20 Life Lessons From Surviving My 20s
By: Charles Payne Ii
Tags: Life Lessons, Finance, Happiness, Love, Life

20 Life Lessons From Surviving My 20s

From military to missionary to MBA, here’s what I learned

Your prefrontal cortex is not fully operational until age 30, which means your decision-making function (that wonderful CEO in your forehead) wasn’t 100 percent functioning in your 20s.

All those times your emotions overwhelmed you? All those moments where you could not think clearly? It was your 20-something-year-old brain operating at a C+.

As if these biological hindrances weren’t making life complicated enough, life has changed significantly in the last decade (2009 to 2019). Steve Jobs is gone, GaryVee and TikTok are in the house, the economy is on an insane prosperity streak, and yet suicides rates are the highest they’ve been since World War II.

Given the complexity we are confronting on all sides, I wanted to share 20 lessons from both the ups and downs of my twenties. And if you’re not yet 30, let me tell you — life only gets better.

1. Life (for the most part) will be different than you expect.

When I was a child I thought I would become a doctor like my father.

When I was in high school, I thought I would be an engineer or an army officer.

When I was in the army, I thought I would become a famous businessman.

When I was a missionary (not a businessman), I finally got over my fear of success and religious barriers and pursued a Masters in Business Administration (MBA).

In each of these moments, if you asked me what the next 10 years of my life would be like, I would have had a different answer than my actual future. That’s how life works. The sooner you get comfortable with this reality of change, the more enjoyable and fun life will be.

Side note, my next role after being a Christian missionary will be working for a beer company. How’s that for irony?

2. Certain experiences will only come when you decide you’re ready for them.

For a long time, I never managed to stay in a relationship with one woman. Whether it was my raging insecurity or simply a lack of chemistry, most of my relationships came to an end.

Then, when I moved to Spain, somewhere in my head I decided I would really like to meet and date a nice Spanish woman. Within a few months, I found a great one on a church retreat and it looks like we’re going to make it.

Looking back, I can see the signals — my behavior and mindset were not prepared for the experience of loving one woman for the rest of my life. It was only when I decided that I truly wanted and was ready to grow old with someone that I finally stepped toward that reality.

We can try to fool ourselves, but until we’ve holistically accepted the decision we will subconsciously sabotage the vision. So, don’t rush it. Listen to the inner voice and, when you’re ready, go for it.

3. Fathers and good coaches will never validate victimhood or complaining; this doesn’t mean they don’t have empathy, it means they know you’re stronger than you think.

In our twenties, especially if you attend university, we meet professors, teachers, or bosses who tell us or ask us to do things. Many of the things they ask of us seem pointless, stupid, and a complete waste of time.

What we do not realize is that as an adult, life, just like these authority figures, does not care how we feel about many things. Instead, life simply brings things our way. Everyone has it hard in some way at some time.

Given this reality, most dads and good coaches will never validate or accept your complaining. Were you bitten by a bunch of insects in Brazil? Is it really itchy? Dad will simply laugh and tell you it’s not that bad because complaining and sulking will not change your circumstances.

In some cases, you may need help and you should ask for it. If you’ve experienced a traumatic event, such as stress during a war, abuse, or assault, you may even need to seek a therapist specialized in trauma, take a sabbatical, or undergo a process with safe people in a private space.

Beyond those extremes, if you’re still alive and you don’t have cancer or some other life-ending disease, you’ll probably be okay. In fact, you’ll probably laugh about it later. More importantly, you will grow and learn something about yourself.

4. Most mistakes are not the end, but you should get “better” at making mistakes (or at least not make the same mistakes).

When I was separated from the Army, I took the hit hard. I felt like a stain on my family’s legacy of military service.

One day in Spain, a business coach said, “Just because you made a mistake doesn’t mean you are one.” It was the most important lesson of my 20s.

Life sucks sometimes. You make mistakes. You get betrayed. Or, worse, you lose a loved one or take someone’s life (like some of my friends in service). You cannot undo these things. You can only grieve them, learn from them, and move on.

When you courageously face the pain, you transform it rather than pass it on and you become a more empathetic person and a force for good.

As the old proverb goes, “Don’t get bitter, get better.”

5. Ditch entitlement as fast as you can — it really won’t help you.

This one is self-explanatory. Entitlement does not look good on anyone.

It’s ridiculously unattractive. It makes you appear spoiled, arrogant, helpless, and pathetic. You will probably not respect yourself, and, as a result, no one else will respect you.

Instead, work for what you want. Learn to take care of yourself and your needs. Then adopt a selfless attitude and do small things to start helping and taking care of others. You’ll be a much happier, healthier, and better person for it.

6. Learn to negotiate, stand up for yourself when it matters, and say, “No”.

The word “No” is sacred. It creates a boundary between you and something else. When you say “No,” you protect something. That something may be your opinion, a fact, a value, or yourself.

When you say “No” to protect things that are important, you build the container that is you. This is crucial in your twenties because you are experimenting and getting a sense of who you are away from home (I hope).

This does not mean there is no room for negotiation. It means you need to exercise the muscle of self-respect. Or, as Brene Brown says, “If you can’t say, ‘No,’ then you also cannot say yes.” In essence, “choose courage now over resentment later”.

7. A lot of people have unbalanced lives that should not be emulated — choose who you emulate wisely.

When you look at the cover of Forbes magazine or any social media account, you never get the full impression of a person’s life. For example, David Goggins’ book Can’t Stop Me is an incredible tale of grit.

What you don’t see is whether his family is in shambles or healthy, whether his kids hate him or love him, and how much or little all the fame in the world did for him in terms of happiness.

Bottom line, be careful who you put on a pedestal, and look at the sacrifices they made to get where they are. You may not respect them as much as you think.

8. Being respected is more important than being liked (although you should strive for both).

Being respected simply means that you recognize a similar set of values in another human being. For example, an artist may never respect a soldier or vice-versa. However, that artist may deeply appreciate another creative.

When you decide your values, you are making a statement about the kind of people you appreciate in your life. These people are your tribe (in a sense).

To be anything else would be inauthentic. You would have to betray your values and act differently, becoming unhappy. In the end, that’s a losing game. Choose respect over being liked, and, when you can, choose both.

9. Mentors who are willing and available are gold. Gain them by networking via common ground, real questions, and true curiosity about their lives, experiences, and choices.

Mentors are everywhere. They are in your church, in your business, in your university, and in your family. The mistake most people make is going for the ones who are too busy building something to make time for them.

Instead, I recommend going for mentors who are competent in an area of your interest and, most importantly, available.

Mentorship ultimately means someone investing their limited time into you. Since this is a hefty sacrifice for many of us, availability is the gold standard of a great mentor.

Will they get on the phone with you every few months? Can you pick up where you left off without judgment? Do you both share personal stories and get something out of the interaction? Are you both learning? These are the most important points, not arbitrary desirability criteria or social media stats.

10. Learn how to feel, understand, and use your emotions in a powerful and mature way.

Given my introverted nature and struggle to communicate my inner world as a kid (INFJ, Enneagram type 4), I often found myself frustrated or overwhelmed by my emotions and circumstances. My brain could not seem to handle it well.

As I’ve grown older, practices such as meditation have become a means to disarm and short-circuit the mental, emotional rollercoaster. This does not mean I have discarded my emotions. It means I have learned to channel them appropriately and connect with them rather than be controlled by them.

Although it is difficult in our 20s (sleep is in such short supply), with education and training or using tools and books like the Headspace App or Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, we can and will get better at handling our emotions. Doing so will not only make us happier and freer, but it will improve our perspective, our maturity in our relationships, our ability to cope with stress, and our decision-making abilities.

11. Time and commitment are the best indicators of what you truly care about.

Existentialism, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia, rejects science as an adequate framework for fully understanding human beings and makes “authenticity” the norm of self-identity. In essence, your freedom, choice, and commitment are what define you, not your beliefs or scientific axioms.

In life, people believe many things, education gives us a myriad of facts, but we all eventually realize that “actions speak louder than words” (talk-actions=shit). If we want to find out what we care about, we need only look as far as our daily lives.

Unfortunately, in a world where it’s easier to make a 15-second video that looks amazing rather than do something amazing, we realize too late that we overvalued our time and freedom and missed out on the great things that only come from sacrificing them now for a better future.

Enjoy the little moments. Have fun in your twenties. But make sure you do some reality checks along the way.

12. Integrity is everything; maturity and life are about becoming who you truly are (integr-ation).

Life is more of a discovery process than a decision-process. I do believe, as one of my favorite authors Richard Rohr suggests, that we are about 1/3 nature, 1/3 nurture, and 1/3 self-decision. However, we don’t truly understand how all these fit into the world until we actually go do something in the world.

I believe this is what we mean by integration.

As we go through our twenties, we start making choices about who we are. The more these choices align with our core values, the more we integrate and the greater our integrity grows.

The older we get, the more we understand ourselves, our strengths, and our place in this world. I have found that moments where I most strongly sense this alignment are also the moments I feel the happiest and most true.

13. It’s normal to undergo your first big transformation around 30; expect to start thinking differently and embrace that change.

The first year of my MBA changed the way I look at life. I started thinking more long-term and strategically. Most importantly, I started making choices for me and stopped caring what other people thought.

When you’re age is around or greater than your parents’ ages were at your birth, you start to realize they had their own lives to worry about. Moreover, you see that although you are similar to your parents, you are also very different.

This is a bit shocking at first and can even make you feel a bit lonely, because growing up means you get to call the shots in your life and nobody cares. But it’s also a great invitation to step into a new level of autonomy, make some new friends, walk a different road, and live your life.

14. Self-imposed stress and expectations must be carefully managed.

We all know results are important. You cannot run a business that isn’t profitable (in theory). However, one day I wrote a phrase that deeply touched me: “The vast purposelessness of mysterious competition while trying to please someone else.”

It describes the biggest cognitive errors I made of my twenties, the fruitlessness of self-imposing arbitrary comparisons and creating arbitrary expectations in hopes of finding happiness or, worse, trying to make someone else happy.

Whenever I self-imposed expectations, I prioritized the outcome over the process and removed the importance of my experience from the process. In that case, my happiness would only be found in an endless stream of progressively greater achievements, which is a recipe for disaster.

Given the outcome lasts only a moment, it makes much more sense to find activities in which the activity itself is the reward. These activities may change over time because we lose interest or they become unfulfilling. Nevertheless, life is better with a few necessary or deeply personal expectations rather than multiple arbitrary ones.

15. Your heart is best for big decisions, your head is helpful for daily decisions.

Discipline is a daily endeavor. It requires mental fortitude and the choice to overcome resistance through action. This is a great skill and it will serve you well. Unfortunately, mental models and effort often fail in the realm of significance.

In the realm of significance, we need to turn to our hearts (which actually have a brain — check out heartmath’s research). The perennial tradition holds that the heart is the seat of wisdom. It knows things that transcend the mind. When it comes to important life decisions — my choice to take two years off to travel the world as a missionary, moving to Spain, joining the military, deciding I’ve found the one — I lean toward the heart. So where does the mind come in? You must use your mind to support your heart-based decisions each day.

16. Values are fought for and earned; beliefs are chosen.

Values are not values until you fight for them. They cost you something. This is why military veterans have respect for each other in and out of the uniform. They understand the concept of selfless service and sacrifice.

Beliefs are chosen. They often change over time as life reveals that which is true and false about them.

So remember this mantra, “Believes are many, valyes are few. Beliefs always change, values never do.”

17. The day you choose to get organized is the day your life will begin to change forever.

There is an interesting movement around two ideas: “Make Your Bed” and “Clean Up Your Room.” Even though I made my bed every day at West Point, I never considered the value of learning such a habit.

I realized, after becoming the operations director for our company in Afghanistan, that companies cannot survive without organization. Being organized makes operations predictable, builds trust and confidence in your team, and create greater efficiency when coordinating multiple units doing multiple activities.

In the same way, organizing parts of your life in certain ways will make life simpler and more enjoyable. Women or men will enjoy visiting your room. Your routine will become a source of rest rather than frustration. Most of all, you will be able to find things when you need them and execute tasks more efficiently and effectively. Chaos is fun, but it is no way to live long-term.

18. Sometimes the best thing to do for yourself is to be “irresponsible” and “unproductive” for a bit.

One of the biggest lies of business-culture and American society is that productivity is the primary driver of our self-worth. Like Radiohead’s song, “Fitter Happier,” we can do everything right only to end up feeling like a “pig in a cage on antibiotics.”

Since we human beings are not machines, we need fun, variety, and permission to be lazy monkeys from time to time so that we can maintain our sanity, happiness, and gratitude for life.

Whether it’s sitting in our pajamas all Sunday, going to a crazy rock concert, or rock climbing up the side of some random cliff, we all should take moments to relax and reenergize. So don’t GaryVee it up on Sundays working in that wine shop, unless you truly love work on Sundays. Grab a bag of Cheetos, put on The Mandalorian, and enjoy some couch potato time, ya “googey boo-boo” (if you don’t know what that is, watch Alec Balwin explain it in 30 seconds).

19. Money is not the enemy; strive to understand it.

In my first job, I didn’t worry about money. In my second job, I didn’t earn any money. Now, my savings are burnt (thanks non-profit sector) and I’m re-building, re-educating myself, and going back to corporate life.

What I’ve discovered in this process is finding a job that will pay you to work is not overwhelmingly difficult. How I use that money, however, is the far more difficult part of the equation.

Some things are nice to have now, like a new phone. However, most of them are things I do not need — new sneakers, a cool hoodie, another book for my shelf of unread books. Choosing to not buy these things became easier when I got clear and specific about why and why I was saving money (i.e. a car, a new phone, retirement).

Money is a tool to be understood. Invest time in educating yourself or simply chatting with a friend who loves investing. When make a plan, follow it, and live within your means instead of keeping up with the Joneses, you can live a happy life, respect yourself, and weather the storms that wreck the unprepared.

20. Most fear and anxiety comes from a lack of understanding; they will decrease once you take the first step.

This summer, I read a brief line that captured this sentiment from the book, “The Obstacle is the Way.” Although I still haven’t read the full book, the power of the thought remained.

Whenever I encountered the unknown, my reaction is often fear. When I start taking action and interact with the problem instead of avoiding it, however, I find my mind pivots towards curiosity and my anxiety decreases.

Life is an endless series of problems (both good and bad) to be overcome. This is not a bad thing, it is just reality. Each day, we have an opportunity to engage or to postpone. If we remember this truth — our fear will diminish as we gain understanding — we can choose to engage and be much happier, even if we later decide the problem is unimportant and stop.

If you find yourself stressing, it’s helpful to consider whether you are avoiding taking action on an unknown. If you are, you know what to do.