Episode 47_ Moments navigating your early 20’s

Hello my beautiful people, welcome back to the Moments Podcast. I was going to record this episode with Lisette and we were going to talk about college, but then I remembered that last week I promised you I was going to read you the little poem that I wrote. And it's not really a poem, like I'm not a writer, so don't come for me, but I had just been sitting and obviously going through my rut, you guys know I've been talking about it for like a month now, and I just started writing. And when I write, a lot more things come to my mind than when I just think or when I talk. I don't know how to explain it, but I've tried to explain it to you guys before. And I think I'm just going to title this episode something about learning to navigate your 20s, your early 20s specifically, because I don't have much experience in, you know, the later 20s, because I am only 21. I keep forgetting I'm not 22 yet. I think it's because Lisette just turned 22, so part of me feels like I did too. I don't know. I think that's just what happens when you have another half. And yeah, I'm recording this episode kind of late at night, it's like 9.30. I don't really know what's going to come to my mind, I didn't make an outline. I'm just going to think, and I'm going to talk to you with everything that I learned in my early 20s for the year not...yeah. I've been 20 for a year and almost two years. I don't need to get specific. Anyways, I'll start by reading you the poem. And if you resonate with it, or you relate to it, you're not alone. And it's not just me and you either, there's a lot of people that feel this way. Alright, here goes nothing. I feel weird. I haven't added to my gratitude list in weeks. It just hasn't crossed my mind. What used to be the last thing I did before I closed my eyes at night hasn't been touched. There's so much to be grateful for. I think about my blessings every day. But how is it that I get so caught up in life that I don't even take a moment to reflect? How come at the end of each and every day I'm drained? Not drained by anything specific, but simply by the pressure of life. I've been feeling this sort of dissociation lately. I question who I am, I question what I'm doing, and I question my path. I want to do it all, yet I want to be still. I want to travel the world, yet when I do, all I crave is peace and stillness in one place. I want to move my body. I want to sweat. I want to feel good. Yet the thought of those things drain me before I've even done them. I want to always be productive, yet when I try, I always feel I've failed. I want to eat clean, put good into my body, yet I eat until I can no longer breathe and then do it all over again a moment later. I want to make my dreams my reality, yet when I do, I feel I've accomplished nothing. I want to put my everything into my work, yet I get overwhelmed by the thought of opening my camera roll. I want to love myself at all stages, yet I'm repulsed by so many. I want to celebrate my own successes, yet I feel like everyone is already doing more. It's a constant battle. A battle in my mind, a battle in my heart, and a battle in my body. What do I really want? What do I really need? Why do I feel this way? These are the questions I ask myself, yet when I do, the conflict grows. I'm in a weird stage of life, a stage where some of my friends are married, some of them with big grown-up jobs, some of them lying in bed all day, and some in their third year of college. People warned me about the early 20s. They told me it was the hardest time of their lives. They told me it was the best time of their lives. They told me to find a job and save my money. They told me this is when I see the world before I settle down in one spot for the rest of my life. They told me this is when I meet the person I'll marry, and they told me to stay single and find myself. Which do I believe? How do I know who to become? Why does no one else feel these things? Does everyone else just feel okay, or are we all struggling a little bit? I think the key is to keep following my heart, to sit with myself and ask myself what I truly love. What can I pour all of my energy into without emptying my own glass? What brings me joy in each day, and how can I do more of that? I simply need to remind myself that we're all on our own paths, and they're all meant to look a little bit different, and that's the most beautiful part. The key is to commit to what I love, and take it one day at a time with slowness and gratitude. So yeah, that's what I wrote. It was pretty deep, and in the moment it felt pretty deep for me to write it to. I had just been sitting with all these emotions for so long, and then they finally felt ready to come to the surface. So I just started typing. And that's something that I've noticed with myself, is that sometimes it takes me a really long time to process my emotions, and I won't be ready to write about what I'm feeling until a certain point. And I have come to the realization that when that point happens for me, when I am finally ready to dump everything that I've been feeling, is when my mind and my body are ready to take the shift, to take the next step, to move to the next season. And it's really cool. And I don't know if anybody else notices that within themselves too, but after I wrote that is when I decided to take my shift, and to allow myself to move past that phase of life where I was questioning everything. And obviously that's been easier said than done. It's a lot harder to talk that talk, or it's been a lot harder to walk that walk, a lot easier to talk that talk, but I do feel that I've been making progress. And I just kind of want to talk through that poem a little bit, because I know so many parts resonated with so many of us, and I don't know. It's just hard. It's hard being so young, and feeling like you need to have it all figured out, and we all kind of feel like we need to have it all figured out. But that's something that we all should work on letting go of at the same time. We are young. We are supposed to have fun. Life is, you know, I'm constantly saying that life is short, but the reality is that we have our whole lives to figure out what we want to do. Obviously there's like, you know, issues, like, you know, we need to make money, and we need to sustain ourselves, all those sorts of things, but for the most part, it's okay to spend time figuring yourself out. It doesn't have to be so rushed. And I was talking to my friend, I say my friend like you guys don't know her, I was talking to Meredith, and we were just kind of talking about how sometimes these, we called them existential crises, midlife crises, whatever you want to call them, they just happen, and I think that they happen because we're in a time period, in a point in the world where everything is posted online. You know, we follow all of our friends online, we follow all of our, you know, random people online, think about TikTok, think about your explore page on Instagram, your Pinterest. We follow all these random people, and we constantly are seeing what other people are doing with their lives, and obviously, as humans, we're going to compare, and I constantly get in my head with this feeling that I wish I could be in so many places at once. I wish I could clone myself 10 million times, and be on the coast of Italy, and also be at a football game at my old college, and also be at dinner with my family, and also be at the movie theater with my best friend, or be bowling, or be in Australia. There's a lot of places I want to be. There's a lot of times in my life that I wish I could go back to as well, but I'll get into, I'll dive deeper into that later, let's take one thing at a time here. I want to be all these things at once, and when I'm feeling that way, I'm even more driven to compare myself, if that makes any sense, when I'm already feeling like I don't want to be in one place, I want to be in 10 places, when I see where other people are, I just tear myself apart that I can't be all of those places at once. I'm getting a little bit rambly with that part, but I just want to be someone who can remind you that you are right where you're supposed to be, and I know I give you this little spiel every couple episodes, if not every episode, but we all need to hear it, and we all need to be constantly reminded of it. Right where you are right now is right where you're supposed to be, and I also go through this battle of is our path already created for us, or is our path our own to create? I think I've found this place in the middle where I can understand that my path is made for me, but it's still up to me to follow that path, and to do what I love, and to keep chasing my passion, and I think that the one way we stay on our path that's made for us and created for us, and the path that leads us to our purpose, is to continue to do what you love, and to continue to figure out what you're passionate about, and to not change who you are for other people, and to not change who you are to change the way that people perceive you. Going back to me wanting to be ten places at once, I want to be ten places at once to please different people. You know, it's a strange concept. When I want to be the girl at college, it's to please everyone else my age, and to be someone that they love, and then when I want to live in a van and travel the country, it's to please the people who like that. Is this making sense? The 20s are hard. Your early 20s are hard, and they're also really hard to talk about, clearly. I can't keep my head on straight, but I'm doing the best that I can, and I'm just trying to think about that poem, and not simplify it, but dig into it a little bit more, I guess, because through that poem I kind of got my point across, but there's always more, and the part of the poem that really, really gets me is the part where, I don't even know if I can call it a poem, the spiel, the letter, whatever it is, is when I start talking about how people have told us so many different things about being young, and being in your 20s. You know, they tell us to get a job, to save our money, they tell us this is when you spend your money, and you travel the world, because one day you're going to be stuck in the same spot for the rest of your life, and this is when you're supposed to stay single, and to have fun, and to not worry about anyone else, but also this is when you're supposed to find the person that you're going to marry, and plan out your future, those are all really hard things to grasp, especially since they're all so scattered around the spectrum. You know, we can't do all of those things at once, so why are we taught to do all of those things at once, and how do we navigate it, and I think something that I'm beginning to understand, like right now, while I'm recording this, is that we literally just cannot listen to people. We cannot listen to other people, because we are all on our own paths, and we do all have different experiences at different points in our lives, so when one person found their marriage partner, what, what, marriage partner, found their spouse, okay, when one person found the person that they were going to marry, another person was living their best life at 22, and that's why you can't take everyone's opinions and try to live by them, you're supposed to just be where you are, take it one day at a time. I don't know, clearly I'm having a really hard time talking about this, because the whole goal of this episode was to explain to you that, you know, your early 20s don't have to be so hard, but as I try to do that, I contradict myself, and I'm like, wait, they are kind of hard, um, that's the stage I'm at right now, I'm 21, obviously, you know, your early 20s go until you're like 25, but it's a weird phase where I'm at a point where I'm financially independent now, I live on my own, my parents, not that they don't have control over me, but they can't really say no, you know, if I want to go do something or if I want to go somewhere, they're not going to be like, no you can't, you live under our roof and I pay your bills, that's not the case anymore, so obviously they try to lead me in the direction and they try to give me all their support and their advice, but it's still my decision to make my next move, you know, where do I want to go, what do I want to do, and this kind of goes back to that point where I'm like, I want to travel the world, it's what I have always dreamed of, but when I am doing that, when I'm coming home for one day at a time, when I'm traveling for like a month long, all I can think about is just being in one place and finding a routine and getting myself organized and being able to spend my day doing what I want to do, versus, you know, when I'm traveling the world and living my dream, I come home for a day, I can't do anything that I want to do, and I actually notice this, and this is kind of just throwing this in here, I notice that when I spaced myself out more and I gave myself a little bit more time to do things for myself, I became a lot better at keeping up with my friends and keeping up with my family and spending time with my friends and spending time with my family, versus when I string myself out so far and I put way too much on my plate, that's when I start to isolate, and I don't really know where I was going with that, but I figured I'd just share it with you, because, I don't know, maybe you're in the same boat, this is a very strange point in all of our lives, and this is also a very repetitive episode, like I should have put a question box, like what are you struggling with right now in your early 20s, and then taking it from there, but I didn't do that, so I'm just rambling and I'm talking to you and I'm telling you, I'm going to be the person to drill it into your brain that you don't need to listen to other people, obviously you can take what people say, you can evaluate it, you can think about it, and some of the stuff they say might be very valuable, and you might want to hold on to that, and you might want to continue to think about that and to take that, but other people, other people's opinions sometimes have no value, some people just want to see other people hurt, and that's another thing that I've noticed doing what I'm doing. When you take the path less traveled, you're going to get a lot more lash back, and I heard this quote one time, I forget who said it, I forget where I even saw it, but it was something along the lines of, it's always the people who haven't tried it that say it's impossible, and that is one of those that just kind of stuck with me forever, and if you're questioning if you should take a different path in life, if you're questioning whether you should go the risky route, I will always encourage you to do so, I will always say yes, and I've been saying this since I was 13 and decided to go become a yoga teacher, everyone told me I couldn't do it, everyone told me that it was stupid, and that it wasn't going to get me anywhere, and it was dumb, and I was 13 and people told me that, and I did it, I got my certification, and then one of the first articles I was ever in was like the local newspaper, wow, long time ago, I know, and in that newspaper, the news people had interviewed a different yoga teacher at a different yoga studio, asking what their thoughts were on a 13-year-old being a yoga teacher, and she tore me apart, she was like, at 13, you can't understand the power, you just can't understand yoga, and that wrecked me for a little while, honestly, I was like, this is so wrong, and this is so cruel, I just put in all this work to learn all these things, and I finally found something I'm passionate about, and you don't even know me, and you can just say these things, it blew my mind, but ultimately, I think it's one of the things that pushed me further, not that you should ever make it a goal to just prove people wrong, but in that moment, that's what I did, and I continued to just chase the passion, chase the dream, and now here I am with you guys, it always works out, people will always doubt you, when I first told my friends and family that I was gonna move to Hawaii, they were like, no, you're not, to be fair, I do have like this personality, not personality trait, I just have this trait where sometimes I do bail on the things I say I'm gonna do, and I blame that on my type 7 brain, I'm always having new ideas, I'm always brainstorming new things, anyways, I told them I was gonna move there, and they were like, no, you're not, like, that's so dumb, finish college at your college, and then get a job, that's what they told me, that's what every adult told me, and I was like, no, you know what, I'm gonna do something else, I'm gonna figure out something else that works for me, and I did, because I continued to chase my passion, and I continued to work for it, and here I am getting repetitive again about chasing your passion, but you are capable, you are capable, and so many people are going to tell you that you're not, and it's because they don't wanna see you succeed, it's because they're struggling with something on their own that they don't know how to resolve, and subconsciously, they take that out on everyone that they meet, and it's sad, it's sad that there are so many people, not just a few, that are like this, I mean, when I go on TikTok, and I'm scrolling through TikTok, and I see a video that has like, you know, a million likes or something, I open the comments and expect people to be positive and happy for the person that the video's about, and they're not, it's hate, it's always hate, people are always rude, people are ruthless online, because they can say anything behind a screen, and I've dealt with this firsthand, I have had some of the nastiest things said to me that I don't even wanna repeat, that I blocked immediately, that I didn't even screenshot to send to my mom or my best friend, because I didn't want them knowing I was getting DMs like that, at one point, I was getting death threats, because the internet thought that I like, was a homewrecker or something, that wasn't the case, at all, but people love to speak before they know the whole story, and we deal with this a lot in our 20s, and not only with like, random people, or adults, but we deal with this a lot in friendships too, and this is something that I do eventually wanna do a whole episode on, but for now, we're gonna do it in this aspect, in friendships, a lot of them are competitive, a lot of your friends, whether you believe it or not, don't wanna see you succeed, and I'm not sure why this is the case, I think it's just because everything and everyone has found this new side of competitiveness, where they feel like they have to be better to be happy and to be successful, and when we're all at a point where we're figuring our lives out, and we're trying to situate who we are, and who we're becoming, I think a lot of people get really confused, and they get really stressed, and if they're not winning, they feel like they're failing, but the thing is, there really is no winning and losing in life, I think that if you're doing what you love, you're winning, and the only case that you might be losing is if you're, well, a horrible person who wants to do horrible things, with horrible intentions, but other than that, I think if you're grateful, and I think if you follow your passion, and I think if you do what you love, with good intentions, I think that you're winning, I think that you're succeeding, even though I just said there's no winning and losing, there is winning, there's no losing, I think that's what I meant to say, I don't know, it's late, it's not even that late, yeah, in friendships you deal with it a lot, and I have dealt with this so much, and so many times, especially recently, I've just noticed different things about different friendships, and I'm like, well, why does this person make me feel this way when I'm happy, and I really have to evaluate it, I have to take a step back, I have to distance myself from certain situations, and certain people, and sometimes it's the last thing that we want to do, but sometimes space is what heals, and some things are better from a distance, and the love grows fonder when you're apart, that's something I'm learning, that's something that my 20s have definitely taught me, and I don't know if you're in a similar situation, or if you've noticed that, but I do want you to evaluate who you're surrounding yourself with in your early 20s, I mean, at all points in your life, but especially right now, whether you're 16 or you're 25 listening to this, honestly, however old you are, this is something that I think we could all do, is evaluate who you're surrounding yourself with, because the five people you keep closest to you is who you're going to become, therefore, if you're keeping five people who drain you, who don't make you happy, who tear you apart, who are doing bad things, if you keep those people around you, that's who you're going to become, whether you want to or not, things like that are out of your control, and if you keep the people around you who inspire you, who support you, who want to see your dreams come true, who will help you along the way, those are the people that you want in your life, and if you feel like you don't have any of those people in your life, that's okay, because the right people come to you at the right time, and I learned that when I was in Hawaii, this past time, like this spring, I thought I had a great circle, I did have a great circle, I had great best friends, and I thought I had plenty of them, I didn't think I needed more friends or more people, and we randomly met, sorry, I just totally zoned out, we randomly met these people there who quickly became some of my best friends, and some of the most inspiring people in my life, like one of them brought me closer to God, and just always made me laugh, and always made me happy, and always was so supportive of every crazy idea I threw out there, and same thing with the other one, two people that I did not know that I needed in my life, who came into my life at the most perfect time, I didn't ask for it, I didn't search for it, I just stayed true to myself, and those people gravitated to me, and I think that they are one of the biggest gifts that I've ever had, and at other points in my life, I mean, Meredith is another perfect example, again, I was like, I don't need more best friends, and now Meredith is one of my best friends in the whole entire world, like I am so grateful for that human being, and my life would look so different if it weren't for her, and she is one of the few friends that I have who has supported every one of my ventures, and has always lifted me up, and has told me that it's possible even if I shoot her the most craziest idea she's ever heard in her life, and I will always do the same for her, everyone that I keep close to me are people that I believe in, and people whose dreams I want to see come true, so this is where we evaluate again, you have to evaluate with yourself, are you being a good friend, are you being a good person, now, I feel like this episode has just turned into whatever, it's just a spiel, that's what this episode is, evaluate with yourself, are you being someone that you would want to have around, and it's heavy, it's a hard pill to swallow because obviously at first thought, at first glance, on the surface we're all like, yeah, I'm a great friend, obviously I'd want, you know, me as my own friend, but if you really think about it, if you think about what you think about, deepen your mind, are you thinking kind things, are you being a kind person, are you living life without judgment, are you believing in people, are you wanting to see them succeed, because I feel that when you do this, you yourself will succeed a little bit more, and there's this other quote that has always stuck with me, and it's, if you can't clap for others it'll never be your turn, and that one just hits, it hits so hard, and anytime I catch myself for whatever reason, not necessarily doubting someone else, but just living in a mind that I don't want to live in, that's what I tell myself, that's what I go back to, I go, okay Lexi, take a step back, can't we just be proud of other people and be excited for other people, and I talk about this in the poem a little bit, I think the only reason that we do that, the only reason that we doubt other people or we don't want to see them succeed is because we feel we haven't succeeded ourselves, and we don't have enough self love and self appreciation to be proud of where we're at, so we try to like put someone beneath us, if that makes sense, I hope it does, I don't know, just some things on my mind, but moral of the story I guess is that after I wrote that poem, I really was able to release, and I was really able to let go of that, and I really found the piece of myself that I've been missing for a little while, which was just the piece that, or just the, what's the word I'm looking for, I realized that I wasn't in control of my mindset, long story short, and I started to slowly shift things, I started to pull myself out of my own rut by reframing things that I was saying to myself in my head, if I would look in the mirror and be like, ew, you're so gross, you're disgusting, you are lazy and stupid and just a bum, that's what I would tell myself when I looked in the mirror, or when I would sleep in, I would be like, you suck, you're never going to do anything, I was ruthless to myself, and I wondered why I felt so much like ----, obviously I'm going to feel like ---- when I treat myself like ----, that's a lot of ----, dang, you have to treat yourself with kindness and compassion, you have to be good to you to be a good person, and to feel good, and it really is as simple as that, again, like I've talked about the past couple weeks of, you know, talking about my rut, sometimes you can't control it, sometimes you're just going to feel good no matter how hard you try to hype yourself up, but for the most part, when you continue to do that and be kind to you, even when you're struggling, even when you're being a little bit lazier, you're doing a little bit less with your day, you're not as focused on your dreams and goals, if you're still kind to you and you still give yourself grace and patience, you will move out of it quicker, and it won't last you nearly as long, so take that into consideration, take all of this into consideration, I would probably still title this episode something about being in your 20s, but it really was just a ramble, and I'll dive deeper into each of these things at a later date, I just wanted to talk to you, and I just wanted to remind you, again, here I go, that you're right where you're supposed to be, and everything is happening as it's supposed to, and you just need to focus on you, and you need to let go of other people's opinions because they're not relevant, and you have to remember that sometimes people tell you you can't do things just because they don't want to see you succeed, prove them wrong, continue to do what you love, continue to make that life for yourself that you are going to enjoy, no matter what it may be, no matter how often it may change, just keep doing it, because that's what you deserve, and I mean that so wholeheartedly, and so honestly, you're doing just fine, and I'm proud of you, and I know that this is such a hard time in all of our lives, but we're all going to get through it, and we're all going to figure it out, and we're all just going to do a little bit more, where am I going with this, make it a goal to do a little bit less comparing, and a little bit more loving, and a little bit more appreciating, and a little bit more just being a good person, and you'll notice that that will make you feel better. The days that I do good for other people are the days that I feel the best about myself, and I don't know why that is, but it's a good thing, right, like if we're all doing good, you know, this is something that they told me at Mirabal, the chef guy who was teaching me about food also taught me this life lesson, so cool, he said that he likes to help other people because it's like a ripple, it's frick, what did he say, it's like dropping a stone in a river, and when you do good for someone else, it makes a ripple, and then that person will take that good and do the same for someone else, and it leads into this just constant ripple of goodness, that's not how it went at all, I think I just pulled that out of my butthole, but you do get the idea, so that's that on that, be good, do good, feel good, love yourself, trust yourself, be patient with where you're at, and I think those are all of the things on my mind, that's about it, and next week I will be recording the college episode where I'll talk about like, you know, my college experience versus Lisette's college experience because they were so different for both of us, and then obviously just answer any questions that you guys had, and I don't know, just talk about college because it can be hard for a lot of people, it can be easy for other people, again, we're all different, we're all on our own paths, and we're all figuring it out, but it never hurts to hear two different perspectives about the same time period, you know, it's just a good reminder that, I don't know, what am I saying, I'm going to go now, I'm going to end this here, but if you haven't already, I do want to remind you guys to go follow the moments pod on TikTok and on Instagram, I've been getting better at posting on there consistently, and I also am working on making a new website, how fun is that, I also had this idea that the last, I'm going to have pages on the website, obviously a shop page and a podcast update page, and then a home, whatever, I'm going to make a page that is just a mind dump page, so it's just going to be this text box, and I'm going to have a little spiel up there, like dump your mind, dump what you're feeling, and you're going to anonymously write down whatever's on your mind, and it'll send to my podcast email, again, it's anonymous, so you won't have to worry, and I'll take things from there to talk about on the podcast, and not even just that, that's not even the reason I'm making the page, I'm making the page for you to just dump your whole heart into, because sometimes some feelings are so strong and powerful that you don't want to write them down, and you don't want to type them because you don't want them to exist, and you don't want to have to see them again, so I want this to just be a place for you to write what you're feeling, and be able to completely release it because it's gone, you know, I thought it was a cool idea, I thought I'd share it with you, and merch 2 designs, they're coming, they're happening, and I'm really excited about them, and again, great big exciting things for this podcast, and for the future of moments, and for us, you guys are my little family, and my best friends in the whole wide world, and I couldn't do any of it without you, so I love you, and if you haven't, go rate, subscribe, follow, I don't know how all of this works, but I think you can rate the podcast on Spotify, leave a review, you're all angels, I'm grateful for you, and I will talk to you again soon, bye!