221. How to be truly successful in your 20s

have cause break down the psychology of our twenties. I hope you've all been well, that something I don't know special or joyous has happened in your life recently, and that you are prepared and ready to get into this

particularly philosophical episode or topic. Today we're talking about success, specifically, of course, success in our twenties, and it's time for us as a generation, as a society to rethink what it truly means to be a successful individual and why it might be time to move past some of the traditional and limiting ways of thinking about achievement and accolades and to an extent, happiness. How can we truly be successful in our twenties without getting bogged down in comparison

what others think of us doing it? For other people feeling like we have something to prove, what is actually truly worthwhile to pursue and to care about. In this decade, this has been one of my brain's favorite go to topics to overthink about in the last few weeks, last few months as well, because quite frankly, I've been feeling very overwhelmed is someone still in my twenties by the direction of my career, And by the direction of my career,

I mean to a large extent, this podcast. And I'm going to break the fourth wall for a second and just say, you know, I absolutely love doing the show. It is so purposeful to me. It aligns with who I am. It aligns with what I believe deeply about the human spirit and about the power of psychology and the power of information to heal. But I do miss the time in my life when I was only doing it out of pure passion and love. The podcast is now my full time job, and so there are a

lot of additional elements to think about. You know, how do I make money from this? Am I getting enough listens? And biggest of all, how can I be successful? And what does that success mean? Does it mean publicity, does it mean recognition or does it actually mean having real impact and zooming out a little bit, touching some grass, having a bit of perspective, and actually just separating myself from my job and being a happy person. Is that

what actually makes you a successful individual? Having a deep and meaningful connection to what you're doing, Yes, but also a connection to who you are, what you actually enjoy in life, and who you are beyond your career, beyond your work, beyond what other people may be seeing. I think I've been focusing on the wrong things and it's rubbed me of a little bit of joy. And you know, as a group, as twenty somethings, we are have become

very consumed with being impressive. And is that constant pursuit of success actually making us less happy and less centered as a generation because we are too fixated on what

our life looks like versus what our life contains. As you can probably tell, there has been a real mental tug of war for me and last week and I booked this beautiful airbnb in the mountains just to get away, did some soul searching, did some digging, and came to some conclusions about what it means to I don't know, have the achievements, have the accolades, be happy with your life beyond the frills and the excess of what we think success looks like. So I'm very excited for this episode.

If you like more of our chatty, deep thinker style topics that fear into more of the existential philosophical conversations, obviously still with a healthy dose of psychology, you are going to love this topic. So, without further ado, let's get into how we can be truly successful in our twenties and what success actually means At its core, being successful feels really important for a lot of us during this decade. It's definitely up there, I think with some

of our bigger anxieties about the future. You know, how do I set up my life during this chapter to be impressive and to be secure later on? I think our fixation on this obviously comes from a place of wanting certainty. Right, if I'm successful in my attorneys, I'll probably be successful in my thirties and beyond, which means I won't have to worry about money, I won't have to worry about having something to do, I won't have to worry about feeling behind. So that self preservation is

one element of it. But I also think that our you know, excessive fascination and fixation with success also comes from a place of ego, wanting to feel important in the world, and that sense of importance is impacted by what society tells us is valuable and what makes someone again an important person, someone to look to, someone to feel proud of or maybe even envious of in a

sense spoiler alert. The people who we typically see is successful, you know, It's normally not that they are a kind person or that they have a lot of good memories. It's not that they are led by purpose, or that they're acting small, or that they're just a nice, happy person. It's typically a lot more materialistic and grander than that.

What makes someone important and therefore successful comes down to being the best at something, having a lot of money, getting a lot of attention or recognition, having something to your name. I'm going to ask you to picture a successful person for a second. I'm guessing your mind probably went to someone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, or a celebrity like Taylor Swift or Beyonce. That is not

an accident. The image of success that we have is again very limited, very exaggerated, but also very individualistic and closely aligned with fame. You know, what can you achieve, what have you done, What level of attention do you receive for your hard work? What kind of money have you made? Maybe this also comes down to celebrity worship

as well. If you want an amazing podcast specifically on this topic, you need to listen to Amanda Montell's podcast Magical Overthinkers, where she talks about this and she talks about how our collective obsession with celebrities and the parasocial relationship that we have with them has collectively made us feel more compelled or attracted by the idea of fame and perhaps less satisfied with an ordinary life. And you

want to know something fascinating. A study run in twenty twenty two showed that people who are more drawn into celebrity worship often do report feeling less satisfied with what they've accomplished, and they do also believe that they would be happier if they were more like the celebrities that

they see or that they were famous. So again, our perception of what makes someone successful is very exclusive and very narrow, and very much reserved for the best of the best something that you know, unfortunately we can't or be I think this is also elevated by our you know, this new wave I guess of online success and media success and social media success, where anyone can become recognizable

or popular by posting from their bedroom. And so this idea that we could all be notable, that we could all be popular, that we could all have this kind of online huge life is a lot more available to us, and a lot of us are leaning into that self promotion even if you are kind of detached from social media, and how social media hype is really feeding into our

you know, obsession with success. If you're in the corporate world right just you're like equivalent of LinkedIn, there is a cultural shift even on that platform towards self promotion, like what are my successes? What is my worth? If someone else cannot see it, if someone else cannot judge

me by it, if someone else is not impressed. We're looking externally for that confirmation that what we're doing is that we're enough, that we're pushing ourselves enough, rather than trusting our compass for a what we actually care about, be what we actually want to be doing, and see

whether we're enjoying ourselves. When success becomes so individually focused, it really does put a lot of pressure on us to be working harder and to be elevating ourselves in comparison to others, because success starts to feel very competitive, very glamorous, rather than collaborative and simple. It's not about how happy you are, it's not about what you do for your community. It's not about how you give back and what the world needs. But how how do you

make yourself feel impressive in this space? And let me just say this is not a criticism. I definitely buy into this all the time, that success equals self promotion and success equals image. But I also think that that is contributing to a lot of mental and emotional sequences

for this group of people, this age group. Firstly, when we're not meeting the criteria for a conventionally successful life, or you don't feel like a successful twenty something, it really makes us feel quite behind and therefore like a failure. Because we've been taught not to value ourselves as a person, but to value yourself based on output and what you can produce and how talented or impressive you are. And a unique kind of anxiety follows on from that right,

known as milestone anxiety. We have a whole episode on this from a few years ago, but for a refresher, Milestone anxiety is a relatively new concept within the psychology space, where we tend to experience a certain dread panic that a we are not where we want to be in life and b where not where others are in their lives.

There was a poll done on this very subject actually earlier this year, and it asked around two thousand hours in the UK whether they were where they wanted to be in life or meeting what they saw as success milestones. Around eighty percent of them said no, and as a follow up, they said that they felt a huge sense of pressure to be further ahead and achieving more than

they had at this stage. If only twenty percent of people in their twenties or in early adulthood feel like they are at a point where they can say that they are proud and comfortable in what they've achieved, that they are, you know, a good person and impressive person, maybe our notions of what makes for a successful life are incorrect because it should not be excluding that many people, nearly no one is feeling like they measure up, which is probably a good reminder that if you are also

feeling that way, you're actually part of the majority. Our limited view of success, that individualistic, very glamorous, heightened, exaggerated, grand public ideas success is not one that most people can achieve, but it leaves most people feeling miserable that

they can't. Now. If you're someone who is an overachiever, a perfectionist, perhaps you grew up being labeled as a golden or a gifted child, a straight a student, you're probably going to be more influenced by the pressure to be successful in your twenties than most A large facet of your identity, if you do see yourself as one of those people, is most likely derived from performing above the standard, from being admired or praised for your hard work,

being able to push yourself harder than anyone else. A lot of individuals who grew up as overachievers find that the only way they can now tell if they're doing something that is valuable, or if they're even happy with what they're doing, is through external reinforcement. Because our internal system for judging whether something is worthwhile, whether we actually care about something, is broken. We are so used to being praised, recognized, told we're good, and that is the fuel,

that is the motivation to keep going with something. So when we no longer have that, when we get into our mid our late twenties, we've kind of exited like the education system. We're kind of more responsible for our daily lives and our daily work without having someone telling us what to do praising what we do. It can

actually lead to a very broken sense of self. I'm no longer the best, I am no longer good, i am no longer achieving things with this within a certain structure the way that they that I always have, And that can mean that we start to doubt our career choices. We feel like because we're not getting immediate feedback on things, that we're a failure, that we're not doing well, and

we struggle to take self motivated risks. You know, because whether you're starting in your business, maybe you are pursuing social media, putting everything into a passion project, there will be times when you just have to follow your gut and you have to just believe in your goals without anyone encouraging you. But when we have this huge fixation on success, but we also really crave external validation for everything that we're doing. We're not always going to get that,

and so our extrinsic motivation system becomes broken. We feel like if we're not constantly being told like, yep, that's good, yet you're doing really, really well, what are we even doing? Who even are we without? Without that praise? It's a sickness, really, And as we get older, it can be hard to shake that productivity success driven instinct because again that's what we relied upon for most of our lives to bring

us confidence, bring our self esteem, self worth, and a purpose. So, if you want some further reading on this, an article that I could not recommend enough. It was written by this publication called The School of Life, and it's titled The Secret Sorrow of Overachievers, and it talks about how as overachievers, childhood overachievers, teenage overachievers, age, they find it

very difficult to appreciate their wins in life. They talk about how our hunger for stereotypical success feeds the burnout cycle, it feeds our imposter syndrome, and of course the external validation dependency. But also, and this is crucial, it also creates an inability to ever enjoy the moments when we do feel like we've reached our goals. It's never enough,

you know. The author kind of puts forward this proposition of like, and I don't even think this is just overachievers, but can any of us taste success once and not get addicted? Is this not such something that we all crave to be seen and acknowledged as being good. Let me introduce you to this concept called gold medal syndrome, because when we talk about, you know, is success ever enough?

This comes into it a lot. So obviously, the Olympics has just finished and we've seen that, you know a lot of people win gold medals, athletes who work their entire lives, sometimes for less than ten seconds. And obviously losing is awful. It sucks. You don't want to go to the Olympics and lose. But even for the people who win, they face this psychological phenomenon where upon getting everything that they ever wanted, upon being at the top of the podium, the literal top of the podium, they

are deeply, deeply unhappy. And what's actually happening here is something called the hedonic treadmill. We tend to think that success, that being the best, that being impressive, that being you know better than everyone else, or doing something really really cool that people think is really really cool is going to make us really happy, and to an extent it does. But also after we achieve these huge things, these huge milestones, we tend to return to a pretty stable level of happiness.

The myth that people get really hurt by is that being successful is somehow going to transform your life, transform your emotional state, and that you will never be miserable again. But actually a lot of successful people in the world

are gravely unhappy. Many successful professionals struggle to enjoy their accomplishments because it becomes their entire life, because they really elevate how it's going to feel to reach the finish line, and when they get there, it's actually quite miserable because they often neglect a lot of other parts of their life and they realize that being impressive and is really

not what life is all about. There was a study done by UCLA a couple of years back, and it found that about seventy two percent of successful entrepreneurs seventy two percent, I just want you to remember that number. They suffer from at least one mental health concern. A lot of them actually have increased rates of depression. You know, I think I don't know what the number is now. I think it's one in three or maybe yeah, one in three people will have some kind of mental health

concern in their life. That's around thirty three percent, seventy two percent, seventy two percent of people who are really in this success obsessive, success driven world feel that more intensely. And CEOs. The same study said that CEOs, some of the most successful people in the world, may be depressed at more than double the rate of the public at large. And here is my main point, and here's why I think we need to rethink this concept. Success is a

very shallow thing to base your life meaning on. And when we are so focused on achieving some goal or having this external image of being the person that has it all, being disciplined, often you miss out on doing things for the sake of just enjoying them, or doing things, you know, pursuing a career a life path because that's what you feel called towards, because that's what you actually

care about. Here's the other aspect of this, and I know this is going to contradict a lot of what I've said, But you know, most of the most successful people in the world are actually those who started out for themselves, who did it from a place of pure enjoyment, not for accolades, not for wealth, not for recognition, but because being good at something requires being committed to it from a place of deep personal value, enjoyment, pleasure and care,

and just actually feeling that even if no one else could see what you were doing, you would still be doing it. And here's why that's often the case, and why I think that really undermines our initial perception of success. We think that the end goal is the thing that

will motivate us all along. Actually it's the process. And this first concept I want to talk about is called learned industriousness, and it refers to a phenomena whereby people who are very successful, who succeed in businesses, who succeed in sports, in music, they are the people who fell in love with the process and the act of doing rather than the outcome. This is backed up by another concept,

another idea called flow. Now, we talk about the flow state a lot, but in case you haven't heard of it before, you haven't called it in a past episode Flow is basically a heightened state of consciousness when you're doing something that you equally love, that equally challenges you, excites you, and it basically puts you in the zone

and you feel fulfilled afterwards. Your flow state is often what indicates your calling right because you could sit there and do this thing for hours, not get bored, not get tired, feel fulfilled, feel not the opposite of exhausted, to feel exhilarated. Now, flow is not the concept I'm

talking about. What I want to talk about is how they discovered flow and if you listen to the Ted talk given back in two thousand and eight by the creator of this concept, professor Mahali sin Semahali, he interviewed Ballerina's CEOs, chess players, elite cyclists, people who are incredibly, incredibly talented and good at what they do, and what he found was that the one thing they had in common was that, again, these people just really loved what

they were doing, and they weren't doing it for the acknowledgment. They weren't doing it for image, for publicity, for sponsors, for money. They were doing it because this is the

thing that lit their fire. True success comes down to feeling purposeful, feeling aligned with a mission, feeling aligned with a value of some sort, and genuinely just enjoying what you're doing, like actually sinking your teeth into life, into what you really love and what really sets you alight, and just doing it regardless of what other people are thinking.

And I think that that is the huge switch that we need to make, the huge, the huge understanding that we need to switch from thinking about success is something that is done for others and something that is praised by others, something that has an image to it. Instead think about success as something that only you would care about, that only you truly know the meaning of and truly love.

So I want to say this, you know, if you're feeling behind, if you don't feel like you're taking a life path that is expected of you, or that you're not pursuing success in a traditional way, if your dreams aren't going to make you famous, aren't going to give you headlines, aren't going to you know, I don't know, aren't going to put you on like a public stage, You're probably actually doing what's right and you aren't missing out.

In fact, I think you're closer to what true success looks like for most of us, which is actually joy and energy and love and just value and passion. I really want to talk about how we can actually find more of that and how we can truly be successful in our twenties with that more evolved understanding. So let's take a shot break, let me grab a glass of water, let me catch my breath, and we'll be back shortly.

If we stop focusing on being successful in our twenties or elevating our reputation looking good on LinkedIn being traditionally accomplished, what would fill that space? What could we be focused on instead? Have a few suggestions. Instead of our twenties being about achieving that Wonderkin's status of being the best, I think instead our twenties could be focused on experimentation, giving yourself three to four startovers, to try new things and to really search for the thing that gives you

meaning in life. Our twenties could also be for running towards the fear, taking things less seriously, celebrating our mistakes what we're learning in the process. Like imagine if instead of you know, putting promotions on your resume, you put on the times that you failed and you came back from it or what you learned. More than that, I think how twenties should also be about having fun, And I know that it's such a simplistic and shallow maybe

for some of your way of saying things. But if this decade isn't about having fun, like, what's it actually about. If it's not about making memories that guide yourself and guide you to who you really are, when are you actually going to have time to do that with the level of self awareness that you have now? Maybe this is my biggest problem with our current conception of what

makes for an important and lucrative life. It makes everything so much less fun because you are constantly in a mindset of competition and comparison, needing to assess what others are doing and whether you are measuring up to that standard, and often comparing yourself to the lives of people who we've already revealed may not actually be that happy, but because it looks that way from the outside, it feels

like something that we want. As a result, I think that there is an over tone of seriousness that settles over this time in our lives well before it should, when actually we should be very unseriousness, unseriousness, unserious in certain aspects and areas of our lives to make the most of this period of freedom, but to also set

upon a self discovery journey. What I really want for us is to kind of swap the isolation and the comparison and the flamboyance of traditional success for community, for self knowledge, for discovery, and for value, to be truly successful in our twenties, and to tap into that life source that we were talking about before. There are three things that I think we need to focus on instead of, or in parallel to, getting ahead in our careers and

our finances whatever. Firstly is figuring out your sense of self and really finding your deep in a pool of authenticity to draw from. Secondly is building strong relationships that you can rely on in the decades to come. And three is learning through experience and failure and being okay with not doing everything perfectly, but just doing it. When I see my friends who are really setting themselves up for an amazing bright future for security and purpose, they

all have those three things in common. They have a sense of who they are, they have a network, and they have a flexible mindset that allows them to actually look at the world see where they're needed, see what

they want to do and pursue that. They are the people I think I feel most envious of, not because of the accolades, or because they work eighty hours a week or them or they're disciplined, but because these individuals who I see in my own life just have this serene sense of mission and self assurance that is incredibly admirable. And you know, the interesting thing is is that they

don't even care. They don't even care if I thought they were amazing, because they feel it themselves and they feel drawn to something without the need for public aca knowledgement of it. So let's focus on how we can cultivate these things, the self knowledge, the friendship, the openness to failure. Building self knowledge means getting clear on where

your internal compass is naturally leading you. There is a huge drawer, I think, at the beginning of our twenties or the end of our teen years to big flashy careers like doctor, like lawyer, like entrepreneur, because they're impressive, because you make a lot of money, because they are traditionally seen as people who have it together and who are you going places in life. The further we get into this decade, though, and I'm not sure if I'm the only one who noticed this, but I noticed this

shift around twenty one and twenty two. People began to drop off from those career paths because they begin to realize that their heart just isn't in those endeavors. They might be doing it for family, because it's impressive, or because they are squeezing into this box that their soul doesn't fit. And not to make it sound too spiritual, but that's how it feels. It feels uncomfortable to be pursuing a life that you actually don't even want more

than you want it. But on a surface level, getting to that realization quicker means getting clear on what actually inspires you. What you would do if no one was watching, not if money was no option. I know that's a question and often gets thrown out, but what would you do if no one was watching, if no one cared about what you were doing for better or for worse? And what do I genuinely derive joy from beyond my

career and as a person. This is basically what we would call in therapy and psychology as a self assessment exercise. I think we should all be doing it more periodically, whereby we stop and we assess not just how we're tracking towards conventional traditional goals like financial goals or career goals, but how we're tracking towards the broader goal of being in touch with ourselves and our lives and how we feel. Obviously, I think self knowledge in this decade can be difficult

because we still are in a transition period. We are still developing as individuals, and things do rapidly change. So that is why it's important to check in once every three months for fifteen minutes. Such a small time investment, but to journal, ponder, and think about these three questions. I think these three questions in particular really structure this self investigation. What do I value the most in my life right now? What could I be doing to be

more aligned with my purpose? And by purpose we mean the thing that you would do when Norme was watching, the thing that you care about beyond your career. And if you are anxious, dissatisfied, uncomfortable, what is the source of this feeling and what needs to be amended When you don't know yourself and you don't take time to care or to listen to your inner desires, perhaps because you are really caught up in being productive, in being efficient,

in being successful. I really do think that you're setting yourself on the path for a huge crisis later on. And I've seen it time and time again in people's lives where they are very consumed by doing what they think needs to be done and following a traditional path, and there is never a space in that journey for self reflection and for really thinking, like what actually makes

me happy? And so they wake up at thirty thirty five forty and they just feel even more lost than they would have at twenty twenty five if they had sat and reflected. So focus on it now. I also

think this is a unique time for risk. Some people get frustrated when I say this, but I do think that our twenties are the easiest time to do the things that might not get you further ahead in your career but makes sense for you as a person, and just kind of give you the chance to say in the future, yeah, I did that thing that was part of my life store Yeah it was out of character. Yes it may not have contributed to me getting ahead

in life, but I'm happy that I did it. The big one people often think of when I say that and when I say take risks, make memories in your twenties, is travel. Of course, if you're tossing up between do I travel or settle into my corporate job and climb the ladder, my answer is always going to be travel if you have the opportunity, because that is going to set such a core foundation for future you who might

choose to pursue a corporate life. It's not just travel, I think it's also things like going back to school for something that might not make you a success but that you care about, or taking a year to just make art or write and work whatever job pays the bills. This all gets us closer to understanding what we truly want. I think it also takes the pressure off having to come up with the answers to what's going to make me successful, what's going to make me impressive? What do

I want to do with my life? So early on, this is still a period of exploration, even if society is kind of putting, you know, kind of moving back the starting blocks a little bit and really putting a lot of pressure on the milestones. There is a wealth of experiences and knowledge to be collected in your twenties that are going to make you more successful in the

long run. Secondly, friendships our most prized relationships. If you feel like you have nothing to show for yourself in your twenties, that you're behind the people you went to high school with, or your colleagues, or where you expect it to be, lean into your relationships and lean into your friendships. There is a quote that says, show me someone's friends, and I'll tell you how rich they are. Not rich in wealth, but rich in connection, intimacy, vulnerability,

having those kindred spirits to ride through life with. There are so many people who have a narrow goal and an even narrower focus on how to get there because they do think it will give their life more meaning to be the big success story. But we know from earlier discussions that once they get to that finish line, often one of their first thoughts is who do I

share this with? There is no success without community. The relationships that you are devoting yourself to now are the things that will also make you successful in your future. And so there's another element of this that I want to talk about. You can really only grow as far as your friendships allow you to. So, yeah, if you

are someone who wants big things. If you are someone who wants a creative life, who wants an adventurous life, actually be particular about who you're surrounding yourselves with, because I do sometimes think that as much as we want companionship and connection, you don't want to be limited by someone else's beliefs about what they want from their life.

Hopefully that's making sense, but I think be selective and put time and energy an effort into your friendships and see that as something that is a mark of success. See that as something that you can say, yeah, I am full of wealth as a person. I have achievement. I am impressive, I have accolades because my relationships are

fulfilling and deep and vulnerable and rich. Finally, something else that makes you successful in your twenties is an openness to failure and being able to adapt and go lightly through life. That is what's going to make this a pivotal period for you. Each setback teaches resilience, and I

think adapting from that builds confidence. There is no one in life who is going to walk through any period, any chapter, any month, even without experiencing something that just doesn't sit right, that's inconvenient to them, that makes them

feel insecure, that makes them feel like a failure. The people who get over that far faster and who are able to keep pursuing their deep inner calling or the thing they care about are the people who are adaptable and flexible and who allow room for that in their journey.

I think that's very hard to do when you're really focused on perfection, and you're really focused on making a name for yourself and doing it right the first time, and you're really focused on how other people perceive your journey and how other people are perceiving your successes, take a step back from that for a second. This is not their life, This is not their journey. You are

the one who is experiencing your day to day. And you know, I saw this amazing quote that the people in life who are truly the most successful, who have the best businesses, who inspire people who make change, they always have the most interesting stories about how they got there because they didn't stick strictly to a they put themselves on at eighteen or twenty, and they didn't expect for everything to go right. They bounce back from failure, They accepted it, They made it part of who they

were becoming. So just a really good reminder and I want to just finish this up close off this episode by saying, firstly, thank you for listening to me ramble. Obviously, this is something that has been on my mind. I'm trying to rethink and evolve my own understanding of success in this moment alongside you. So if you do have any thoughts feelings about this yourself, please let me know. But secondly, I really do think that it's time to get rid of this confined, outdated model of what a

successful individual looks like. It is not someone who I think is materialistic or who is outwardly the most beautiful, most impressive, has the most things to their name. It's the person who you look at and you say no. That is someone who has a really deep pool of inner peace and cares about something and they draw from

that in any other of their life. And it doesn't have to be their job, right It could be someone who is like literally working at McDonald's but really cares about their athletics career, really cares about making ceramics on the weekend. That is someone who knows themselves. That is someone who hopefully has a community around them. That is someone who is open to failure. Those are true markers of success. So thank you so much for listening to

this episode. I hope it's given you something to think about, or that you've learned something from the studies we talked about, from the random quotes we threw in there, from my rambling. If you enjoyed this episode, if you feel like there's someone else in your life who needs to hear it, please feel free to share it with them and make sure you leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify wherever you are listening right now and follow along

for more episodes. I'll give you, guys, some sneak peaks on what's coming up next week. We're going to be talking about female friendship. We're going to be talking about people who are overly sensitive, and sibling relationships and a lot more so, lots to be excited about. Hopefully we see you back here very soon, and until next time, stay safe, stay kind, be gentle with yourself, rethink your notions of success, and we will talk soon