 When you're in your 20s, you think you have a lot of time. And so very often, people waste time, procrastinate, and don't go after the things they really want in life because they figure, I'll do it later. But if you're thinking that way, you are dead wrong and you're gonna regret it later in your life. In this video, I thought I would share five key revelations that I wish I had at 20 that probably would have saved me five or 10 years of effort towards my goals. What's up guys, Alex Hein here over at Modern Health Monk, author of the book, Master of the Day. So before we jump in, there's two very important links right below this video. The link first is for a free journaling exercise, which can help you figure out, number one, what you actually want from your life and figure out how to design your dream life going forward. So you'll also get a weekly email on how to use journaling really to figure out what you want from life and to make it happen. So check it out. Realization number one, you don't have a lot of time. Now, here's the kicker. When you're in your 20s, you think that I can just date casually. I can just get bullshit jobs. I can not save money. I can eat whatever. There's gonna be time to do it later. And what it is doesn't really matter, right? It could be I'm gonna eat healthy when I get into my 30s or if I have a problem. I'm gonna start saving money once I need to save money. I'm gonna get a job that I really like once I need a job I really like or I'm gonna take a job for money once I actually start needing money. The reality is that all of these are based on the faulty premise that you have a lot of time. And sure, relatively speaking, in your 20s, you have more time than in your 30s or your 40s or your 50s. But the problem is that people who are not deliberately thinking about the life they want, who they really wanna date and be around, what income they wanna earn or what job they wanna do or how much money they need, what they want from life, the problem is when you reach 30, you don't magically inherit these. You don't download them from the universe or from Jesus or Muhammad. That's the irony. You think that one day you're just gonna wake up and know the answers. And while that may be true for some things in life, it very often is not. So what happens? After 10 years, you're now 10 years older and you don't have any more clarity on the kind of people that you're compatible with in dating, what job you wanna do, or what you really want from life. And now you're starting to feel the time crunch. Realization number two is that deliberate living is the path out of mediocrity. Look, I don't know anyone in their 20s who says they want to live the average life. I don't know anyone who wants to do like a boring finance job and make 70K, have the husband or wife and the 2.5 kids and make it white fence in the Australian Shepherd. And that's gonna be like their ultimate life vision. That's gonna be the dream that excites them the most. I just don't know anyone who really says that. But the problem is that the reason people wake up at 25 or 30 or 40 or 50, and they are not happy, they're not where they wanna be is because they have not really thought about what they wanted. And if they have, they are not deliberately living. Meaning they are not taking daily actions and steps in alignment with what they want. And so they say, oh, I wanna be a millionaire entrepreneur, yet they haven't even dedicated one hour a day in the last week to becoming an entrepreneur or to building that venture or enterprise or to becoming a YouTuber and uploading their videos. There's a complete incongruency between what we say we want and what we do. And that's most of us. But the path out of mediocrity, the path towards who you really wanna be and what life you want is, if I say I wanna travel the world, then I better be saving money every single day to travel the world. And if I say I wanna be a doctor, then I better be studying for medical school or in medical school. And if I say I wanna be an artist, I better be freaking painting or taking pictures every day or trying to sell them. So most people regret their lives because they're not living their lives. They're just on autopilot. The third realization I wish I knew was that you should always take the pay cut in jobs and focus on getting better. So very often kids talk about when I get out of college or grad school, I'm gonna get this job and make that much money. And what they're really optimizing for is financial security, which is fear, not growth. The problem is, let's say you work a finance job at 22 and by 30 you've mostly capped out your salary. Well, you still have 30 working years and if you're someone like me who's restless, you're probably gonna work the rest of your life because you like working and you feel bored if you don't. But the problem is something simple because if you optimize for money now, you're ironically gonna make a lot less as time goes on. But if you optimize for growth, what will result in skills growth, career growth, interests, passions, development, mastery? Ironically, you very often typically start by earning a lot less money but when you look at it in the 10 year window, not the two year window, you end up making a lot, lot, lot more money. So for example, as an entrepreneur, I've been self-employed since like 27. The problem was from 22 to about 33, I made less than every single person I know, right? Literally less than every person. I was living on like 40 grand and I was doing that because I was figuring out what I liked, I was building things I was passionate about and I was acquiring valuable skills. I learned to shoot videos and run a business and do marketing and sales and all this stuff. And that result was within seven years, everyone had way eclipsed me. They all had nice apartments, new cars, they could travel if they wanted to, if they had the days off and I'm over here living on 40 grand like this kind of sucks. But I knew there was a plan and all my friends were probably thinking this guy's an idiot, he makes no money, look how much we make as finance people, whatever. And ironically though, now that I'm in my mid 30s, you can see how it's caught up because number one, I'm a much more excited person going into work every day compared to most people I know who are not. And ironically, getting closer to year, let's say year eight, nine as an entrepreneur, now my income has doubled and my income has tripled and I work less than 40 hours a week and I have unlimited time off. So very often when you optimize for growth, you will have less money in the short run. But even if your only goal was money, you're gonna have way more from year 10 on. My fourth realization is that you should do what you actually want because no one is forcing you to live anyway, right? If you want to see what it's like traveling the world for a year, then go do it. No one's forcing you to get the nine to five job. You may have your parents, you may have your friends, you may have whoever, but they're not forcing you at gunpoint to live a certain way. If you're living the way that they want rather than what you want, then you're letting yourself be a doormat because I know it's tough with family relationships, especially if your parents are immigrants and they came to the US or whatever country to get a better life for you, but no one's forcing you to live your life anyway. You can do effectively whatever you want. And that time period is the most important time period to take risks because there is no risk. If it's business, you lose your money, so what? Move back in with your parents, get a job at Starbucks. If the entrepreneurial dream doesn't work out, there's no risk. You have no kids to support. If traveling the world doesn't work out, are you hated? Are you just run out of money? There's no risk, just go home. For most of the things you want to do, whether it is grad school or not grad school, becoming an artist or an entrepreneur or an actor or musician, you should actually really make it a priority to go after the things that you really want to do because this is one of the least risky time periods in your life to do what you actually want, not what you think you should be doing. And that brings me to point number five, which is that it is literally the best time ever to take any risk because financial risks, who cares? You're not supporting a family or kids. Even if you end up penniless and broke, move back in with one of your siblings or your parents. There's no shame. It doesn't even matter. You can rebuild your life in a couple of years, no sweat. That's hard to do when you're 40 and you have a family. That's hard to do when you're married and you can't just go do whatever, eat, pray, love. That's not easy to do later in your life. So this is the time where you should take the greatest risks to build the most conscious life that you really want, which is doing what you actually actually want to do. So that's why for me when I was 22, I bought a one-way ticket to China. I literally bought a one-way ticket without even knowing when I was gonna stay to Beijing, China, and I stayed there for a little over a year. I worked as a digital nomad. I got a remote job and I just traveled around Taiwan and Philippines and Thailand just for three or four months just to see if I would like being a digital nomad. And that was around that time where I was like, you know what? I'm gonna see why am I happiest. So I live in Europe and I lived in Asia and I lived in New England. That's the time to explore and test and risk and just try things out. Undeniably, that is the most important time to do that. So you should take those risks because there's really no risk of failing. You don't end up anywhere bad. You just end up where you are. And so there really is no risk and that's why you should do every single thing you've always wanted to do because there is no better time. So five realizations that I hope will help you guys in your 20s. That could also be 30s, 40s, 60s, but time to live. Try living the way you've always wanted to live. No one's stopping you, all right? Ponder that. Download the free journaling worksheet below the video and I'll see you guys soon.