Sometimes I feel like I’m so naive, impressionable, and I don’t know what I’m doing (22f). I basically listen to what everyone tells me what to do and just go with it, so I don’t make mistakes or look bad. For instance everyone tells me since I’m in my 20s I should date around and not want commitment bc I’m a baby. I started doing that and I realized that I’m not happy doing that and I think I want something more. My sister who’s engaged and she’s 24 mind you tells me I’m too young and my mom tells me don’t say I told you so if I fall in love and get hurt. Other people tell me don’t go to law school it will be a waste of time, pursue this instead , don’t do this job , etc. and I just go along with it bc I’m like I’m 22 they probably know more than what I do…how do yall just block out all the noise and do what you want ? I just feel like a kid sometimes and I don’t know what I want in life or what I’m doing
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40yo dude here, this is my take:
Do what you want to do. If you’re not sure, take time and think about it, read about it.
Whatever it is, you’re going to make mistakes. Period. We all did, we all still do.
If you make a fool of yourself, who gives a shit? Chances are, whomever you are around at that time you won’t be in a year, hell, you may never see them again.
Make decisions and learn from mistakes. That’s it. None of us old fucks know what we’re doing either, we just got better at faking like we know.
If you wanna go to Law school, fuckin’ do it. If you wanna join the Peace Corps and travel? Do that.
Alright, my rambling is over.
I didnt know what to do for school, people told me to go to school anyway, I spent three years there and guess what? I still didnt know what I wanted to do. if you just go along with what people say instead of taking the time to think about what you want, you’ll never get anywhere meaningful to you.
When your family nags you with advice, just smile, nod and then you leave and do whatever the heck you want. At some point you have to decide to live for yourself, not what other people expect for you. You can take their advice and think about it, but you’re the ultimate judge of what makes you happy.
Honestly, that’s how my early 20s went. I followed what others told me because I assumed they knew better and then somewhere in my mid 20s I stopped listening and gained the confidence to follow what I want.
I’m also in my early 20s, and I feel that way about a lot of things. What I want, big-picture, is a life like my Mom’s: career, husband, kids, dog, cat, minivan, the whole deal. I want all the craziness and noise of a busy family who love each other and grow up together. But right now, I feel way too young to take on that kind of responsibility. I’ve been living in my own apartment for a few years, and I’ve learned some responsibility and feel like I’m doing an okay job adulting. But I’m nowhere near mature or experienced enough to make a wise choice picking a husband. I’m years away from being able to be a good mother. I’m just not ready for those things yet. I’m still a kid.
I knew what I wanted to do for work really young. My aunt was a developer, and one day I asked her what exactly she did at work, I knew it had to do with computers but I didn’t know what it was. She showed me how to write programs in Python and I was HOOKED. So being a CS major in college was something I’d planned on when I was about nine. And I was a CS major and I got my degree and now I’m a software engineer and I really like it.
But life is way more than your job. When I was getting close to graduation, several of the older women in my family gave me the same advice: don’t get tied down too fast. Live your life and learn who you are. I realized that by the time she was 21, my grandmother was married and had two kids. (Actually, I guess that’s true of the other one too, but she didn’t tell me to go have adventures.) She never got to explore the world and see what she wanted. So I’ve been doing it for her, sort of. I have been to several cities around the USA, and I’ve been to foreign countries, and I’ve tried a lot of things to see what I like and learn about myself. (I got a GoPro and made a video of parasailing and showed both my grandmas. They said it looked exciting but they didn’t want to try it.)
Something one of my uncles told me was to remember that you don’t have to plan out the rest of your entire life. Do what you want to do, make the best decisions with the information you have, and if it turns out that a few years later you want to do something else, you can change your mind about a lot of things. Not having kids, for example, once you have children they exist and that’s a huge deal. But if you don’t like your job, you can get a different job. If you move to a new city and a year later you still don’t like it, you can go somewhere else, or go back to your hometown.
My Dad told me not to be too afraid of making mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes, otherwise you’d never hear of anyone in college changing their major. The idea is that you learn from those mistakes what works for you and what doesn’t, and then you use that information when you make your next decisions. And some of those will be mistakes too, and hopefully with some experience you’ll learn enough to make fewer mistakes, and then you’ll be ready to take on more serious responsibilities.
I started dating my now husband when I was 20 and he was 19. I wasn’t looking for my forever person, but I also wasn’t just dating “for fun.” Real relationships can happen at any age and be valuable even if they’re only meant to last a shorter amount of time.
My priority was my school/career plans, so we took our time to build adult lives individually while dating through college. We complimented one another and ended up growing together rather than apart. I was married at 25, first kid at 29. Now I am 51 and still happily married. But it was kind of luck that my first serious relationship ended up being the long term relationship.
Everyone’s path is different. If it doesn’t feel right to date around, you should look for a good partner for you who aligns with your values and goals at this time. Then, maybe it will become more, or maybe it won’t. You will learn more about yourself and what you ultimately want in a partner.
Explore career options that appeal to you. Maybe try journaling and meditation to give you a chance to shut out the other voices so you can hear your own inner voice (this can be done a variety of different ways).
Sometimes people have great wisdom and you can listen to them to avoid making similar mistakes.
Sometimes people are only thinking about their unique experiences and making broad suggestions based around that.
Some advice will work for some and not for others. You are the only one that can sort out what is what.
For example, A lot of people told me that I should break up with my high school boyfriend and date around so I don’t regret missing out. That is solid advice for alot of people. However, my now-husband and I didn’t need to follow that advice. We never felt like we missed out or resented not dating others. However, my sister would have been absolutely miserable if she had not played the field a little to see what she did and didn’t want in a relationship.
It’s perfectly natural, you don’t have a lot of experience in those areas yet so you are going to feel that way a lot of the time. It’s like when you first learn an instrument, you can feel totally inadequate and you look to your music teacher constantly for guidance. Life can be like that too.
But it’s also important to remember that you have an instinct of your own that you can trust. Take in the advice of others who may have more experience than you, but always choose what you want or think is best for you right now, deep in your being. You’re going to make mistakes, try not to make really big or stupid ones. But it’s a totally normal aspect of life – the worse thing to do is to make mistakes based on opinions of others.
It’s not weird exactly but you’re making really big life decisions based on “other people”? It’s okay to listen to advice or experiences from others but you don’t have to do what anyone else thinks is right. What do YOU want? That’s the main issue here. You need to be responsible for yourself and figure out what you want and then how to do it.
At 22, many people are already done with uni and starting their adult careers. You sound extremely aimless and without direction. This is really an internal problem. The noise from anyone else doesn’t matter when you’re following the path you set out for yourself. You just nod and say uh huh to whatever crap you hear and continue with your plan anyway. It’s easy to not be influenced when you have a goal to begin with
There will never be a shortage of people telling you how to live your life. They will not all agree. Almost all of them are going to be wrong.
In my teens, it was what I should do at school, and what I should study and college, and what college I should go to. Surprise surprise, ten different people would name ten different colleges. There was no way I could make all of them happy, was there? In my 20s, it was what company I should work for, again not agreeing. I was told who I should date, again not agreeing. “You need someone more old-fashioned.” “You need someone who’s an introvert.” “You need someone who’s outgoing.” All of them told to me with 100% confidence. And then people telling me about what my wedding should be like. How to raise my kids.
I eventually settled on saying something like this: “Well, you’ve certainly given me a lot to think about.” That usually made them happy, and what made me happy was not thinking about it.
I’m in my 60s now, and I still get it: what car I should buy. When I should retire. It never ends, ever. And they don’t agree with each other, so there’s no way I do what all of them think is best even if I wanted their advice, which I never did.
That old song is true: you can’t please everyone, so you need to please yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT6bgyimP8g