I was recently introduced to a company that has made a new type of mattress popular to young adults called Casper. They started a new project collaborating with bloggers about what advice they could give to young professionals and I was surprised, but flattered to be asked to be a part of it. My first thought was – “Who… me?!” As a mid-20 something, I can honestly say that there are a whole lot of days where I don’t feel like I have it all together and from what I hear, that’s pretty normal. If there’s anything I’ve learned so far about being in my 20’s, it’s that these are my most transformative years (at least as far I’ve seen!) Who I was at age 20 is vastly different from who I was at age 25. How I ran and organized my life at 22 and graduating college is far from the daily routines I hold as a 26-year old working girl. For me, the most exciting part of this all is that at 20 years old, I never envisioned this future for myself. It was a total surprise. And not knowing what the next 4 years of my 20’s will hold is something that I’m looking more forward to. Hopefully the lessons I’ve learned so far that have helped shaped my 20’s are something that you might find useful too!
Say “yes” to the things you want to do / Say “no” to things that disinterest you
Seems like a no-brainer, right? For me, this was one of those things that was easier said than done. In my early 20’s, I was a total people pleaser. I never wanted to leave a friend hanging or let someone down when they were so excited to do something that I was pretty much lukewarm about it. Not wanting to disappoint anyone, I would suck it up and in the end, I was just hurting myself. It wasn’t until my mid-20’s that I realized saying yes to things I didn’t want to do was eating up my own time, which I find to be very precious (we’ll get into that a little bit later!) Also, friends of mine would become upset if I didn’t have an opinion when they asked me if I preferred one thing over the other. Instead of voicing that I didn’t want to do either, I would say – “Whatever, it doesn’t matter to me, you pick!” In my head, I thought I was being flexible when really to them, I was being more difficult. It wasn’t until I started voicing my opinions with someone that I dated that this became more apparent to me because he would end up telling me that he *liked* how honest I was about what I did and didn’t want to do.
