Reaching your 30s means surviving three decades handful of uncertainties, so if you’re approaching this age, congratulations! Yet, it may be dawning on you that you are aging, and life will get a bit harder this time around. This is when panic sets in.
If you want to get your life together before your 30th birthday, there are things that you need to figure out. Knowing these things will help you save a few sleepless nights as you get older. Let’s get started!
1. Your best years may be ahead of you
Being young surely comes with a lot of privileges. There are the good old days when we had all the time in the world to do whatever we wanted, having so few responsibilities in our hands. But as we people get a bit older, life hits us hard and makes us realize that those privileges won’t last forever.
Thus, as we approach our 30s, we begin conditioning our minds that our best years are over— that we have to be all serious about enduring everything life throws at us. But this isn’t the case. The truth is, life is yet to offer its best years. You still have a great deal of time to enjoy life. After all, 30 is the new 20, or so they say.
2. What motivates you
Motivation becomes pretty knotty as we age. Back in our younger years, all we need is a compliment or a reward of playtime to boost our desire to accomplish what adults ask us to do. But now that we’re the ‘adults’ who are there to motivate us to do our jam-packed work?
The older we get, the harder it becomes to find motivation because there’s no one to swing a carrot in front of us. This becomes a problem because there’s this misconception that motivation comes from other people when it should’ve come from within in the first place.
3. What do you expect from yourself
You should have an idea of what you are capable of doing by the time you reach your 30s. You should be aware of your potential. However, unless you learn this unless you learn more about yourself.
You need to figure out your limits, endurance capacity, how long you can concentrate, and how fast you can learn something. Without knowing these things, you will be held back, thinking that you are not capable of doing what you actually can.
4. You are the only one responsible
Where you are right now and where you will be in the future is the consequence of your choices and decision. No one is responsible in the place you are right now other than yourself. Nobody decides for yourself unless you allow them, so by the age of 30, you should be aware that you are the very person responsible for everything in your life.
You should never forget that no matter what other people say about your decisions, you are still in control of most factors that impact your life. All things that you have done so far, either good or bad, are all on you.
5. How to educate yourself
Finishing schooling doesn’t mean calling it a day of learning. You need to understand that education never stops. The moment you stop learning is the very time you stop earning. The best investment you can make for yourself is continual education.
The world is constantly changing, so it is necessary to continue discovering new things that aren’t getting taught in school before. Otherwise, you will be left with a decade-old knowledge, having no place in the new industry.
6. Be comfortable in making sacrifices
Accept it or not, you’ll be facing a lot of responsibilities are you get older, and you cannot accommodate all of these at a single time. You’ll need to make a lot of sacrifices. But if you are not fully aware of these sacrifices, you will be able to default to the easiest choices naturally.
Once you are comfortable in making sacrifices, you’ll get to choose and enjoy a ‘little now’ instead of losing ‘a lot later.’ It will be necessary for you to understand what you currently have and recognize what you’ll get in return. If you can’t make sacrifices, you will only end up choosing illusions of an imaginary good life.
7. How to make better mistakes
Failures are inevitable. There eventually would be times you would make bad decisions since it’s impossible to foresee the future and because there isn’t an existing cheat sheet to guide you step by step to succeed in all you do.
The only thing you can do as you age is to make better mistakes. These mistakes are those that will allow you to continue playing the game even if it doesn’t work.
Don’t take the risk of making an irreversible and completely destructing mistake. Don’t bet all your eggs. Leave something for yourself so you can still afford to go with the game.
8. How to take care of others
What do you think would happen if you were the only person left on earth and robots were taking care of everything? Perhaps, you’ll go insane in just a few weeks. Even if people say that you are anti-social or extremely extroverted, everyone needs someone good people around them.
We all need to belong to a group. In fact, it’s human nature to do so. Life’s greatest moments are shared with others. You need to understand how you can be a great friend, great teacher, a great parent, and whatever role you need to play in the future.
9. How to find balance
Balance is one of the ingredients of happiness. If you would notice, the happiest people in the world have a balance of wealth and passion. They have the capability to take good care of themselves while taking care of their loved ones. They have found a way to do what they love while making money out of them.
No matter how focused you are on your career, it is essential to space sometime for things that make your heart race. Don’t neglect to have balance for the sake of money.
Of course, there are times that you’ll have no other choice but to give up some of that balance for a sprint. However, keep in mind not to neglect it entirely unless you want to end up alone and miserable.
10. What makes you unique
All the things that we have experienced are what make us who we are right now. And each and every one of us has different experiences that make us unique since we can never have the same exact experiences at the same time. With this being said, leveraging your unique quantities can be your biggest strength.
Your ability to take full advantage of your quantities is what will determine how well you will do in life. If, until now, you don’t have any idea of what makes you unique, your 20s is the best time to figure it out.
11. How to keep growing
Studies are still getting conducted on whether the brain stops developing at a certain age. But one thing is apparent— some people keep on growing while others quit.
Some people in their 30s and 40s still spend time on growth, learning about new technologies, and digging for ways to improve themselves. These people who keep exploring are more likely to enjoy life until the very end.
