21…the age of official adulthood. People dream and plan for their 21st birthday long before the day actually comes. People expect something grand to happen when they officially turn 21. I’m sure to their dismay, like to mine, the 21st year is just another year….nothing special about it. My 21st year was not what I expected and sometimes I just wish I had gotten some advice about how to navigate being 21.
No one mentions the scary part of finally being “an adult.” As I am leaving this beautiful 21st year, here are a few things that I wished people told me before I turned 21.
It’s okay not to know what’s next. When in your early twenties, people will often ask, “So what’s next? What are you planning on doing with your degree/life?” With so many new careers coming on the market and us evolving more into ourselves every day it’s okay to not know what you want to do next. We have so many facets to our being and there may not just be one particular thing that we want to focus on. Life is a journey, not a destination and each part of life is interesting and it’s beautiful to take time to discover who we are and figure out what we want to do, not for our parents, not for our image but for us. What truly makes you happy? In taking time to figure this out, there may be moments when you don’t know what’s next.
It be like that sometimes… and it’s okay for it to be like that. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has moments. The stress that comes along with being 21(an “adult”) is the constant thought that we should have it all together and that’s far from the truth but that’s what we keep telling oursselves. No matter how much people may commend you for all that you’ve done, that voice still plays in the back of your head that tells you that you should have done more or you should have done it a different way. So many anxious thoughts flood the mind of a 21 year old and any young adult for that matter. Life is stressful and it’s okay not to have it all together all the time.
Live in the moment. Amazing moments happen in our lives and we forget to soak it up and actually enjoy it. We are constantly on our cell phones recording every moment of our lives. I’m not saying this is always a bad thing because I’m guilty of this as well. But sometimes, we should just live, live in the moment. This day is never going to come again but at least be sure that you can truly say that you’ve lived. I’m not saying live in the sense of partying all the time but actually experiencing life and doing things that make you truly happy without the constant thought that you must record.
Celebrate the small wins. We constantly dream about where we see ourselves one year from now, five years from now and so on. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to plan for the future but we continually look at success as something that’s coming but we never look at it as something that we already have. This actually just hit me this week when I went to a talk about capitalism. People spoke about how capitalism drives our society and we always have this desire to attain more. In the plutocratic society that we live in, not many people see themselves as successful until they have acquired x amount of dollars. However, don’t be afraid to celebrate yourself even when in the eyes of others, you have not quite made it yet. In whatever area of your life you may be in now, you should consider yourself successful and celebrate you!
This is not an exhaustive list but these are just the main things I wished people had told me before I tured 21.
What are some things that you wished people told you before you turned your age?
Share your advice in the comments below!
Schar's Mind 
One thought on “What I wish someone told me before I turned 21”