what I thought my 20s would look like was completely different from what actually happened that decade was the most transformative phase of my life and honestly I made a lot of mistakes big ones and so in this video I wanted to share what they were what I learned from those mistakes and hopefully it can save you from making the same ones the first mistake I made was using money as a yard stick rather than as a tour the idea is that there are really two ways you can use money either as a tool to live
a better life or as a yard stick to measure your success against others for most of my 20s I used money as a yard stick I spent a big chunk of my paycheck on things like a nice car expensive outfits and other things that were loud and performative I was making six figures at the time working in banking buying all these things that were really nice but I felt empty inside like I was living on autopilot and trapped in a cycle of just living for the next paycheck or the next material possession and it wasn't
until I hit rock bottom that I realized I needed to change something and that something started with how I thought about and used money I knew that if I wanted to walk away from the life that I was in and from the job that I hated I needed to build a solid Financial safety net to be able to take any other RIS so I stopped using money to buy things to impress other people and instead saved a huge huge chunk every single month and eventually I had enough of a safety net to quit that job
that I hated and pursue a life that I'd always dreamed of I have a full video right here that goes into the details but essent that was the moment when I truly understood that money is a all and changing your relationship with money isn't easy but when you use that money to build a life that feels fulfilling on your own terms that's the most powerful shift that you can make during that year of focusing on saving and setting up the right systems there were so many creative ways I learned how to save money that didn't
feel like I was constantly penny pinching or feeling restricted so I'm running a completely 5-day savings challenge where I'll teach you some of the best savings strategies that will help you boost your savings by an extra 1K this month the challenge is completely free to join all you have to do is go to Nisha me/ and by the way we ran this challenge in June and over 50,000 people signed up and we had this community where everyone was sharing their best tips and their best hacks so I guarantee you'll learn one new thing that you
can Implement into your life straight away it's completely free to sign up and there is a deadline to join you could head to Nish show.me slave for all of the details number two taking one side in your 20s you're often bombarded with expectations and misconceptions about how you should be living this so-called defining decade on one hand you're told it's all about enjoying life and finding yourself and soaking in every experience and on the other hand hustle culture Creeps in and it tells you that these are the years or the golden window for working relentlessly
grinding while you're free from bigger responsibilities and most people just feel like they need to pick a side looking back at my 20s now I realized that there were at least 5 years or 5year window where I completely lost my balance and I dove head first into the hustle culture I was laser focused on ticking all the boxes getting my qualifications climbing the ladder Landing what I thought was my dream job only by the way to discover that it wasn't my dream after all and I placed this enormous pressure on myself and convinced myself that
I had to have it all figured out by a certain age I was so caught up in chasing the next Milestone that I just lost the concept of of slowing down and enjoying the journey because I just thought that all the happiness I need will come from these achievements and this is what no one tells you when you measure your happiness solely by your achievements you're putting your joy in a box and that box gets smaller and smaller until one day you look back and you wonder where the joy in the journey went so if
I could talk to my youngest self IID say it's okay if it takes you a little longer to get to where you want to be if slowing down lets you enjoy the ride more then it is worth it number three stop caring about what other people think of you this is the thing that stifled my growth the most it's the thing that held me back the most and if I can tell you to take one thing from this entire video it would be this stop caring about what other people think of you because your life
will look completely different when you do I spent way too much time worrying about how I appeared to others and it's why I initially picked a career that everyone around me seemed to be doing and why I didn't start my YouTube channel for so long and why I had to delete all my colleagues from LinkedIn before I posted anything and sure I'd love to tell you that just do what you want because no one is going to care and no one's going to say anything and no one's going to laugh at you but that probably
isn't true they will laugh at you they will make comments they will talk about you it's going to happen but is that enough to stop you from living your life and a quote that really helped me when I was going through this phase is a millionaire won't judge you for starting a business a bodybuilder won't judge you for working out a professional athlete won't judge you for playing a sport but it's always those people who are going nowhere who want to judge you for trying to do something with your life the quicker you can snap
out of caring what they think the happier you'll be trust me on that one mistake number four taking the default path that is handed to you there's a default path that's been set for all of us by Society by our families or even by the education system and this path involves the road map going to school getting a stable job climbing the corporate ladder getting married having kids and deviating away from this steep up path often feels like a really big risk but what we don't really ever consider is the risk of staying on that
path the risk of settling for a job that you don't like settling for a boss that you don't like settling for a relationship you're not happy in we never really consider that risk and a really good way to know if you're making a mistake by sticking to that default path is by asking yourself if you weren't in your existing position so if you didn't have the job that you have right now if you didn't have the boss that you have right now if you weren't in the relationship that you're in right now would you go
out of your way to actively choose those things right now so for instance would you actively apply for the job that you're in if the answer is no then you need to change something cuz if you don't you're very likely going to feel a sense of a missed opportunity or regret later on by the way a lot of this comes with asking the right questions to yourself and one of the most important skills I believe everyone should have is curiosity being a constant learner and a better thinker will help you ask the right questions and
not settle for any deep fault path that you've been put on that's why I'm really excited to introduce today's sponsor which is brilliant brilliant is where you learn by doing with thousands of interactive lessons in math sta analysis programming and AI it's designed to help you build your critical thinking skills through problem solving not memorizing so while you're building real knowledge on specific topics you'll also become a better thinker brilliant recently launched a ton of new data science content which I'm working my way through and all of the content uses real world data to train
you to see Trends and make better informed decisions so whether you're new to data analysis or you're an expert there's a full Suite of content covering everything from data visualization algorithms to regression models and you test your learning using real world scenarios like understanding how to unlock rental value on Airbnb it's a really fun way to learn new skills and you can check out everything all of their content completely for free for a full 30 days over on brilliant.org Nisha and if you do like brilliant and you do like using it then using the same
link you can also to get 20% off of an annual premium subscription and mistake number five stop feeling sorry for yourself there are so many times where I felt like I failed at something or I did fail at something and I thought it was the end of the world and that I wasn't good enough and that nothing else that I try will work and that I should just give up all together and stick to what I know and I just played victim so much and because of this it took me so long to bounce back
every time something didn't work out because I'd just be paralyzed by this fear of making the wrong choice or failing again but actually the best time to fail it's in your 20s and your 30s because the fall really isn't that hard and you can pick yourself up again really quickly I Now fail at something pretty much on a weekly basis and it makes me happy because I know that I'm trying I'm constantly trying to do something new I'm trying to get outside of my comfort zone and the moment where I don't feel like I'm failing
I know that that fire in my belly has died out and that's when the fun stops we all fail and it's okay as part of the process you have to fail to get to the top sometimes so this is the video that I wish someone gave to me when I entered into my 20s if you like this video you probably would like this video right here on 30 things I learned by 30 thank you so much for watching don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you there
