I’m 28 years old and if I could go back to my early 20s, I’d probably hit myself in the head. Not for the stupid things I did—those at least make for good stories. I’d hit myself for the things I didn’t do out of fear, laziness, or simply because I followed whatever path seemed most comfortable in the moment.
Turns out there’s an almost perfect formula for wasting your 20s. And I know this because I followed it without realizing it for years. It’s not complicated—in fact, it’s so simple that’s why it works so well. It’s the default path. The one you take when you’re not paying attention.
This isn’t a motivational sermon. I’m not going to tell you to wake up at 5am or do 47 things before breakfast. I’m just going to show you the pattern I followed, the pattern I see most people following, and why it’s a trap disguised as comfort.
Read this. Recognize what you’re doing. Then do the opposite.
1. Stay connected all the time
Start here. This is the one that seems most harmless of all. It’s just your phone, right?
Check your phone every three minutes. Every time there’s a pause in conversation, when you’re waiting for the elevator, when you go to the bathroom, when you finish one task and before starting the next. Respond to every notification instantly as if it were an emergency. Keep all your apps open. Don’t miss anything.
FOMO is real, right? You can’t disconnect because you might miss something important. A conversation in the WhatsApp group. A meme everyone’s sharing. A story from someone you probably don’t even care about that much but still need to see.
Except the only thing you’re really missing is your own life.
Constant connection doesn’t keep you connected to others. It disconnects you from yourself. You spend years never being fully present anywhere. Always halfway. Always with one eye on the screen. Always waiting for the next notification to tell you that you matter.
You eat with your family but you’re checking Instagram. You watch a movie but you’re scrolling Twitter. You try to work but every five minutes you check if someone responded. You’re never where you are. And after years of this, you don’t even know what it feels like to be completely present.
And worst of all, you never sit alone with your thoughts. You never experience real boredom. There’s never genuine silence in your head because there’s always digital noise filling every empty space.
You know what happens when you never get bored? You never think about anything real. Good ideas don’t come when you’re scrolling. They come when your mind has space to wander. But if you’re always consuming other people’s content, you never generate your own.
Without silence there’s no clarity. And without clarity, you’re basically living on autopilot following whatever Instagram tells you is important this week.
Disconnect. Not all the time—I’m not telling you to throw your phone into the ocean. But regularly. Leave your phone in another room when you work. Turn it off an hour before sleep. Eat without looking at it. Walk without listening to anything. Sit with your thoughts even if it’s uncomfortable.
Because that discomfort you feel when you have nothing to look at is exactly why you need to do it. Your brain is addicted to constant input and you need to break that cycle before an entire decade passes and you realize you never had an original thought.
2. Consume everything, create nothing
Once you’re constantly connected, this is the natural next step. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, Reddit, Twitter. All day. Every day.
Watch what others build. Watch what others create. Watch how others live their lives. Observe, consume, repeat.
But you never do anything.
Never put your ideas out there. Never risk looking stupid or imperfect. Never share something you made because it’s “not good enough” or “someone else already did it better.” Stay safe in the audience, applauding from the stands while others take the stage.
Here’s the trap nobody tells you about: there’s a fundamental difference between people who build things and people who just observe. It’s not talent. It’s not luck. It’s simply that some do and others don’t. And that difference becomes your entire life.
I spent years in this mode. Literally years thinking about creating things. I imagined projects. Planned blogs I never wrote. Designed things in my head I never made. I told myself “someday I’ll start” while scrolling for hours watching what others had started.
The problem isn’t that consuming is bad. Reading, watching movies, learning from others—all of that is fine. The problem is the ratio. When you consume 10 hours a day and create zero, you’re not a person with interests. You’re a professional spectator of your own existence.
And what happens with just consuming is you get used to having impossible standards. You see the polished, finished work of people who’ve been doing it for years, and you compare that to your half-formed idea you’ve never tried to execute. Obviously your idea loses. So you don’t do it.
But that’s never going to get you to create anything. Because the only way to make something good is by making a bunch of bad things first. Everyone you admire made garbage at the beginning. The difference is they published the garbage anyway.
Plus, consuming without creating is like only inhaling and never exhaling. Eventually you suffocate on ideas that never left your head. You fill up with input without output and become anxious, restless, frustrated, without knowing exactly why.
Create more than you consume. It doesn’t need to be good. It doesn’t need to be seen by anyone. A blog post nobody reads. A drawing that looks terrible. A website with no visitors. Whatever.
Creation builds competence. It teaches you to finish things. It shows you that you survive publishing something imperfect. It gives you tangible evidence that you can do something instead of just thinking about it.
Consumption, by itself, builds nothing except a list of things you watched while your life passed in front of you.
3. Always choose what feels good right now
Once you’re in constant consumption mode, the next step is obvious: always choose the option that requires less effort and gives more immediate dopamine.
One more series instead of working on that project you’ve been keeping in your head. Infinite scroll instead of reading that book you bought six months ago. One more game instead of learning that skill you said you’d learn this year. TikTok instead of literally anything productive.
It’s comfortable. It’s easy. And it mathematically guarantees that while others move forward, you stay exactly where you are.
Here’s the thing: your brain doesn’t distinguish between productive pleasure and empty pleasure. Dopamine is dopamine. So when you scroll for two hours, your brain thinks you did something. But you did nothing. You just looked at things. And when you’re done, you feel the same or worse than when you started.
Versus when you work on something real. At first it feels bad. It’s hard. Your brain protests because it requires effort and there’s no immediate reward. But when you finish, even a small part, you feel genuinely good. Not empty dopamine, but real satisfaction.
The problem is that the easy option is always available. Netflix doesn’t judge you. Instagram doesn’t tell you you’ve seen enough. TikTok never ends. So if you always choose based on what feels good in this exact second, you’re going to choose distraction 100% of the time.
And I’m not saying never relax or enjoy yourself. That would be stupid and miserable. But there’s a giant difference between resting after working and avoiding working by using rest as an excuse.
There’s a difference between watching a movie because you really want to watch it, and watching three movies in a row because you don’t want to face the hard thing you know you should be doing.
What happens is that every time you choose the easy over the important, you’re voting for the kind of person you want to be. And if you vote enough times for “the person who avoids hard things,” eventually that’s what you become. Not by conscious decision, but by a thousand small decisions that accumulate.
Immediate pleasure feels good now but accumulates into years of feeling empty, frustrated, wondering why you’re not moving forward while watching others achieve things.
Choose long-term satisfaction over immediate pleasure. Not always, because you’re not a robot. But most of the time.
Before opening Netflix or grabbing your phone, ask yourself: “Is this going to make me feel good after doing it, or only during?” If the answer is “only during,” there’s probably something better you should be doing.
Your future self isn’t going to thank you for the 500 hours you spent scrolling. But they will thank you for the 500 hours you spent building something, even if it was imperfect.
4. Convince yourself you have time
This is the one that hurt most to write because it’s the mistake that cost me the most.
That project you want to start. That skill you want to learn. That change you want to make in your life. That business you want to build. That person you want to reconnect with.
You’ll do it later. Next month. Next year. When you have more time. When you’re more prepared. When you have more money. When you know exactly what to do. When it’s the perfect moment.
You’re in your 20-something. You have plenty of time, right?
No. Absolutely not.
This is the biggest and most dangerous lie your 20s will tell you. That you have unlimited time to figure things out. That you can afford to wait. That the future is so far away it doesn’t matter what you do today.
But here’s the mathematical truth nobody tells you until it’s too late: every day you wait is a day you literally don’t get back. You can’t be 23 again. You can’t redo your 20s. Time only goes in one direction and every “I’ll do it later” accumulates into years of “I should have started.”
I was 22 when I said “I’m going to start writing seriously next year.” Then 23. Then 24. Then “when I’m 25 it’s going to be the year.” And so the years kept passing while I waited for the perfect moment that never came because the perfect moment doesn’t exist.
You know what’s the best time to start something? Five years ago. You know what’s the second best time? Today. Not tomorrow. Not Monday. Today.
The problem with “I have time” is that it’s technically true but practically devastating. Yes, you probably have decades of life ahead. But you don’t have decades of your 20s. You don’t have decades of youthful energy, fewer responsibilities, a plastic brain that learns fast, less fear of failure.
And worst of all, procrastination compounds. Every thing you postpone makes it easier to postpone the next. You build a mental pattern where postponing is your default response to anything difficult. And eventually you don’t even realize you’re doing it.
Plus, waiting doesn’t make you more prepared. Most of the time it’s just fear disguised as prudence. “I’m not ready” almost always means “I’m afraid of failing” or “I’m afraid it won’t be perfect.” But you’re never going to be ready. Ready is a state you only reach by doing the thing, not by thinking about doing it.
If something matters, start today. Literally today. Not next Monday. Not when you finish this other project. Today.
You don’t need to start perfect. You don’t need to have everything figured out. You just need to start. Write one line. Read one page. Send one message. Do the minimum viable thing that counts as starting.
Because the perfect moment doesn’t exist and waiting for it is another elegant form of procrastinating. The difference between people who achieve things and those who don’t isn’t that some have more time or more talent. It’s that some start and others keep waiting.
5. Avoid anything that’s hard
By this point you’ve got some pretty solid destructive momentum going. You’re constantly connected, you only consume, you choose immediate pleasure, and you postpone everything. The natural next step is to avoid anything that requires real effort.
Growth is uncomfortable. Change is scary. New things are uncertain. So avoid it all.
Stay with the same friends even though you have nothing in common anymore, even though the friendship feels forced, even though you know they’re not helping you grow. Because making new connections requires vulnerability and effort.
Don’t take risks. Not in your career, not in your relationships, not in anything. Because failing is embarrassing and what if you try something and it doesn’t work and everyone realizes you’re not as good as they thought.
Stay at the job you hate because looking for another one is hard. Stay in the relationship that doesn’t make you happy because being alone is scary. Stay in the city where you don’t want to be because moving is complicated.
If something is hard, it’s probably not for you. If it requires sustained effort, you’re probably not “made for it.” If you fail on the first try, it’s a sign from the universe that you should give up.
Follow this philosophy long enough and one day you’ll wake up and realize you’re exactly the same person you were at 20. Same fears. Same limitations. Same small life. Just now with more regrets and less time to do something about it.
Here’s what nobody tells you about the comfort zone: it’s not comfortable. It’s just familiar. And your brain confuses familiar with safe, when really all it is, is predictable. Predictably mediocre.
The comfort zone is a cell you build yourself, brick by brick, every time you choose the easy over the important. And the treacherous thing is it feels good while you’re building it. It feels like protection. Like security. Until you realize you can’t get out anymore.
Because what happens when you avoid the hard for years is your tolerance for discomfort becomes lower and lower. Things you could do before now seem impossible. Risks you would have taken now seem irresponsible. You become fragile without realizing it.
And eventually you reach a point where even small things seem monumental. Answering a difficult email. Having an uncomfortable conversation. Doing something you’ve never done. Everything feels like climbing Everest because you’ve spent years training your brain to avoid any type of resistance.
Plus, avoiding the hard guarantees you never discover what you’re really capable of. You live your whole life within the limits you set for yourself at 20 years old, when you knew nothing about nothing, and you never give yourself the chance to surprise yourself.
Get comfortable with discomfort. Actively seek it out. Do something that scares you a little each week.
Have the difficult conversation. Apply for the job you don’t think you’ll get. Talk to the stranger at the event. Start the project even though you don’t know how it will end. Fail publicly and survive.
Because every time you avoid growing, you’re choosing to stagnate. And stagnation in your 20s is basically death in slow motion for your 30s. You’re going to hit 30 with the same capabilities you had at 20, but now with more responsibilities and fewer excuses.
Discomfort is the price of growth. And if you’re not willing to pay it, you stay exactly where you are. Forever.
6. Live for other people’s approval
This is where things get psychologically dark.
Build a life that looks good in photos. That impresses when you tell it at gatherings. That generates likes when you post it. That makes people think “wow, they’re doing well.”
Live for external validation. For what others think. To prove you’re making it. So nobody can say you failed or wasted your time.
But never, ever, ask yourself if you’re actually happy with what you’re building.
Study the career your parents want. Work at the company that sounds prestigious. Date the person everyone approves of. Buy the things that demonstrate success. Live in the place that has status. Do everything you “should” be doing according to others’ expectations.
And act every day. Act like you’re fine. Act like you love your life. Act like this is the path you chose. Act your 20s instead of living them.
This is especially insidious because it feels productive. It seems like you’re building something. It seems like you’re moving forward. You’re checking all the boxes society says you should check. But you’re building someone else’s life. Not yours.
The problem is that external approval is a drug that never satisfies you. You always need more. You get the prestigious job and you need the promotion. You get the promotion and you need the better title. You get the likes and you need more followers. It’s a bottomless pit because you’re trying to fill an internal void with external validation.
And worst of all, you know, somewhere deep that you try to ignore, that you’re living the wrong life. But you’ve already invested so much in this version of yourself that admitting it’s not what you wanted feels like admitting you wasted years. So you keep acting. Keep building. Keep impressing.
Until one day, probably in your 30s, you realize you built a beautiful life you don’t want. A prestigious title in a field you hate. A relationship that looks perfect but feels empty. An expensive house in a city where you don’t want to be. Friends who are really acquaintances who only know you superficially.
And the saddest part is you don’t even know what you really want because you spent your entire formative decade asking others what you should want.
Because when you live for others’ approval, you outsource your value system. You let Instagram tell you what success is. You let your parents define what a good career is. You let your friends dictate what an interesting life is. And eventually you lose touch with what you, the real person underneath all the expectations, actually value.
Build a life that feels good, not just one that looks good. The approval of strangers, even well-meaning family and friends, is worth nothing compared to your own respect and satisfaction.
Ask yourself regularly: “If nobody knew about this, would I still do it?” If the answer is no, you’re probably doing it for the wrong reasons.
I’m not saying completely ignore others’ opinions or be a rebel just to be a rebel. But when your important decisions are dictated by what others will think instead of what you actually want, you’re basically renting your life to other people.
And at the end of the day, they’re not going to live with the consequences of your decisions. You will.
7. Completely ignore your body
Now we’re getting into serious territory. This was one of my biggest mistakes and the one with the longest-term consequences.
You feel fine now, so what does it matter? You’re 20-something. Your body recovers from everything. You can sleep three hours and function. You can eat garbage for weeks and nothing happens. You can not exercise for months and still look more or less the same.
So eat whatever, whenever. Fast food five times a week because cooking is too much work. Zero vegetables because they don’t taste as good as fries. Pure coffee and energy drinks to function.
Sleep whenever. Three hours today, nine tomorrow, who knows the day after. Stay up until 4am every night because night is when you feel productive. Or more honestly, because it’s when you scroll without anyone bothering you.
Exercise never. Going to the gym is too much work. Going for a walk is boring. Your body is fine like this. You can start “when you really need it.”
Ignore your mental health because you’re too young to be burned out. Anxiety is normal. Constant sadness is just a phase. Chronic stress is part of being an adult. You don’t need therapy, you just need to try harder.
Your body will handle it. Until it doesn’t.
Here’s the truth nobody tells you until it’s too late: your body is 20-something years old only once. And what you do to it during those years compounds. It doesn’t disappear. It accumulates.
Those sleepless nights don’t erase themselves. That junk food doesn’t reset. That chronic stress doesn’t evaporate. Everything stays in your system, accumulating silently, waiting to collect the bill in a few years.
I spent my early 20s thinking my body was invincible. I could drink energy drinks to compensate for not sleeping. I could eat anything because my metabolism was fast. I could be constantly stressed because “that’s life.”
And technically it worked. My body handled it. Until I hit 26-27 and suddenly I wasn’t recovering the same. One sleepless night destroyed me for two days. Junk food made me feel horrible. Stress gave me physical pains I didn’t have before.
And you know what the worst part is? By that point I’d already built years of horrible habits. Changing became exponentially harder because my body was already used to functioning in constant emergency mode.
Plus, ignoring your body robs you of mental energy. When you sleep badly, you think worse. When you eat badly, your brain functions badly. When you don’t move, your mood tanks. Everything is connected and when you neglect one thing, you neglect everything.
And mental health—we ignore that until we explode. We build years of untreated anxiety, ignored depression, unprocessed trauma, because we “don’t have time” or “it’s not that bad” or “others have it worse.” Until one day you can’t function anymore and you realize you should have sought help years ago.
The ironic thing is we treat our phones better than our bodies. We charge our phone every night. We protect it with a case. We update it regularly. But our body, the only one we’re going to have, we treat it like we can buy a new one when this one breaks down.
Treat your body like it matters. Because it literally matters more than anything else. Without a functioning body there’s no successful career, no happy relationships, no finished projects, nothing.
Sleep enough. It’s non-negotiable. Seven to eight hours, consistently. Your productivity will go up, not down.
Move daily. You don’t need to be an athlete. Just walk, stretch, do something. Your body is designed to move, not to sit 16 hours a day.
Eat real food most of the time. You don’t need to be perfect. But your body can’t function optimally on pure garbage fuel.
And take care of your mental health. Get therapy if you need it. It’s not weakness, it’s maintenance. It’s as important as going to the dentist but for your brain.
Your 30-year-old, 40-year-old, 50-year-old self is literally begging you to do this now. Because they’re going to live with the consequences of the decisions you make today. And they can’t go back to fix it.
8. Get into debt without control
And finally we arrive at the one with the most concrete and lasting consequences. The one that can literally chase you for decades.
You’re young. You deserve to treat yourself. You deserve to live well. You deserve that trip even though you don’t have the money. You deserve those clothes even though your account is at zero. You deserve to eat out every day because you work hard and you earned it.
Swipe the card. Live your best life. YOLO and all those phrases that justify horrible financial decisions.
Saving? Investing? That’s for boring old people who don’t know how to enjoy life anymore. That’s for when you’re 40 and established. Right now you’re in your 20s. You’re supposed to be free and do what you want, right?
Wrong. Completely wrong.
Drowning in debt isn’t freedom. It’s exactly the opposite. It’s a cage you build at 21% annual interest. And that cage gets smaller every month you only pay the minimum.
Here’s what credit cards don’t tell you, but you discover when it’s too late: they’re designed to keep you in debt. The compound interest that in investments is your best friend, in debt is your worst enemy.
You buy something for $1000 with your card. Doesn’t seem like much. You pay the minimum. That $1000 becomes $1200, then $1440, then $1728. And that’s just one year. Two years and that “small” purchase already cost you double. Three years and it’s triple.
And you don’t make just one purchase. You make dozens. Hundreds. All “small.” All “justified.” All silently accumulating into a mountain of debt that eventually crushes you.
What happens is that debts rob the future to pay for the present. Every dollar you owe is a dollar your future self has to work to pay. You’re literally borrowing money from your future to treat yourself now for things you probably won’t even remember in six months.
And it’s not just the money. It’s the freedom. Because when you’re in debt you can’t quit the job you hate. You can’t take risks in your career. You can’t move where you want. You can’t take time to find what you really want to do. You’re trapped because you have to pay your debts.
That “freedom” you thought you were buying with your card turned out to be the thing that took away all your real freedom.
And don’t fool yourself thinking “I’m not one of those people who gets into bad debt.” We all think that. We all think we’re going to pay everything next month. We all think it’s just temporary. And for some it’s true. But for most, “temporary” becomes years. Decades.
Credit card companies count on you thinking short-term. They bet you won’t do the math. They bet immediate gratification will win over long-term planning. And in most cases, they win that bet.
Plus, spending money you don’t have disconnects you from reality. When you pay with a card you don’t feel the pain of spending like when you pay cash. So you spend more, without realizing it, building a financial prison brick by brick.
Live below your means. Not to be cheap or miserable. To be free.
Every dollar you save today is freedom you buy for tomorrow. Every dollar you invest is a small machine that works for you while you sleep.
If you have debts, pay them aggressively. Make it your number one priority. Because every month that passes, compound interest is destroying you.
If you don’t have debts, don’t make them. Use a credit card only if you can pay the total each month. If you can’t pay for something in cash, don’t buy it. It’s that simple.
And learn about basic finances. You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to understand compound interest, the difference between assets and liabilities, and how money works. Your future self is going to live a completely different life depending on whether you learn this now or in 10 years.
Because here’s the truth: your financial decisions in your 20s have more impact than in any other decade. Because of the time you have ahead. Because of compound interest. Because of the habits you build.
You can build a foundation that gives you freedom for the rest of your life. Or you can build a burden that chases you for decades.
The choice is yours. But choose consciously, not by default.
The pattern you probably recognize
If you got here and you’re recognizing yourself in several of these points, breathe. Don’t panic. And definitely don’t beat yourself up.
You’re not broken. You’re not behind. You’re not a failure. You’re just following the default path.
The path of least resistance. The one everyone follows because it’s easiest. The one designed by algorithms, social expectations, and your own brain seeking dopamine, to keep you comfortable, distracted, and basically stuck in the same place.
And worst of all, this path feels normal because everyone around you is following it too. Everyone is connected 24/7. Everyone is in debt. Everyone is postponing. Everyone is building lives for Instagram. So it seems like that’s how it’s supposed to be.
But normal doesn’t mean right. And common doesn’t mean inevitable.
Here’s the good part, the only good thing in this entire post: you can get off this path whenever you want. Today if you want. You don’t need anyone’s permission. You don’t need a perfect 47-step plan. You don’t need to wait for the new year or Monday or for the stars to align.
You just need to decide you’re going to do something different. And then do it.
It can be one small thing. Disconnect your phone for an hour. Write one page of something you want to create. Exercise for 20 minutes. Pay extra on your credit card. Say no to something you really don’t want to do.
One thing. And then tomorrow another. And eventually those small decisions compound into a completely different direction.
The problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do. The problem is that knowing isn’t enough. You have to do something with that knowledge. And that “something” can start ridiculously small.
What changes when you do the opposite
The difference between following the default path and doing the opposite isn’t dramatic at first. You’re not going to wake up transformed after one day of doing things right.
But the changes compound. And compound interest works in all areas of your life, not just finances.
When you stop waiting and start doing, you build momentum. The first day is hard. The second too. But the tenth is easier. The twentieth is almost automatic. And after three months you have real evidence that you can do things, not just think about doing them.
When you prioritize long-term over short-term, you build freedom. Every time you choose the hard option that benefits you in the future over the easy one that benefits you now, you’re buying a bit of future freedom. And those small purchases accumulate into a freedom account that eventually allows you to do things others can’t.
When you create instead of just consuming, you build competence. Not just the skill to do the thing, but the skill to finish things. To publish imperfect things. To survive criticism. To improve with practice. Those are the skills that actually matter.
When you take care of your body, you build energy. Not just physical, mental too. You think better. You feel better. You have more capacity to face the problems life throws at you. Your baseline wellbeing goes up, so bad days feel less bad and good days feel amazing.
When you disconnect regularly, you build clarity. In silence you find what you really want versus what Instagram tells you you should want. You find ideas that are actually yours. You find peace of mind that’s impossible when you’re constantly bombarded with others’ input.
When you live for yourself instead of for others’ approval, you build a life you actually want. And that life might look completely different from what others expect. It might be simpler. It might be weirder. It might not make sense to anyone except you. And that’s perfect because it’s your life, not theirs.
This isn’t complicated. It’s not advanced science. But it’s definitely not easy.
Because doing the opposite of what everyone does requires courage. It requires that you feel uncomfortable regularly. It requires that you look different. It requires that you choose delayed gratification when everyone around you is choosing immediate gratification.
It requires that you’re willing to be misunderstood. For your friends to ask why you don’t go out as much. For your family to question your decisions. For strangers on the internet to have opinions about your life.
But that’s exactly why it works.
Because everyone else is ruining their 20s by following the easy path. And in five years, in ten years, they’re going to be in exactly the same place or worse, wondering what happened.
You don’t have to be one of them.
I’m 28. I’m closer to 30 than to 20 and that feels weird to admit.
I made enough of these mistakes to recognize the pattern. I spent years constantly connected, consuming instead of creating, choosing Netflix over progress, waiting for the perfect moment that never came, avoiding everything that scared me, worrying about what others thought, neglecting my body because I thought I was invincible.
I fixed some of these. I’m still working on others. And there are probably some I haven’t even realized I’m still doing.
But I also did enough things right to know that changing direction really works. That you don’t need to have everything figured out. That you can start from where you are. That it’s better to start imperfect than never start.
The difference between the person I was at 22 and who I am now isn’t that I’m perfect now or have everything figured out. It’s that I now know which path leads where. And when I find myself on the wrong path, which still happens often, at least I know I’m on the wrong path. That’s already something.
It doesn’t matter where you are in your 20s. If you’re 21 and just starting, perfect, you have an advantage. If you’re 27 and feel like you wasted time, you still have time. If you’re 29 and panicking, breathe—your 30s aren’t the end of the world and you can still make significant changes.
But that time, although it still exists, runs out faster than you think. Every day you wait is a day you don’t get back. Not to scare you, just to be honest.
So if any of this resonated with you, if you recognized yourself in some of these patterns, take that as useful information. Not as a reason to feel bad, but as a map showing you where you’re standing and where the different paths lead.
And then choose your path consciously. Not by default. Not because it’s what everyone does. Not because it’s easiest.
Choose the path that in five years you’ll be grateful you took.
Start today.