Avoiding regret in life is not an easy task. We make many plans that never come to fruition, simply because, well, life itself gets in the way.
There may be no way to entirely prevent such experiences, but during your twenties, you’re in the best place possible to make sure that you don’t feel as though you missed out on too much when you look back on your life. True, this decade of your life carries with it many responsibilities, but it also grants you more freedom than you’ve ever had before or ever will again. You have the independence to make your own choices. Your parents can’t dictate your decisions, and you may not yet have a family of your own that depends on you.
As such, you should strive to take advantage of this freedom while you still can. In order to avoid regret later, make sure you take the following steps now:
1. Try To Live Your Dream
What do you want to be when you grow up? For most of us, the answer to that question sadly does not match what we end up doing with our lives. Big dreams are important, they provide us with a passion, but they’re not always feasible.
However, while that may be true, if you have the opportunity to pursue your goal – no matter how unrealistic it may be – it benefits you to try. Depending on what your particular ambition happens to be, the odds may be against you, but you’re less likely to reflect on your unfulfilled hopes with sadness if you know that you at least made a sincere attempt to realize them.
Life is full of many joys, and the fact that you may not do what you love for a living certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy a happy life. You don’t necessarily need to satisfy the itch that urges you to actually have that dream career. You just need to know that you gave it your best shot.
2. Be Single
Love is perhaps the most rewarding experience that life has to offer. For most of us, a truly fulfilling existence involves a deep, lasting connection with another person.
The problem is, due to our natural impulse to find a mate, we often ignore the benefits of being a single adult. Aside from the practical issues – you’ll have more money to spend on yourself, you can change your life dramatically without worrying about how it affects someone else – there’s also the simple fact that we all should find a way to define ourselves without tying that definition to another person. While your significant other should make you happy, you should also allow yourself to be happy without that person.
Reaching this goal can be difficult when you don’t have to, though. If you’re in a relationship, there’s no need to work on forging your own identity. By forcing yourself to remain single for a little while, you find yourself.
3. Learn Everything
As many a PSA probably told you during your youth, knowledge is power. That’s obviously true, but it’s not the whole story. Knowledge is also pleasure. There’s nothing particularly deep about it; filling your head with interesting information and acquiring useful skills are positive experiences.
They are also difficult to come by when you have a house to maintain, bills to pay, and a family to raise. The little free time you have left at the end of the day may not be enough to devote to the development of your mind.
Thankfully, if you’re still relatively free from such burdens, you can continue to learn about anything that interests you. Read a book a week. Listen to educational podcasts instead of the radio. Audit a college course. Scan Youtube for tutorials teaching you how to cook or play guitar or meditate. There is, unfortunately, a time limit on your life. Use that time wisely by filling your mind.
Commit To Health
Don’t believe the headlines touting the latest fad diet. Unless you’ve been blessed with unbeatable genes, there’s no easy way to get fit and stay that way. Being healthy is an overall lifestyle, incorporating exercise, diet, and daily habits. You can’t simply make minor, temporary changes to your day-to-day life; you must adopt a lifelong commitment to health.
Your twenties may be the best time to do so. Again, once you have a family, it will be difficult to find the time to work out, to monitor your meals, to take all the myriad steps necessary to optimize your health. Thankfully, if you lay a solid foundation in your twenties, it will be easier to carry good habits over into your thirties, forties, and, perhaps, the rest of your life. Train yourself to live a healthy life now; it’s never an easy task, but it will be much more difficult later.
4. Understand Your Values
As stated above, a dream career can be a powerful, driving force in your life. That said, it’s not the only goal you may value. What do you want most out of your time here? Love? Money? Respect?
Daily life requires us to constantly work in order to keep ourselves fed, clothed, and safe. It’s distracting. When you’ve got a job, responsibilities, a home, it’s easy to forget that life should be lived intentionally. You’re putting in the work to make sure you stay alive, but you’re not remembering what you want to make of yourself over the course of your life.
By the end of it, you may realize that you merely drifted through your years, never truly working to put your values front and center.
If you’re in your twenties, though, you’re an adult. You don’t know everything, but you’re mature enough to know your goals, and to know which expectations are realistic.
Take the time to create a mission statement for your life, something to carry with you every day, reminding you of your aspirations, hopes, and principles. Later on, you’ll be too busy to consider such concepts. Now is the time to put yourself on a path towards your ideal life.
