I get an education? Or should I get my
foot in the door career wise and get ex experience
and kind of not get a degree right now, but
go back. The interesting thing that I found is that
there was almost a fifty to fifty split just in
the people that dmned me or reached out to me
between the people who said college was a mistake and
(26:16):
it was a waste of money, and people who said
I regret not going to college and not prioritizing my education.
It's very interesting, and I think obviously you're probably listening
to this being like, well, that doesn't help me. But
let's have a little bit of a discussion around why
people said college wasn't worth it, and the people who
said that they wish they had done it. I think
(26:36):
these days, going to university just kind of seems like
the necessary next step for a lot of us. But
having a degree, we all know this, like, it doesn't
necessarily guarantee you a job, even having a master's, even
having a PhD. You know, it's incredibly costly, it's a
huge time investment. It doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going
(26:58):
to be further ahead or have more opportunities. That is
why I think a lot of people are starting to
question its kind of necessity. Personally, I think education is
always valuable. It is an asset, even if it's an
asset that more and more people have. It gives you
more than just skills just being in that environment. You know,
(27:18):
it gives you a network, It gives you mentors, it
exposes you to ambitious people and just people who will
become your friends and will help you get ahead.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
But if you.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Don't have a specific thing that you want to do,
and you're just going to college or university to take
it off the list, and you're not being present in
your classes, you're not paying attention, you're not really getting
involved in that experience, you feel like you have no
motivation at all, it might actually not be worth it.
And that's what some people are saying to me. Instead,
(27:50):
like going into the workplace, taking a gap year, those
might be more valuable in giving you maturity and experience
and more of a direction. And they should be presented
as things that are valuable to do at any stage.
But also straight out of high school. It should be
just as normalized to go and get an apprenticeship or
to go on work, or to go and you know,
(28:12):
travel abroad after high school as it is to just
like jump straight into university otherwise. And I've spoken to
people who feel this way. You know, you wake up
at twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, you've just graduated university,
and you realize that you have spent nineteen to twenty
years being in school like this was a realization I
(28:32):
had when I graduated from UNI. I was like, oh
my god, this is the first time in my life
that I'm going to spend more than three months not
studying or not like being in a classroom. And if
you haven't done some soul searching during that period, like
and if education is all you've ever known, like you,
(28:52):
you're going to feel quite lost and you're going to
feel a bit scared. So it is something to consider.
Is this necessarily the best thing for me to do
right now? I can't answer for you, but just take
that wisdom and do what you want with it. I've
also been loving this idea recently of people who take
(29:13):
their retirement throughout their life rather than just at the
end of their life, you know, normalizing not needing to
save up all your experiences for your sixties, but having
them throughout your career and throughout your professional life, taking
little mini gap years, taking like mini sabbaticals.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
And you know, anything can happen.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I always remember this story I was told of this
couple who were in their sixties and they were nearing retirement.
The wife had retired, the husband hadn't, and he kept saying, oh,
let me just one more year, we could just get
a little bit extra money, one more year, one more year,
and then and then we can go and finally have
all the money that we want for this big, amazing trip.
(29:57):
And she had a heart attack and she died before
they could do that. You know, he was six months
out from like finally saying like I'm done, and she'd
been retired for six years and she never got to
do those things. And that can happen, Like life is
very unpredictable. So do what you want to do whilst
you have the youth, and whilst you have the time,
(30:21):
and whilst you have the desire to do it. So
this kind of relates to three other common mistakes that
I heard, which were people regretting not having a gap year,
people making the mistake of jumping right into work and
feeling too and messed with their professional identity so that
it made it very hard for them to quit a
job or quit a career or take a step back.
And number three, people feeling like they haven't traveled enough
(30:44):
and they haven't explored and now they're in a period
where they're settling down and they regret that we live
in a current state of the world in a current
society that is very much dictated by what your resume
looks like, what you've achieved, your job title, your medication
to the hustle, what you can present is successful to others,
(31:04):
and that can be very hard to step away from.
It can be very hard to step away from because
often we there's this implicit idea that if you take
a break or you do something for your personal development,
you're going to miss out on a critical formative, formative
period for your professional development. And by the time you
come back like you've missed the boat, you're never going
to get that time back. You are falling so far
(31:27):
behind you'll never.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Be able to catch up.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
It's a common myth. Here's two things that I'll say
to that. Building your career is not linear. People can
get somewhere in five years, and it's going to take
someone else thirty years to get to that same place.
It's what happened during those years in terms of your
life experience that matters more and will matter more at
the end of the day. Secondly, if we think back
(31:52):
to that list from people on their deathbeds, people who
have their whole life to kind of survey and examine
the number two regret, they say, not just people in
their twenties, people like in their eighties and nineties, I
wish I hadn't worked so hard. These are people who
have every reason, to be honest, who have years more
of life lessons than we do, who would probably give
(32:15):
anything to have a second shot to live a life
with the wisdom they have now, and they have gifted
us that wisdom. We want wealth, we want success, and
the reason many of us want that is so at
the end of the day, we can travel, we can
sit and enjoy life. We can have nice things. You
can also have them now. This is actually the best
(32:35):
time to travel. It's the best time to explore. You
might not have the big budget that you want, but
you do have your youth, and you do have the
opportunities to make really great stories and develop experiences and
skills that will impact you for longer. No, you are
the youngest, you will ever be the healthiest. Most likely,
you have this stamina. You don't have obligations. Older people
(32:56):
may have the money, but they don't have all that
you have now. Another is people felt that they made
was not taking risks, not chasing their dream and in
a similar vein wasting time thinking rather than doing. This
really reminds me of another story that I was told
by someone recently about her mother and how her mother
(33:19):
trained to be an accountant and she spent all of
these years working her way up being an accountant, and
then like thirty years into the career, she was like
had a complete mental breakdown and was just like, I've
wasted so much of my time. I feel so unhappy.
She read The Artist's Way. If you know that book Dough,
SHEI references a lot. It's incredible she read The Artist's
Way and she dropped everything.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
And became an artist.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
And now she's an incredibly successful artist. And the real
moral of the story is something that she said to
my friend, which now feels permanently kind of seered into
my brain. The safe option is the safe option for
a reason because it will always be there, because you
can always go back to it. People can't always say
the same about their dreams. It's something I've definitely seen.
(34:04):
Big dreams that you have for your life, big dreams
that are really calling out to you, they don't always
wait around, and it becomes harder and harder to do
them the older you get. If you want some research
to back this up, because obviously I can't just go
a whole episode without citing at least one paper. You've
got to hear about this study that they did at
(34:25):
Core now. So this team of research is they recruited
hundreds of participants to share their regrets kind of like
what I'm doing now, but professionally, and they then divided
all of these regrets and their answers into two different categories.
Those involving the ideal self i e. What you dreamed
you'd be or what you felt and in a drive
to become, and regrets involving the ought to self i e.
(34:50):
Those that dealt with not meeting expectations or the ideals
of others. Which type of regret do you think was
most common? Ideal self regrets one by a landslide. Participants
had more regrets around their ideal self and around things
that they wish they'd done to make their dreams come
(35:12):
true over regrets around things that they wish they'd done
to impress others, or regrets over things they wish they'd
done because they ought to have done them. So the
math is on your side, like, if you want less regret,
aim higher for yourself, do more to become your ideal self,
take further risks, and it kind of seems like logically, scientifically,
(35:32):
I could even say, like, you will die a happier
person with a happier life. Okay, we have three final
mistakes in our list, and they're all very different, and
they were all kind of hard to put into any
of these other categories. They were standalone regrets. The first
mistake was not getting help for my mental health. Soon
(35:53):
I heard this quite a bit, and oh my gosh,
if I personally could only go back in time and
tell myself this, I think I would have saved myself
a lot of suffering. Your mental health is your most
precious asset. People say it's physical health, it's your mental
health by far because it comes from the mind, and
the mind really does control a whole lot. It controls everything.
(36:16):
If your mind is suffering, everything else will suffer. It
controls who you are, what you think about yourself, your beliefs,
your dreams, your interests, your relationships, everything. So please tend
to this part of you like it is the precious
asset that it is, especially when you're young, because you
(36:36):
can learn so many skills that will carry you through
and give you a healthier life mentally. If you learn
them earlier, know that as well. No matter how stuck
you feel, how hard it is right now, people train
for years to be able to help you through this,
and they will be able to help you through this.
They have thousands of tools to help you feel better
(36:56):
and more like yourself. One of them will work. So
if you have been putting you off, if you've been
waiting for the right time, thinking that you can get
through it on.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Your own, basically, no, you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
The second kind of standalone regret that I heard a
lot or mistake was not asking my parents important questions
and not spending.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
Time with them.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
When we're in our twenties, we go through a very
natural period of separation from our families.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Everyone does.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
It's an important stage in our development. It's known in
developmental psychology as individuation.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
You have to be able to form.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Your own independent identity away from the safety and the
structure of the family. But at some stage you do
emerge from this period and you kind of come back
to your parents and come back to your family members
and see them differently. And I think the way you
see them now is not equals, but as the adults
that they are with complex lives the same way that
(37:54):
you have a complex internal life, and you want to
know more about them. You want to know more about
who they were before they were a parent, who they
were before they were a partner, who they were as
a child, all these things. Don't miss that opportunity and
don't miss that window. I've been doing this with my
own grandparents.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
A lot recently.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I feel very lucky that, you know, I still have
three very healthy and a live grandparents who have incredible stories,
and every time I see them, I really make an
effort to just say, you know, what was like the
snacks that you liked when you were my age, or
what was your best friend's name? Or what did you
learn from your first job? Just like small questions, because
they are literally like a textbook on how to live
(38:34):
a good life, and they're a textbook that I have
access to that is like literally right there and open
and ready for me to learn from. A lot of
people spoke about having lost their parents or you know,
things happening that has meant that they can't really stay
in touch with them, and the mistake that really feels
like and how that weighs heavy the final mistake on
(38:57):
this list, and I feel like it is the best
place to end, not spending more time alone getting to
know myself. An interesting thing about this one was that
this was one that I heard a lot more from
older people, a lot more from people over the age
(39:18):
of forty. It feels like an important one to finish with.
I say this in my book, I say this on
my podcast so many times that if you're a frequent listener,
you're probably going to be annoyed that I'm saying it again,
and I apologize in advance. But there is only one
relationship that you will have your entire life. There is
one person you will spend more time with than anyone
(39:40):
else in existence, and that's you. You are always there,
You will always be with you. There's a quote I
love from Carl Jung, which is the privilege of a
lifetime is to know who you truly are. And that
starts with really being able to spend time alone, to
(40:00):
put a mirror up to your soul and your sense
of self and examine it. Explore the parts of you
that feel uncomfortable, try new things, be present with your thoughts,
go on dates with yourself. Just know what you want
from life and who you are. It is the foundation
upon which all other stuff is built. I know how
easy it is personally to fill up your social calendar
(40:22):
and to never have a Friday or a Saturday off,
to feel like you're failing. If you are, I'll have
this intense pomo or to always be dating people. The
quiet moments that you end up having when you do
that will feel very scary, when in fact, when you
practice having time alone, you'll realize that it's very fulfilling
(40:44):
and that it is the key to living a good
life if you can really hone in on what you
actually want from life, what you want from your relationships,
and also what you want from yourself. And that's important
work that you shouldn't put off, that should be your
number one priority. That's where the list ends. That is
our final mistake from this list. I hope that you've
(41:07):
taken something away from this. I hope that you've learned
from this. There are definitely probably there were a lot
more mistakes that people mentioned, Like by no means was
was I able to include every single little thing that
people said was a mistake. Some of them were very specific,
but if there is one that you think we haven't
touched on that is important that you have learned from
(41:28):
through your own life experience. Leave a comment below. Leave
a comment in just below the episode description. What is
the biggest mistake you feel like you have made in
your twenties and what do you think people.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Can learn from that. This kind of.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Wisdom is the kind that feels really really important. And
I really loved being able to investigate this and just
like you know, I don't know, kind of like revive
my research days. So I hope you enjoyed it. I
hope you liked this episode. Share it with a friend
who you think may benefit from it as well. Leave
a comment like subscribe all those things. Leave a five
(42:00):
star review as well if you feel cool to do so.
It really does help the show grow and expand and
reach new people. And make sure you're following me at
that Psychology podcast as well on Instagram if you want
to contribute to further episodes. A lot of what I
learned and what I shared in today's episodes came from
dms and came from people who follow me on Instagram
(42:20):
who were able to contribute. So I hope to see
you over there. But until next time, stay safe, be kind,
be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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