There are lifetime advantages to messing up your life in 20’s.
Messing up” depends on a number of factors, predominantly what you think about yourself and what others think about an event.
In the short term, falling short of expectations can be devastating. Ironically, this devastation is important for emotional and mental growth.
However, it is hard to see those “blessings in disguise” not until later in life. Nevertheless, they are better off avoided because, again, they have unpredictable impact.
1. Dropping out of university
The idea that education is useless has become common in the internet era.
It is, however, important to note that whatever one thinks of the system, it might not be so much about what education offers but what one becomes through and because of it.
This applies to a lot of things no matter how “useless” they might appear on the surface. Experience of any kind is the best teacher.
That being said, for those that venture off the beaten path, they are forced to adopt new ways of surving and being resourceful. This promotes diversified talents and skills that last a lifetime.
2. Committing too early
Practice makes perfect. Finding something that one easily dedicates resources towards can be hard.
This is especially true at a time that life is throwing a multitude of options and paths. It can be considered a mistake to choose “quickly”.
However, it is hard to find that pursuing something makes one’s life worse in general. Some part of that pursuit pays off in the long run in whatever format that is beneficial. Wisdom, expertise, personal development.
3. Not committing at all
Variety is the spice of life. In certain amounts at least. Again, it depends on a personality, and for some settling for anything comes slow and surely.
Just like comitting early cannot be calculated to determine how foregone experiences affect the outcome, it is not true that each experience will be beneficial in the long run.
That is a cost of life. What a committed person gets in devotion, non-commital gets in compound knowledge, to whatever degree.
4. Caring what other people think
This is an inescapable hell. An important hell, in some way. Other people inform the way one conducts himself/herself.
Individuality is important for one’s sanity, and it comes slow and painfully for some, fast and catastrophic for others.
It is also true that you care about what a certain group or person thinks rather than entire societies. Whichever the case might be, it dictates how you will positively cooperate and co-exist in an environment.
This informs behaviour, defining boundaries and interpersonal skills that are important later in life.
5. Making money the centre of their lives
Much of what is valuable in the early stages of life is external value. This is not a bad thing. In any case, you cannot teach someone values, they come through experience.
The 20s are a period of establishing oneself. Whatever values you did not get in childhood or adolescence, chances are low they are going to show up magically because someone said so ans so is important.
Establishment requires resources for physical survival which money affords comfortably. This is why there’s so much ‘stepping on each other’ to get ahead at this stage.
Despite the chaos of survival, it is better to struggle for resources at this stage than later, and learning through experience what is valuable and what is best dropped.
