The Psychology of your 20s - 316. The 20 biggest mistakes people make in their 20s

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Over the past 6 months I've been asking people: what is the biggest mistake you made in your 20s? I've heard from over 5'000 people, some of them 21, some of them 80 and I have combined all their responses to make the ultimate list of the 20 biggest mistakes people make in their 20s, for the people, by the people.  From love, to career, to finances, going to college, friendship, taking risks: today we talk through the most common responses we received and what we can learn from these moments and regrets. Listen now!  ORDER MY BOOK: https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/general-clean  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]    The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s, and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world.

Thank you so much for joining us back here for another episode as we break down the psychology of our 20s. I have a bit of a different episode for you all today. I know you all love our deep dives and our really like in-depth searches for the science behind obviously. the experiences of our 20s, but today I want to do something a little bit different and not just focus on one topic for this episode, but talk through a bit of a list. In fact, a list that I have been working on for the past month, basically just outlining the biggest mistakes that people

make in their 20s, from people still in their 20s, all the way up to people who I've spoken to in their 70s and their 80s. I've talked to so many people just kind of sliding in this question into conversation and writing down their answers. What's the biggest mistake that you made during this decade? I even put up a bit of a question box on Instagram. Over 5,000 of you responded or emailed me or DMed me or dropped a comment in an episode and having curated and putting together that whole list,

I want to share some of my very basic findings and, you know, take that list out of my Excel spreadsheet and just share this little personal research project with you guys, the 20 most common mistakes that people say they made in their 20s. You know, in doing this, I kind of had to stop and pause a few times and be like, huh, is this a mistake that I'm maybe currently making? Like what can I learn from this?

What can I learn from these people's experiences? I feel like we're in such a confusing decade of life. And all we really want is someone to give us the answers or for someone to give us, you know, some kind of reassurance that we are doing the right thing and that we're on the right path. Unfortunately for us, obviously, no one can tell you if what you're doing is correct. and they can't tell you what's going to happen next and they can't tell you that you're not going to have regrets, but they can share their own mistakes and their own misturns

and kind of hope that you learn from them. What really inspired me to do this was actually a 2012 publication titled The Five Regrets of the Dying. And these regrets were, I wished I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself. I wish that I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I'd stayed in touch of my friends and I'd wish I'd let myself be happier.

These were the regrets of people reflecting on, you know, their whole entire lives. But I wondered if we could make kind of like a decade-specific list to learn from as we go along. So this is that kind of preliminary list. Without further ado, my lovely listeners, there is so much to cover, so much info. And of course, a little bit of psychology. Thank you to every single one of you who shared their regrets, shared their mistakes, whether I talk to you in person, whether you DM'd me. However, you got the information across. It has been truly valuable.

I can't wait to get into it. So let me start by clarifying that this list is by no means like a peer-reviewed study. Like if I submitted this very basic research to like any journal or any publication, you know, I would be. rejected in a heartbeat. You know, this was more of a personal interest project for me that kind of turned into this much bigger thing because I spent obviously a lot of time thinking about my 20s, but what I found does kind of seem to line up with what I thought I was going to find, basically. So I do think that although I wasn't able to get, you know, a sample or like a random sample and I wasn't able to talk to even more people than I would have wanted and I wasn't

able to, you know, apply for an ethics application or do anything like that. This list still has a lot of value. But take it with a grain of salt. If you don't necessarily agree with some of the things on this list, that's totally okay. If you think that we've missed things on this list, also please feel free to leave a comment below because, yes, it's not as comprehensive as I would have liked it to be, but still very, very fascinating. With that in mind, I want to begin by talking about mistake number one. The biggest mistake that people talked about time and time again. I'm going to give you a second to guess what that was.

So by far the biggest mistake that I heard that people made in their 20s was prioritizing a romantic relationship over my friends, over my career, over my personal growth. Essentially, people talking about how they had put romantic attraction at the center of everything that they did and kind of realized later along down the line that it meant that a lot of the other things that mattered to them kind of got pushed to the sidelines. I heard this so often in so many different forms as well. Someone talked about how they had left a job that I loved for a man who dumped them five days later or people who had lost friends because they didn't make time

for them when they were with their ex or being so focused on finding love at 21, 21, 22, 23, that they never spent time growing as a person and learning what they really loved about themselves. These were just a few kind of versions of this same mistake that I heard. And you know what? I relate to this very, very deeply. I remember being 19, 20, just like desperately wanting to be chosen by someone, you know, at a club, at a party, on a dating app. it became such an obsession that what I thought was love became my only priority and everything else in my life kind of suffered. I just wish I could tell that version of myself, you know, from only like five, seven years ago just to slow down a little bit. Like just to have some fun.

Treat dating like an experiment. Treat dating like you're studying humankind and figuring out what you like and what you don't and what works for you and what kind of person elevates your life. life rather than just kind of to use this analogy jumping in the first cab off the rank and hoping that it's the right one and kind of later on finding that it probably wasn't. You guys know that I did a bit of a dating detox in my early 20s where I didn't date, I didn't have dating apps, I didn't think really about men for almost half a year and it was during that time that I can firmly say my career took off. I made more friends and incredible friends more than I really think I'd ever had.

I really fell in love with myself. And now that I am in a relationship and we live together, we have a dog together, it feels like the right thing. And it feels like actually that relationship is not my whole world, when I used to make relationships my whole world. How I think about it is like, here's this separate universe for me that I can step into and enjoy alongside and in parallel to this life that I've built myself. Like, my whole world is a life that is more than just love.

So if you will want to avoid what seems like a very big regret or mistake for many people, treat love as something that is fantastic if it finds you. But not everything, especially during this decade, should revolve around it. I heard this analogy the other day that I love. If you knew you would meet the love of your life in six months, how would you live those next six months to the fullest as a single person? And yes, you might not actually meet them in six months, but aim to live like every single day, every single week in that same mindset and with that same perspective for as long as you can.

That's mistake number one. Similar to that mistake, another one that was very closely related and came in second was people who talked about staying in a relationship when they knew it wasn't right for them. That was the second biggest mistake that I heard. This isn't so much about centering the pursuit of love in your life. It's more so about people who found a love that they thought worked and held on to it perhaps for longer than they should have. A lot of these people talked about either A, knowing very early on that this person wasn't for them and not acting sooner, or B, you know, not even knowing. that and not even knowing how to act at all, not knowing and having doubts whether, like

doubting your doubts, doubting whether your perception of this person was correct for so long that by the time you knew that they weren't, you really didn't know even how to change things. You were living together, you had pets together, maybe you were even married, you had kids together and just not knowing how to pull out of that relationship. when things finally end, quite a number of people spoke about how it felt like they'd kind of wasted their youth, they have to start all over again, and how they, you know, maybe didn't completely regret the relationship, but definitely kind of wanted some of those years back. You do have to give yourself a lot of grace in these situations, though, because whether someone

is right for you or not is actually a really tricky question to answer. Like, how do you really not? how can you really trust that that instinct isn't just relationship anxiety or relationship OCD or just general anxiety? Personally, I think it's really, really hard because relationships are tricky sometimes. Like every single relationship is going to have its trials and knowing whether that's a deal breaker or just something that you have to get through is kind of difficult to understand when maybe this is like your first relationship or, you know, you haven't had the most healthy example.

of what healthy love looks like, you kind of just assume that this must be it. Also, just to add to this, if you're someone who has always had a specific timeline for your life kind of imposed upon you by society, by parents, by culture, if you're someone who struggles being alone, it can be a lot easier to settle for good enough in order to fill that void or fill that expectation and only realize like a lot later down the line that you've made a mistake. Okay, we're going to move on from the romance and love mistakes and talk finances. A big number of the mistakes that people relayed that they made in their 20s related to money. Here are the three that came up the most, in no certain order, just the three that were very, very common. The first one was not saving.

The second one was not investing sooner. And the third mistake. mistake was getting a credit card. The savings one was huge. One quote from a listener that really stood out was this. Yes, money does come and go, but experiences last forever and that matters, but you also need to support yourself to have those experiences. The stress I put myself through to go to festivals, to have a Euro summer when I couldn't afford it, to go out for dinner, to buy new clothes was not worth it. I wish I knew what I knew now and had saved more. We can learn a lot from that. When it comes to saving and investing, I beg of you, please just choose like one day this month to sit down and freshen up on your financial literacy.

You don't have to have a lot of money to know how your money works and what it can do for you. You don't have to have a lot of money before you start. Like, you don't actually have to invest. You don't actually have to do anything with that information. It's just important that you know this stuff early in your 20s. when it's easier to learn and to kind of decide what you want financially for your future. I'll be honest, I put this off for so long. And it was only a couple of months ago that I did really have to say to myself, like,

enough. I have to get my money together. I have to learn how investing works, what budget is best, which bank to be with, how to use different accounts and point systems and high interest accounts and whatnot. And I just dedicated like two days across like a two month period, to just learning and listening to podcasts and reading articles and following people who talked about this. And it did make me feel so much more secure and knowledgeable. It definitely eased a lot of anxiety that I had around my future with my money. And I'm going to express that same sentiment

that the woman who DM'd me said, I definitely wish that when I was 23 or even younger, I knew what I knew now because it definitely could have saved me a lot of money and saved me a lot of stress and probably impacted my future in a way that I'm probably not ready to even think about, like having that extra money in like my savings or in my super account, my retirement fund. I try not to think about the opportunities that I missed out on not doing that earlier. There are also so many different ways to budget. Like some people use the 50, 30, 20 method. So 50% for needs, 30% for once, 20% for savings.

others like the 70-20-10 method. Some people give themselves like a maximum amount each month that they can spend and everything else goes into savings and they don't touch that. Whatever it is, find something that works and start even when it feels intimidating. As for that third financial mistake, I regret getting a credit card. Take that advice seriously. Credit cards are great for building a credit score and finding ways to to get money back and perks and travel points,

but my rule has always been and it will continue to be. If I don't need it and I can't afford it, I don't need it. Only buy things with a credit card that you can hopefully pay off immediately. Obviously there are some big purchases like buying a house or a car where it's a bit different, but in terms of just like every day wants like clothes, like travel, like homewares, like whatever it is, if you don't need it and you can't afford it, you don't need it. I actually found a study that concluded around two-thirds of people in their 20s have credit card debt. And another publication was saying that the average amount of that debt is

around $6,000, $6,000. That's scary stuff. And if you don't know what you're doing to get that debt down, that can follow you. If you don't know how to correctly use a credit card as a tool rather than as a lifeline, it can get you into a lot of danger. So reflect on those mistakes, do what you wish with that knowledge. Moving on, there was another group of mistakes that I heard time and time again. And they have to do with how we let others' thoughts, opinions and actions affect us. Mistake number six was putting people's needs above my own. Another one high up on that list, not learning to say no.

And finally, worrying too much about what people thought of me. all kind of in the same vein, I would say. Let me say this. How you think about yourself, how you treat yourself, what you learn to tolerate and not tolerate when it comes to other people's behavior, that has a much bigger impact than we think. And it definitely snowballs. Like it may be small in the moment to just say yes

and to just kind of be passive in the face of someone else's assertions. We may not even notice it, but it can shape our whole life if we end up being steered in a direction that we didn't want to go to make other people happy. Maybe that's like choosing a certain career. Maybe that is earlier like choosing a certain partner that you think will meet your parents' expectations. Maybe it's just letting friends treat you badly. That does something to your soul and it does something to your sense of self that can be harder

to repair the older we get. And I also think the older we get, the more we realize that life is really, really fine. night and you only really get one shot and you owe it to yourself to be fierce and to really stand up for yourself. You know, at the end of the day when you're looking back, you want to feel like you were in control and you didn't continuously sacrifice your own happiness for someone else's comfort, especially, especially when they don't even end up appreciating it. Let me say, a lot of the time these reactions are instinctual. So I don't want you to feel like there's shame around having done this or this being something you want to unlearn.

A lot of the time, these actions aren't just instinctual. They were also conditioned over many years since we were children to be, you know, good and to be agreeable and to just let others have their way or have their say. It is your job to deliberately unlearn these mechanisms. It is your job at some stage in your life to unlearn your tend to unlearn your tend to unlearn your tendency to shrink or to make yourself small. And it will be uncomfortable at first. You know, it is uncomfortable to upset people. It is uncomfortable to hear mean things or to disappoint people or to say no. Of course it's uncomfortable because you're not used to doing it. But on the other side of that

discomfort is a life that it's just, you know, the only word I have for it is lighter. There's like no better word for it. It's lighter. You just feel like you can move through like the waves of life with a lot more ease. You know, we've talked about financial investments. Learning that your opinion and your needs should come first, this is the kind of personal and emotional investment that pays dividends and will bring you so much more happiness. I have a whole episode on this if you want to learn more about how to do that titled How to Care Less About What People Think About You. It really breaks down an exact strategy that you can go about doing this. So go there after this if you need more tips. As we move down this list, almost halfway through now, this next

one sticks out to me particularly because it's probably one of my mistakes and probably one of my biggest regrets from this decade so far. Not keeping up with old friends. Now, it's true. You cannot keep every single friend that you have ever made, but there have certainly been times when I've realized, you know, far too late that I really should have meant. message that person back. I really should have answered their calls. I really should have kept in touch. And at some stage, you kind of, I guess, like months pass and you kind of wake up and you're like, wait, whatever happened to that person? And wow, they were a really good friend. I wish that I had appreciated them more. You know, you miss them, but you're at this weird point where you don't

really know how to invite them or invite yourself, I guess, back into their life. Friends as well kind of hold pieces of who we are and therefore as well who we used to be. So losing touch with them does sometimes feel like losing part of ourselves and that can hit especially hard during periods of loneliness or transition that obviously very synonymous with this decade. I remember when I first moved to Sydney, I've spoken about this before, I lost a lot of friends and I didn't really like appreciate how hard that was until later on. And now I'm at a stage where I really want to reflect back on that time when they were present. And I don't, you know, they're not there to do that with me. And they're not there for me to learn from or to talk to. And it's kind of lonely and it's

kind of sad. We have so much research out there. I couldn't even begin to cite it that tells you that long-term social bonds are just as crucial for your emotional health and your physical health as so many other lifestyle decisions that we make. So when we let those bonds fade, you know, it's not just about missing a friend. It's about really missing a grounding presence in our life and kind of missing out on all these like health benefits and like the secret to longevity. The secret to longevity is having people around you who love you and care about you. Please don't forget about that in the pursuit of your career or in your pursuit of love or in the current busyness of the life and the decade that you are in right now. Okay, we are over halfway through this list now.

We're going to touch on one more mistake that made the list, the early parts of the list, before taking a break. And it's different from everything we've kind of talked to. It's different from friendship. It's different from money. It has to do with our health. The biggest health mistake on the list was smoking. I wish I'd never smoked my first cigarette.

I wish I hadn't started vaping. I wish nicotine had never entered my life. That was repeated time and time again. one person wrote in who was in their 50s. And the way she found the podcast was that she'd listened to a few episodes with her daughter. And she wrote into me when I was asking people for their biggest mistakes, saying how she started smoking at 20 to impress a guy. She got addicted.

And as everyone else around her slowly quit when they left for college, when they had kids, when they got married, she didn't. And I have permission from her to share this, but she basically said, I've never been able to run more than a kilometer. my kids have asked me multiple times, so many times to quit, and I know in my heart one day I'll get an unthinkable call from the doctor and it will be cancer. If only I was 20 again and I could reverse it all and reverse this decision. That kind of left me a little bit speechless, you know, hearing from someone,

this big reflection on their life and almost this call, this like, it almost felt like she was like begging people in their 20s to just take their, health more seriously as someone who could see what happens when you don't. And we can learn so much from stories like that. And yes, smoking is highly addictive. It's calming. You know, it looks cool. It's cultural. It's social. It's also a habit that does damage that time cannot repair. And when you're young and healthy, you have the benefit of not having to think about that. But your oldest self is begging current you to think about them, to think about the future, to think about how you're going to feel when you really start to see the very dangerous side effects of this habit.

Nowadays as well, you know, it's not just smoking. I also heard a lot about vaping. You know, for the first time in decades, I was looking at this research the other day. The use of nicotine has like shot way up. Like there was this very steady trajectory over the years of like nicotine intake going down, going down with education, with people learning the consequences. But when vaping was introduced, you know, it's like this new thing. And with any new thing, there's not long-term research into the health consequences. And it was definitely marketed as like a healthy alternative.

And like something that wasn't as bad for you as smoking. This is what I think about that. When people say like, oh, but smoking, but vaping is so much healthier than smoking, I think like, that's like saying getting stabbed as a healthier alternative to being shot with a gun. Like, it might be true, but a knife still isn't going to feel great and it's still going to hurt and it's still not particularly good for you. So I would really encourage people who do vape and want to stop just to read up on the health consequences. We now are seeing studies come out.

There was a 2023 study titled, E-Cigarette Harm's Aggregate Evidence that Shows Damage to Biological Systems. if you want to get nerdy and read that study. It's one of the first long-term ones that shows what is really happening to your lungs and your body when you vape. Wow, I feel like I'm like a health advertisement right now. But I'm going to take a short break now that I've kind of drilled into you a number of mistakes.

I'm going to let you process some of them, get a cup of tea, get a glass of water. When we return, we're going to talk about mistakes related to family, taking risks, and why seemingly more people are seeing college as a mistake these days. So stay with us. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more.

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found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in someone's, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detainty.

to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alesspian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young.

This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Maricopa County as Laura O'Brien. Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So our careers are probably, I'm going to say this, our biggest source of stress and anguish in our 20s.

You know, big questions to do with our careers. What's our dream job? Will I ever find something I care about? Like, how can I create the lifestyle that I want? Will I ever have a sense of purpose? Big questions, my friends. A lot of that starts with, should I go to college? Should I get an education?

Or should I get my foot in the door career-wise and get experience and kind of not get a degree right now, but go back? The interesting thing that I found is that there was almost a 50-50 split, just in the people that damned me or reached out to me, between the people who said college was a mistake and it was a waste of money. and people who said, I regret not going to college and not prioritizing my education. It's very interesting, and I think, obviously, you're probably listening to this being like, well, that doesn't help me. But let's have a little bit of a discussion around why people said college wasn't worth it and the people who said that they wish they had done it. I think these days, going to university just kind of seems like the necessary next step for a lot of us. But having a degree, we all know this. It doesn't necessarily guarantee you a job.

Even having a master's. Even having a PhD, you know, it's incredibly costly. It's a huge time investment. It doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going to be further ahead or have more opportunities. That is why I think a lot of people are starting to question its kind of necessity. Personally, I think education is always valuable. It is an asset, even if it's an asset that more and more people have. It gives you more than just skills.

Just being in that environment, you know, it gives you a network. It gives you mentors. It exposes you to ambitious people and just people who will become your friends and will help you get ahead. But if you don't have a specific thing that you want to do and you're just going to college or university to tick it off the list and you're not being present in your classes, you're not paying attention, you're not really getting involved in that experience. You feel like you have no motivation at all.

it might actually not be worth it. And that's what some people are saying to me. Instead, like going into the workplace, taking a gap here, those might be more valuable in giving you maturity and experience and more of a direction. And they should be presented as things that are valuable to do at any stage, but also straight out of high school. It should be just as normalized to go and get an apprenticeship or to go on work

or to go and, you know, travel abroad after high school. school as it is to just like jump straight into university. Otherwise, and I've spoken to people who feel this way, you know, you wake up at 21, 22, 23, you've just graduated university and you realize that you have spent 19 to 20 years being in school. Like this was a realization I had when I graduated from uni. I was like, oh my God, this is the first time in my life that I'm going to spend more than three months not studying or not like being in a classroom. And if you haven't done some soul searching during that period, like, and if education is all you've ever known, like, you're going to feel quite lost and you're going to feel a bit scared. So it is something to consider. Is this

necessarily the best thing for me to do right now? I can't answer for you, but just take that wisdom and do what you want with it. I've also been loving this. I do. recently of people who take their retirement throughout their life rather than just at the end of their life. You know, normalizing, not needing to save up all your experiences for your 60s, but having them throughout your career and throughout your professional life, taking little mini gap years, taking like mini sabbaticals. And you know, anything can happen. I always remember the story I was told of this couple who were in their 60s and they were nearing retirement, the wife had retired, the husband hadn't, and he kept saying, oh, let me just one more year, we could just get a little

bit extra money, one more year, one more year, and then we can go and finally have all the money that we want for this big, amazing trip. And she had a heart attack and she died before they could do that. You know, he was six months out from like finally saying like I'm done and she'd been retired for six years and she never got to do those things. And that can happen. Like life is very unpredictable. So do what you want to do whilst you have the youth and whilst you have the time and whilst you have the desire to do it. So this kind of relates to three other common mistakes that I heard, which were people regretting not having a gap here, people making the mistake of jumping right into work and feeling to enmeshed with their professional identity so that it made it very hard for

them to quit a job or quit a career or take a step back. And number three, people feeling like they haven't traveled and they haven't explored. And now they're in a period where they're settling down and they regret that. We live in a current state of the world in a current society that is very much dictated by what your resume looks like, what you've achieved, your job title, your dedication to the hustle, what you can present as successful to others. And that can be very hard to step away from. It can be very hard to step away from because often there's this implicit idea that if you take a break or you do something for your personal development, you're going to miss out on a critical formative period for your professional development. And by the time you come

back, like you've missed the boat, you're never going to get that time back. You are falling so far behind you and never be able to catch up. It's a common myth. Here's two things that I'll say to that. building your career is not linear. People can get somewhere in five years and it's going to take someone else 30 years to get to that same place. It's what happened during those years in terms of your life experience that matters more and will matter more at the end of the day. Secondly, if we think back to that list from people on their deathbeds,

people who have their whole life to kind of survey and examine the number two regret they say, not just people in their 20s, people like in their 80s and 90s, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. These are people who have every reason to be honest, who have years more of life lessons than we do, who would probably give anything to have a second shot to live a life with the wisdom they have now.

And they have gifted us that wisdom. We want wealth, we want success, and the reason many of us want that is so at the end of the day we can travel, we can sit and enjoy life, we can have nice things. you can also have them now. This is actually the best time to travel. It's the best time to explore. You might not have the big budget that you want,

but you do have your youth, and you do have the opportunities to make really great stories and develop experiences and skills that will impact you for longer. You are the youngest you will ever be, the healthiest, most likely. You have the stamina, you don't have obligations. Older people may have the money, but they don't have all that you have now.

Another mistake people felt that they made, was not taking risks, not chasing their dream, and in a similar vein, wasting time thinking rather than doing. This really reminds me of another story that I was told by someone recently about her mother and how her mother trained to be an accountant and she spent all these years working her way up, being an accountant. And then like 30 years into the career, she was like, had a complete mental breakdown and was just like, I've wasted so much of my time. I feel so unhappy. She read The Artist's Way, if you know that book, Dochi references a lot.

It's incredible. She read The Artist's Way and she dropped everything and became an artist. And now she's an incredibly successful artist. And the real moral of the story is something that she said to my friend, which now feels permanently, kind of see it into my brain. The safe option is the safe option for a reason, because it will always be there. Because you can always go back to it. People can't always say the same about their dreams.

it's something I've definitely seen. Big dreams that you have for your life, big dreams that are really calling out to you, they don't always wait around. And it becomes harder and harder to do them the older you get. If you want some research to back this up, because obviously I can't just go a whole episode without citing at least one paper,

you've got to hear about this study that they did at Cornell. So this team of researchers, they recruited hundreds of participants to share their regrets, kind of like what I'm doing now, but professionally. And they then divided all of these regrets and their answers into two different categories. Those involving the ideal self, i.e. what you dreamed you'd be or what you felt and in a drive to become. And regrets involving the ought to self, i.e. those that dealt with not meeting expectations or the ideals of others. Which type of regret do you think was most common?

ideal self-regrets won by a landslide. Participants had more regrets around their ideal self and around things that they wish they'd done to make their dreams come true over regrets around things that they wish they'd done to impress others or regrets over things they wish they'd done because they ought to have done them. So the math is on your side. Like if you want less regret, aim higher for yourself. do more to become your ideal self.

Take further risks and it kind of seems like logically, scientifically, I could even say, like you will die a happier person with a happier life. Okay, we have three final mistakes in our list and they're all very different and they were all kind of hard to put into any of these other categories. They were standalone regrets. The first mistake was not getting help for my mental health soon.

I heard this quite a bit and oh my gosh, if I personally could only go back in time and tell myself this, I think I would have saved myself a lot of suffering. Your mental health is your most precious asset. People say it's physical health. It's your mental health by far because it comes from the mind and the mind really does control a whole lot. It controls everything. If your mind is suffering, everything else will suffer. It controls who you are, what you think about yourself, your beliefs, your dreams, your interests, your relationships, everything. So please tend to this part of you like it is the precious asset that it is, especially when

you're young, because you can learn so many skills that will carry you through and give you a healthier life mentally if you learn them earlier. Know that as well, no matter how stuck you feel, how hard it is right now, people trained for years to be able to help you through this. And they will be able to help you through this. They have thousands of tools to help you feel better and more like yourself. One of them will work. So if you have been putting it off, if you've been waiting for the right time,

thinking that you can get through it on your own, basically, no, you don't have to. The second kind of standalone regret that I heard a lot or mistake was not asking my parents' important questions and not spending time with them. When we're in our 20s, we go through a very natural period of separation from our family. families. Everyone does. It's an important stage in our development. It's known in developmental psychology as individuation. You have to be able to form your own independent identity away from the safety and the structure of the family. But at some stage, you do emerge from this period and you kind of come back to your parents and come back to your family members and see them differently. And I think the way you see them now is as not equals, but as the adults that they are

with complex lives the same way that you have a complex internal life. And you want to know more about them. You want to know more about who they were before they were a parent, who they were before they were a partner, who they were as a child, all these things. Don't miss that opportunity and don't miss that window. I've been doing this with my own grandparents a lot recently. I feel very lucky that, you know,

I still have three very healthy and alive grandparents who have incredible stories. And every time I see them, I really make an effort to just say, you know, what was like the snacks that you liked when you were my age? Or what was your best friend's name? Or what did you learn from your first job? Just like small questions because they are literally like a textbook on how to live a good life. And they're a textbook that I have access to that is like literally right there and open and ready for me to learn from.

A lot of people spoke about having lost their parents or, you know, things happening that has meant that they can't really stay in touch with them. and the mistake that really feels like and how that weighs heavy. The final mistake on this list, and I feel like it is the best place to end, not spending more time alone getting to know myself. An interesting thing about this one was that this was one that I heard a lot more from older people, a lot more from people over the age of 40.

it feels like an important one to finish with. I say this in my book, I say this on my podcast so many times that if you're a frequent listener, you're probably going to be annoyed that I'm saying it again. And I apologize in advance, but there is only one relationship that you will have your entire life. There is one person. You will spend more time with than anyone else in existence. And that's you. You are always there.

You will always be with you. There's a quote I love from Carl Jung, which is that the privilege of a lifetime is to know who you truly are. And that starts with really being able to spend time alone to put a mirror up to your soul and your sense of self and examine it. Explore the parts of you that feel uncomfortable. Try new things. Be present with your thoughts. Go on dates with yourself. Just know what you want from life and who you are.

It is the foundation upon which all other. stuff is built. I know how easy it is personally to fill up your social calendar and to never have a Friday or a Saturday off to feel like you're failing if you are, I'll have this intense phomo or to always be dating people. The quiet moments that you end up having when you do that will feel very scary. When in fact when you practice having time alone, you'll realize that it's very fulfilling and that it is the key to living a good life. if you can really hone in on what you actually want from life, what you want from your relationships, and also what you want from yourself, and that's important work that you shouldn't put off that should be your number one priority.

That's where the list ends. That is our final mistake from this list. I hope that you've taken something away from this. I hope that you've learned from this. There are definitely probably, there were a lot more mistakes that people mentioned. Like, by no means was I able to include every single little thing. that people said was a mistake. Some of them were very specific. But if there is one that you think we haven't touched on that is important that you have learned from through your own life experience,

leave a comment below. Leave a comment in just below the episode description. What is the biggest mistake you feel like you have made in your 20s? And what do you think people can learn from that? This kind of wisdom is the kind that feels really, really important. And I really loved being able to investigate this and just like, you know, I don't know, kind of like revive my research days. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you liked this episode. Share it with a friend who you think may benefit from it as well. Leave a comment, like, subscribe, all those things. Leave a five-star review as well. If you feel cool to do so, it really does help the show grow and expand and reach new people. And make sure you're following me at that psychology podcast as well on Instagram.

if you want to contribute to further episodes, a lot of what I learned and what I shared in today's episodes came from DMs and came from people who, you know, follow me on Instagram who were able to contribute. So I hope to see you over there. But until next time, stay safe. Be kind. Be gentle with yourself.

And we will talk very, very soon. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not saying. to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with.

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