“This isn’t the time to make hard and fast decisions, it’s time to make mistakes. Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere chill. Fall in love – a lot. Major in philosophy ’cause there’s no way to make a career out of that. Change your mind. Then change it again, because nothing is permanent.”
– Jessica Stanley (played by Anna Kendrick), The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
Thank you to my career counselors, academic advisors and every well-meaning professional development fairy at UCLA for all the advice this senior year. Truly, I have been to the Career Center more times than I went to CorePower, which is saying something. I’m going to stick with Anna Kendrick’s Twilight graduation speech because it is the only “life guidance” that has ever felt both chaotic and accurate enough to tattoo on my frontal lobe.
Some days, I feel like I’m a sophisticated senior, a terrifyingly capable job candidate, an academic weapon and a Type-A doing the most in the best way. Like I’m casually going to Century City between classes, locking in at Powell after surviving Neuro, and stepping into my corporate era with a color-coded calendar and a LinkedIn that’s suspiciously well-maintained. Other days, I wake up late, contemplating academic disappearance by week 2, sprint across campus realizing I haven’t texted my best friend back in two days, and remember I still don’t know how taxes work.
Where did those days go when I was just a baby Bruin and my only problem was scoring Bruin-Bash tickets? Going to Rocco’s every weekend, ending up at frats and darties like I had unlimited energy and zero cortisol. How did I have the strength? The mental space? The audacity? Life was a buffet and I was determined to sample everything. Yesterday, I stayed home while my friend went out, and I realized I’ve officially entered my couch era. I would rather watch movies with my boyfriend, clean my apartment, and romanticize my crazy/chic little apartment life. Is that pathetic? Or is that just what happens when your brain finishes developing and starts craving stability (but not more than the LOULOU YSL handbag in smoky burgundy with a chevron-quilted topstitching).
So, this is my how-to guide for actually doing your twenties right. Universe, please manifest every Canva moodboard I’ve ever made, from corporate girlie and Aritzia-coded closets to travel queen, model in LA, entrepreneur, and yes, Forbes magazine one day if we’re feeling generous. This is my manifesto but it’s also permission. The truth is, doing your twenties right is not about perfection but about becoming someone you can come home to.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAG-PwdBtnQ/Vesfj1ZQWTeWtPEYSKQhbQ/edit?utm_content=DAG-PwdBtnQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton – my most recent Canva moodboard!
Step 1: Stop treating your twenties like a deadline
Everyone loves saying “college is the best time of your life,” so apparently, if we are not constantly thriving, tanning, traveling and falling in love under string lights, we’re wasting our youth. And then in the same breath, they tell us to “work hard now so you can relax later,” as if later is a guaranteed reward we can redeem with a receipt. So which is it? Are we meant to live our best lives right now, or are we meant to grind until our frontal lobes combust?
Our twenties are not our “one chance” to get everything right. They’re the decade where we’re allowed to be undecided, messy, curious, experimental and still brilliant. Here’s what nobody tells us: the reason this decade feels so stressful is that we’re building taste and discernment, forming new friendships, making decisions that could alter our lives and learning what we actually want. There is more going on biologically and psychologically than we realize. From what we tolerate to what we refuse or finally believe we deserve, we’re basically becoming full people in real time. So yes, take things seriously and work hard but don’t turn your twenties into a punishment.
How to actually balance “building your future” with “enjoying your life.”
I’m no “Eat Pray Love” guru, but I don’t buy the cultural script that happiness is something we deserve only after prolonged strain and self-sacrifice. We’ve basically been raised inside a productivity paradigm where simply existing is never enough. There’s always a next rung: study hard so we can get into a good college, grind in college so we can get a good job, work the job so we can get promoted, get promoted so we can earn more, earn more so we can finally relax…except we never really relax, because the goalpost moves again.
Psychologically, it’s the perfect setup for the hedonic treadmill, where every achievement gives us a temporary high and then our brains adjust, normalize it and start craving the next upgrade. Combine that with social comparison, especially online, and suddenly our lives stop being something we experience and start being something we optimize. Our worth becomes contingent on output, titles or milestones and the scariest part is how normal that feels. Our life is literally happening right now in the middle of this chaos. Time is going to pass anyway, so we might as well let it be gorgeous.
Step 2: Choose a life that feels like yours (not just for the aesthetics)
There is a very specific kind of panic that hits in your twenties when you see someone your age on TikTok living in a sunlit apartment with a perfect skincare routine and a boyfriend who apparently cooks and reads poetry unprompted. Meanwhile, you’re eating cereal for dinner and romanticizing a stranger who made eye contact with you at La La Land Cafe.
Our life is not meant to be a performance surface but a place we can actually live inside. Mirror neurons are a special class of brain cells, mainly in the premotor cortex and inferior parietal lobule, that fire not only when we do an action but also when we watch someone else do it. In other words, our brain is built to absorb other people’s choices and cravings like they might be our own. What we think is ambition is sometimes just social contagion.
Which is why I’ve started asking myself one question that changes everything:
Is this goal supportive or performative?
A supportive goal empowers who we truly are and carries us closer to the person we want to be in ten years. It makes us feel expanded, not exhausted. It is the kind of goal we would still want even if nobody watched us achieve it.
A performative goal is usually borrowed. Our brain mistakes someone else’s lifestyle for our destiny, so we start chasing what looks popular or impressive. When our motivation is driven by external validation, it is harder to sustain because it was never truly ours.
Choose the authentic life, not a borrowed one!
Step 3: Make a bucket list, but make it emotionally intelligent
Here’s my twenties bucket list, hopefully filled with some ideas you can borrow. Some of these are glamorous, some oddly specific and some are just wholesome enough to make my heart feel domesticated.
1. Solo travel, at least once
I mean real solo travel. The kind where I eat alone, get lost, figure it out and prove to myself I can handle life in cute shoes.
2. Take one random class for no reason
Pottery, salsa, surfing, photography, Pilates. Something unserious and slightly humbling. Your twenties are for becoming multidimensional.
3. Build a main character morning
Not a 5 a.m. billionaire routine. Just a morning that feels calm and intentional: water, sunlight, movement, a little music and five minutes where my brain is not already panicking.
4. Learn to be alone without being lonely
Solo museum days, solo coffee dates, solo beach sunsets. Not because I’m sad, but because I’m sovereign.
5. Become fluent in money, not afraid of it
A savings system, a budget that feels like freedom, an emergency fund and basic investing knowledge. Financial literacy is hot. Stability is romantic.
6. Be an it girl about health, but sustainably
Do movements that feel inhabited and not punishing. Eat food that feels like nourishment and not negotiation. Most importantly, rest without guilt.
7. Keep friendships sacred
Dinner nights, spontaneous drives, traditions. Romance is beautiful, but friendship is the architecture of your life.
8. Learn to say no without apologizing
No to people who drain me, no to rooms where I shrink, no to self-betrayal.
9. Practice ten seconds of courage everyday
Take ten seconds to do the brave thing before being talked out of it. Build and pratice bravery as if it’s a muscle.
10. Stay Iconic
Be hard to confuse. Say what you mean, mean what you say and do not entertain energy that makes you feel small.
Step 4: Romanticize responsibly
Romanticize your walk to class, your library era, your post-shower skincare, your iced coffee/matcha, your playlists and your sunsets. Make the ordinary feel cinematic because honestly, it helps.
But also romanticize the boring grown-up things, because that’s where the real grown-ups do.
Romanticize:
- sleeping enough
- drinking water
- saving money
- calling your mom
- leaving situations that make you feel small
- choosing friends who feel safe
- taking breaks without guilt
The real flex is consistently nurturing a nervous system that stays regulated, sustained and rewarded. In a culture that glamorizes burnout and multitasking, regulation becomes a form of self-respect. It is the ability to pursue ambition without living in chronic fight-or-flight and treating peace not as laziness but as a skill.
Step 5: Remember that “behind” is usually just a story
The feeling of being “behind” is usually a perception issue. Social media compresses time and collapses context, so everyone looks like they are winning at once. It creates this false sense that adulthood has one correct timeline, one correct aesthetic and one correct sequence of milestones.
What we call “behind” is often just the part of growth that is invisible: the awkward drafts, the unglamorous build phase, the post-puberty puberty phase where nothing looks impressive yet, but delayed gratification is compounding in ways you cannot always see in real time. Growth rarely arrives in sync: we become capable before we feel confident, we endure before we heal and we work long before success becomes visible. Becoming is not a linear path but a spiraled one where we’re allowed to revisit old lessons with new maturity. That does not mean we are failing, but we are evolving with awareness that actually lasts.
Doing your twenties means keeping your heart open and your standards high, treating your friendships like treasure, because community is not optional in this decade. It means learning how to take care of your money, your body and your mind without turning self-improvement into self-punishment. It alos means working hard without postponing your joy, because you do not need to earn a life worth living.
So here is my love letter to you, fellow twenty-something: you are not late or failing. You are not missing some secret instruction manual and you do not need to be ‘fixed’. You are simply in the middle of the most formative decade of your life. Let it be unfinished. Let it be honest. Let it be yours.