Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
Happy New Year. Welcome to 2024.
Welcome to a new year of the podcast.
Thank you for joining me.
Thanks for being here.
I'm currently coming to you from perhaps the most beautiful place in the world.
I'm in Japan, in Osaka, ringing in the new year with my family, my friends, my partner.
Honestly, it felt like such a well -deserved little break after how crazy last year was for me.
We've been eating ramen and fried chicken every day, sleeping in, drinking a lot of beer, playing cards.
I just feel so blessed and I know that sounds so cheesy but I think this time for me has been really appreciating how much I have to be grateful for moving into the new year.
There were some significant life changes over the past 12 months and of course I was just reflecting back on where I was at this time at the beginning of 2023, looking back specifically at my old journal entries from that time and a lot of what I remember is this like distinct fear and anxiety.
I had absolutely no idea what would happen.
I was still working my corporate job, I was struggling after my first year living in Sydney, was just like very heartbroken and I'll be honest, feeling really aimless and lost nothing really seemed to have direction or purpose and I just really couldn't have imagined that this much would have changed,
that my entire life would be completely different a year later.
Coming into 2024, the new year is obviously such a pivotal time for so many of us to reflect on the past, to have that moment of introspection for how far we've come but also perhaps how much further we would like to go.
It feels so significant because it is this tangible new beginning for us even though, you know, time, years, days, there's such an arbitrary concept.
I feel like just the psychological kind of narrative around a new year leaves us with a lot of expectations, a lot of big ambitions and it's really interesting because I think this like concept of a fresh start that a new year brings has been acknowledged by cultures and societies for thousands of years.
The Babylonians actually used to celebrate the new year and make new year's resolutions or like pledges to the gods and like promises that they would fulfill in order to like ensure their crops were successful, that their children were healthy to prevent famine and this has been seen in just like so many
cultures, this like reverence around the beginning of a new chapter in like ancient Rome.
They used to celebrate the god of new beginnings and transitions around this time.
There's this really like rich history here that points to the kind of the universal significance that a new year brings and this is what we're going to discuss today because this is the time of year four reflecting deeply on what we want for our lives.
When we enter into a new year, we need to set our intentions maybe in the form of new year's resolutions but I actually think more powerful is setting our motives, redefining what we see as our purpose.
What can we do in this new year so that this time when we're next year, when we're entering 2025 we can kind of sit back and say I made those changes, I invested in the right people, I invested in myself, in the right path, the right decisions, I took the risks that I needed to take.
For me, each year seems to have a theme.
Last year the theme was very much discovery and this year is the year for taking risks.
It is our year for kind of embracing fear, for embracing the unknown, not being afraid of the future, recognizing that we are in control.
We are going to take accountability for creating our dream life.
I think risk plays such an important role in this realization because as we get older it becomes so much easier to just do what is convenient and easy, just take the path laid out in front of us.
We become a lot less active in our own decision making and I think to be honest we just get used to being comfortable and not needing much else but true growth and true happiness comes when we really push beyond what is comfortable, beyond what feels safe to a place of expansion.
Also I say this a lot but what is easy isn't always what is best.
It's not necessarily going to get us to a fulfilled place I believe so firmly in challenging what you expect your life to be, the kind of blueprint that society imposes on us and just betting on yourself for a little bit, just taking a chance on your dreams, your grand ideas and that's really I think
what the focus of 2024 is going to be for me and I hope it's the focus for you as well.
I want to give you an example of how risk has really kind of changed my life.
For the longest time I was convinced that in order to be happy I really needed to pursue a very secure career and I needed to push myself to move up the corporate ladder that the financial security that that would bring would be fundamental to my peace of mind and my future and last year after months
of anxiety and worry I think I realized that my notions and ideas about what would make me happy were incorrect because I was doing all the things that I thought was going to lead to satisfaction and fulfillment and the sense of security and I was miserable.
I was really miserable and so I took the risk to quit my job to do what really truly made me feel fulfilled and kind of aligned with my reason for being on this planet.
It wasn't without stress in fact it was probably more stressful than when I'd been at my corporate job especially when it came to financial stability and being able to pay my rent and my bills but I think I knew that if I didn't do this if I didn't take the leap each year each month that passed it would just
become harder for me to make that decision and I would regret it.
I would be somewhat haunted by the what if of the decisions that I didn't make so I think there's this conundrum that we all face when we think about creating our dream life when we think about the things that we really want to do.
There is this inherent choice this inherent kind of equation that we need to weigh up.
Do I stay where I am and remain safe and sure of my surroundings but possibly regret my decisions later in life or kind of mourn the life I could have lived or do I choose to be brave?
Do I choose to see what happens?
Maybe I'm rewarded for my risk but if I fail at least I end up back in the same place I was before with the knowledge that I tried.
That is a really common I think mental conundrum that we go through is we have these two paths and risk obviously requires giving up something.
Risk requires maybe giving up a previous dream that you've outgrown giving up those parts of your life that you are comfortable with giving up financial stability giving up friends giving up relationships but there are so many benefits and so many rewards that come from that and I think that there are so many
areas in life that we can choose to take risks.
We can go back to school we can take a year off to go solo traveling we can move to a new city start a new business a side hustle a hobby whatever it may be and we can also choose to take a risk around being more honest with people about how we feel asking people out dating more introducing yourself
to strangers going to things alone initiating difficult conversations.
Obviously this is not a full list of the risks that I consider important but these are the risks that especially in our 20s I think we kind of have a duty to take you are never going to be this free or this inhibited again.
Mistakes are also an inbuilt part of this decade they are in many ways expected from us so people give you a lot more what I would call a pass if you are to make the wrong decision at least you gave it a go.
A lot of people cannot say that, a lot of people live with the mistake of not taking a chance on themselves for their entire lives.
I want to talk about one of my favorite studies of all time here there was this study that examined the power and kind of the psychology of regret and the impact of the decisions that people didn't make on their psyche in the future what they found is that you are more likely to regret a decision that you
didn't make versus one that you did across thousands of people there were so many of them that expressed more regret for the risks that they didn't take compared to the ones that they did actually 24 percent of participants regretted the things that they did do and 76 regretted the things that they
didn't do. So I think this study is important when we consider how we're going to approach risk taking in the new year because it highlights the dangers of inaction and not even just inaction but a denial of your dreams a denial of that urge of what you know deeply is going to make you happy.
It is really such a tragedy to imagine yourself on your deathbed realizing that there is nothing you can do to undo the past but wishing that you have been brave when it counted and I think being brave when it counted is something that we don't always understand or recognize until it's in hindsight.
We often don't realize the opportunities that we have because they are so scary to us until it's too late and I really want to encourage you to be open to what might be coming to you in this new year that you might discredit because it is too scary that you might immediately say no to.
Regardless of this understanding of the benefit of risk even if we appreciate that this could be our future sometimes we experience a lot of cognitive dissonance around the many choices that we need to make in our 20s.
So cognitive dissonance in psychology refers to this kind of mental discomfort experienced when we hold two contradictory beliefs or ideas or values.
I think that really applies to the dreams that we have.
So we might see ourselves in one way as someone who was really motivated by corporate success.
We really want to raise a family, we really want to perhaps pursue a quite traditional life.
That is one belief that you have about yourself.
But another belief is that you want to be a bit of a vagabond, that you are someone who is really independent, really free -spirited, you want to start your own business, you want to travel and you kind of have these two choices right and it feels like in this moment you have to make a decision.
You have to make a decision right now and making a decision requires you to give up on one of those paths.
But you have to think about the timing of your dreams in this moment.
I have this saying that you can be everything that you want to be but you can't be at all at once.
When we think about the things that we want from our lives we have to consider what can be postponed, what actually may be better to hold off on, whereas what is best for you right now?
When would it be the best time to do these things?
I think when it comes to a lot of those adventurous dreams that particularly people in our 20s really harbour, the time to do those things is right now.
It is literally right now.
Most of us do not have children, we do not have mortgages, we have exited our like education pipeline, we've either graduated high school university and it's in those moments of fear and kind of like the question of what am I going to do with my life from here on out?
That we need to be adventuring and discovering and willing to branch out.
It's not to say that you can never do these things once you're past a certain age but simply that you have to be able to make hard calls about what you want now that may mean that you're going to delay some of the other things in your life till later.
Still in those moments I do think fear is our biggest enemy.
The saying always goes, fear is the killer of dreams.
I don't think that has ever been more true than when it comes to dreams that require risk because the essential premise of risk is that the outcome is unknown and it is the fact that the outcome is unknown that makes it so scary but also that makes it so exciting.
Exciting because yeah it could go terribly but also it could go incredibly well.
You have no expectations, you have no idea of what's going to come next and that just leaves so much room for surprises and room for excitement and room for the unexpected.
What I really want to discuss though is some of the things that kind of hold us back.
Some of the fears that keep us in a place of comfort, keep us in a place of stability and how we're going to push back against that anxiety or perhaps that passivity this year.
How we're going to embrace risk in all its forms from small to big in 2024.
So all of that and more after this short break.
I was reading this amazing book a while ago called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.
You might know her, she is the author of that very famous book that came out a few years ago called Eat Pray Love and she also has possibly one of the best TED talks of all time.
It's titled Your Elusive Creative Genius which quite frankly I think about at least once a week.
I watch it always but in her book Big Magic what she really focuses on is the mental barriers that hold us back from realizing our best lives because that's what fear really is.
It's all about what's mental, it's all about our thoughts, it's all about how we interpret a situation rather than what it actually is.
And I think it's this way of thinking, thinking from a place of fear that keeps us buying into this feeling that we are small or not capable of doing what we've dreamed of.
You are afraid of making a mistake, you're afraid that you have no talent, you're afraid that it will take too much time to get to where you want to be but the thing is that that time is going to pass anyways.
Either you did something with it or you didn't.
You're afraid of it not working out perfectly, that's especially the case for perfectionist overachievers, people who have been taught to do things the right way.
You are afraid of disappointing others or yourself, you're afraid that your dreams are embarrassing just because other people don't understand them, you're afraid that you don't have the right background, the right degree, the right education, that so many people have done it before you, that your dreams
aren't special. You're afraid of being too late.
And trust me you are never too late if you are still breathing, you're afraid because something went well in your life once so nothing can possibly go right again.
This is a huge cognitive distortion that a lot of us have as if good things in life are like a, exist in a bank account and we've withdrawn too much of the money and so all the good things in life all of our, I guess our balance of good things has been depleted.
Life doesn't work that way and I think the other thing that we're very afraid of is that you're going to give up things in your current life that you love and you won't be able to get them back.
That in itself is a massive barrier for so many of us, a barrier to pursuing a life that it might actually be better for us, but like we said before, it's going to require sacrifice.
Here is the important thing to remember, fear is not real until it is realized.
The easiest way for a fear to never be realized is to never do anything risky that will allow you to grow.
You can stay in your safe bubble your entire life and never have to encounter any of those worries being realized, but at the end of your life you're going to have to face an even bigger fear.
The one that you let your life pass you by and you never did anything about it.
You never did anything that was going to potentially make you happier and with that comes a lot of bitterness around what could have been, what if my life had been different at this moment and now there's nothing I can do about it.
I worry about that all the time.
It's that perspective of future me that really I think keeps me in a place of taking chances on myself.
Of course I think that doesn't mean that you should take every risk that comes across your plate that you should do anything that you desire or act on every whim.
There are obviously some risks that are more calculated, more practical, more meaningful than others and then there are some that are just plain ridiculous.
You're not going to go and jump out of a plane and you've never done it before just because you're ready to embrace risk.
That is not a smart risk.
That is not one that is practical, but there are some risks that we call bounded.
Bounded risks are amazing.
The idea is that there are these types of risks that have limited downsides but unbounded upsides.
Essentially what that means is that although there are limited costs incurred and yes there will be some costs, time, money, missed opportunities to get this idea off the ground, the benefit is that there is no limit to the benefit.
These are the risks that you should be taking.
I think about them especially in terms of this podcast right or like content creation.
So when I began this podcast obviously I had to invest some time into buying a microphone and setting up a platform and creating episodes, but what I realized now is that there was an unlimited benefit from being able to do something that I loved and engage with people and share and converse with people
who really shared my passions and then there are these risks that are called unbounded.
These are not so great.
These are the risks that we should avoid.
So actually they're pretty terrible because these risks mean that you could lose everything.
So compared to bounded risks in which you can kind of control how much you lose, with unbounded risks there is no limit to what you will have to give up.
And so whilst the payoff might be potentially unlimited, it means that you're probably going to lose something pretty valuable in order to get there.
Jumping out of a plane, that's a big one.
If you've never skydived before, there is no limit to how much you could potentially lose in this situation.
The limit being that you could lose your life and the payoff is actually not really worth it, right?
Another one is like choosing to burn all your bridges at your previous workplace or with all your friends because it's going to leave you unmoored and allow you to make more friends.
That is not a good risk.
That is not a good risk because you lose a lot more than you seek to gain.
So when we think about risks from this perspective, from kind of a cost -benefit analysis kind of perspective, we really need to consider whether the decisions we're going to make are going to lead to a benefit that's going to outweigh the initial costs.
It's important to be a little bit rational when we think about the risks that we want to take in our 20s because although risk equals fear, it does not equal complete abandonment of everything you love and care about.
I really do believe once again that the most amazing growth will come out of the periods of greatest discomfort where we really push ourselves and explore what's out there but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be silly about it or you have to completely abandon all logic.
Taking a risk still requires judgment and yes there are people who are more likely to take risks but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should be doing things that you know aren't going to make you happy or aren't actually aligned just because you want to be free, just because you want to be uninhibited,
just because you want to see what happens.
I think that brings me to another important point.
Risks don't have to be inherently spontaneous to be risky.
They can also be planned.
I think we often think about risks as being these things that are very impulsive that just kind of come to mind and we have to see them through but you can take your time, you can be prepared, you can talk it through with family and friends but the most important thing in that moment is to make sure
that your preparation is not actually just an unconscious form of avoidance.
You are never going to feel fully ready for anything ever.
There will always be some doubt, there will always be something that you cannot account for and often when we over plan and overthink that is really just an unconscious way of us choosing to avoid fear where we get stuck in this like loop of being, of being like if I just know more, if I'm just, if I
have a few more days to prepare a few more months the outcome is going to be better.
That is not always the case.
Things turn out how they're going to turn out regardless of how much planning you put into it.
So I think there are ways that we can become more familiar or comfortable with the idea of risk.
Firstly, think about small risks you can take to prepare yourself for a bigger risk you know is going to come in your future.
So for example if you want to go traveling or move to a new country for a year, two years, take time to visit that country first just to make sure that it's actually what you like.
So you don't get over there and then realize that this was a huge mistake and you want to fly back home immediately.
If you want to quit your job go to a few networking events or start your side hustle whilst you're still working to get a feel for it.
Prepare yourself for risk.
Don't deny yourself of the risk but implement it in your daily life or aspects of it in your daily life before you take the full leap.
With any risk that involves giving up work, giving up opportunities, giving up education, giving up jobs, take a solid look at your finances before you choose to do that.
Like I said before sometimes you do have to be practical even if you're going to be risky.
I did this at the start of last year and it was really important to understand what the next few months of my life were or years even were going to look like so I didn't kind of just step off the deep end and there were suddenly not just so many unknowns but so many ways that I could have been prepared
mentally, financially, emotionally and wasn't.
I also think instead of thinking about risk as these big decisions we need to make that will forever all to our lives, think about them as value realignment.
Risks are a way for you to shift your life back in the direction that aligns with how you see yourself, with what you value from life, with what you want from your future and maybe you've just become really detached from that in the past year or two.
Perhaps you see yourself as a creative someone who has like a real true fire in their belly for producing work that really moves people from expressing their imagination but at the moment you've been really caught up in finishing your business degree that you haven't made time to pursue those parts
of you. Maybe the risk you need to take then is to move out of your comfort zone and pursue this more deeply by carving out time to do it by setting yourself long -term goals in which you're going to realign how you're living your life with how you wish you were living your life.
Maybe you also value being really adventurous and a bit of a nomad but you perhaps felt a little bit stuck post -COVID, you feel the need to work full -time to make money for your dreams.
The risk you need to take is to just get back out there.
Normally when we are like I said over planning over preparing what we're really fearing in those moments is not being unprepared it's being uncomfortable so you kind of have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and kind of say you know fuck it this is actually what I want from my life even if it's
difficult at times even if people don't understand it I'm at this point where I can either choose to deny myself that dream or that vision for my life or I can choose to embrace it.
Risks are really not just a catalyst for change but a catalyst for realigning your true self with your actual self, taking yourself off the path that everyone else wants you to live and back onto the path that you want to live so I want to talk about some of the risks that I'm going to take this year
to finish it off. I really want to solo travel.
I used to be completely terrified of planes and it meant that when everyone else around me was taking those times to do their Europe trips or their Southeast Asia trips I was kind of stuck at home because I was too scared to embark on this journey mainly just like the first 14 hours of the journey on the plane
so I think that I regret not having those experiences that a lot of my friends have been able to have so I really want to solo travel this year.
I really want to get into a position where I can live alone and force myself to make that decision when the time comes rather than just reverting to living with friends or living with a partner.
I think that I really want that space to know myself even though I'm scared of being lonely and I really want to set myself a really big athletic goal.
That might not sound like a risk for a lot of people but I think my fear has always been of failing or embarrassing myself of not meeting people's expectations for what someone who participates in that these activities looks like not being fit enough to do it or to fit in and that's really kept me and held me
back from participating in activities that I think I otherwise would have really loved and would have made a lot of friends from.
That's what I want to do this year.
I want to challenge myself to not be constantly worrying about what other people think about me and my behaviors and my actions and just do it anyways.
One final reminder before we wrap up this episode.
You have a responsibility to yourself to actually just do things, to make decisions that might leave you feeling temporarily a little bit out of place but will significantly change your life, will set you on a new course.
No one is going to come and suddenly make your life amazing for you.
You are the only one that can do that and maybe not everyone will understand your motivations.
Maybe you don't even know what risk would look like for you in this year.
It doesn't matter though because in this life you can choose to be comfortable or you can choose to grow.
I know I've said it so many times throughout this but I do think that we need the reminder that when we buy into fear we also buy into dissatisfaction and we buy into regret and that's not something that I think we want to live with.
If you're not quite sure what it means to you to take a risk, what you would take a risk towards, leave yourself open to opportunity.
When I say leave yourself open to opportunity, what that really means is that be prepared to say yes to things in the moment.
Be prepared to just be open to the idea that your expectations for what you wanted your life to look like might change and might not be the same.
Also put yourself in situations where you can be challenged.
Go and try new things.
Interact with new types of people.
Look for new jobs that you might be interested in even if you're not even going to apply for them.
Watch travel blogs of people doing really cool things.
Think about the things that you loved maybe in childhood, the dreams you had in childhood that you've kind of neglected, that you've forgotten about.
It's a really good way to I think really tune into what you want from your life that you've maybe neglected.
So I want to say officially welcome to your year for taking risks in whatever capacity you choose to do that.
Welcome. I'm so excited to hear from you about what are the risks you are going to take in 2024.
What are the things that you are going to realize or at least just explore this year?
How are you going to push past your fear and your anxiety to maybe discover something about yourself that you never knew?
I'm really excited to see what that means.
Not just for me but for all of you my lovely listeners.
I'm so excited for this year.
It's just crazy how fast time is going.
I'm not going to think about it too much.
I feel like that will lead me into such an existential spiral.
But I also just want to say thank you so much for your support in 2023.
My entire life truly did change and that would not have been possible without you.
Every single one of you who listens every single week, who supports me in silent ways, who shares episodes with friends, it's just mind -blowing that I have this community and every day I'm just so grateful for it.
I'm so grateful for it.
I really don't have the words so I guess I'll just say one more time thank you so much and hopefully I will see more of you this year.
I will see more of you in 2024.
If you enjoyed this episode please feel free to leave a five -star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now, share it with a friend if this is what they need to hear.
Make sure you're following for all of our new episodes this year and we will be back next week with another episode.
Happy new year. This year I've been really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so I decided to commit to dry January to really kickstart 2025 and just test myself.
Heineken 00 is the perfect companion for dry January because you feel like you're still participating when you're out for dinner with friends, out for drinks, whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals.
I'm a big beer fan so I also love the taste of Heineken 00 plus being alcohol -free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls.
Heineken 00 is available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery at heineken .com.
You must be 21 plus to purchase.
Enjoy Heineken responsibly and good luck with dry January.
