Everything I regret about my 20s

this is my painting of venus the greek goddess of beauty the myth goes that she was born from a seashell in the scene the daughter of zeus and quite importantly in fully adult form so she symbolizes a woman who was always mature and who never had to grow up now unfortunately this was definitely not the case for me my twenties have been a period of huge change and discovery to the point that i would hardly recognize the girl that i was two three or god forbid five years ago and although elizabeth would say that this is a good thing because he says that if you are not completely embarrassed by the person that you were 12 months ago then you haven't done enough growing which basically means that i must be the most overgrown adult ever if we are measuring this by the amount of cringe or embarrassment for ourselves as i'm still on this journey of self-growth and discovery and changing my mind about things i thought let's chat about it all together here with you as a family because in my 20s i've completely changed my mind about life on friendships and relationships about money about growth about self-improvement and all of these things so i thought let's break down the main things that i've completely shifted my mindset about let's go now the first thing i've completely changed my mind about is that you always need to be helpful or valuable to people i don't know if this is because i'm the oldest daughter and i've always been in a role of kind of trying to help other people but i've definitely internalized throughout my whole life this view of your self-worth or your worth is measured by how helpful you are like what do i need you for what are you useful for can you do something for me and i definitely internalize this in the way that i became almost a fixer and i only recognized this very recently where i thought that unconsciously every time that i would meet someone or every time that i would care about someone the way that i showed my love or affection or attention is through doing things and helping people as soon as i meet someone and i like them my mind subconsciously goes to oh my god what do they need help with and i'll just ask them oh what are you working on and then i'll try to kind of do some work with them or do some work for them or just like send them a link to something that might be helpful and this is definitely the role that i took in all of my friendships and relationships so far in my life in the last two years i've met a few people in my life with whom this just didn't work like they would just deflect my attempts to help them because they didn't want it and this might be very obvious to those of you who are quite healthy in this regard but to me it was the first time in my life that someone said that they liked to be around me as opposed to i was helping them for something and it was it completely blew my mind and i think since then i've kind of realized how concerning my behavior has been this has been the thing that kind of uncovered this whole fact that my relationships with people are completely built around how helpful i can be for them and my self-worth is so tied to how helpful or valuable i am as a member of society or as a person in a friendship or relationship and this is really concerning i think that self-esteem can fluctuate because sometimes you just don't feel good about yourself and that's fine but self-worth should not fluctuate and my self-worth fluctuates so much around how helpful i am for other people so this is something that i've really changed my mind on which is the fact that human beings have inherent value just by existing they don't need to do things i don't need to do things to become valuable i don't need to do things to become likable i'm fine just the way i am and anything else is a cherry on top i hope this was basically obvious to the rest of you but if it's not i wish someone would have told this to me years and years ago that it's fine people can just like you for you rather than what you give them and what you bring them and this doesn't always need to be kind of an exchange of value you have inherent value by yourself that should never change the second thing that i've completely changed my mind about is the fact that you need a very clear and defined passion in life in order to be successful when i was younger and i would see interviews or read biographies of top athletes or singers or musicians or businessmen or anything like this they would always say that i always knew what i wanted to do from a very young age it was crystal clear to me that this was my path in life and i took it so i kind of internalized the view that in order to be successful you need to know what you want and if you don't know this then you will obviously never be successful because if you're just aiming for nothing you will get nowhere and this really concerned me because i had no clear passion in life i liked so many completely different things equally and it really really stressed me out when i thought oh my god i'm never going to be successful because i just don't know what i want and i'm completely hopeless and why do i not have this one strong calling and this one strong passion and i genuinely would sit down and write and think so much around figuring do i like this thing slightly a bit more could i do this for the rest of my life is this my calling and i just never found it and i've come to the point in my life where i realized that this is just not true and yes there are some fields where you cannot get by without extreme amounts of dedication i can't suddenly decide that i want to be an olympic athlete for next year and apply for that that just doesn't happen but with most other things in life you don't need to have these levels of dedication and sometimes things are not crystal clear and you don't need to have a single linear path in life this is especially true when it comes to my career and i often think that oh my god should i go for this or this i like these two things equally what must i do and it seems to be such a tragedy in my mind i've come to the point of realizing that my life doesn't need to have a single career but my life is my career and i can change i can shift i can grow i can switch around and it doesn't need to be set in stone so there's no chance i'm going to be one of these super successful people but also i don't want to anymore and i think that's just like a childless dream that had a very long time ago and i don't actually need this quote i could success that these people have had okay the next thing is a very recent one that i've changed my mind about and that is that being indecisive is a bad thing i am famous for being extremely indecisive as a person and switching my mind from one extreme to the other extreme super super fast and i call myself a passionate mind changer which basically means i strongly feel one thing and i'm like yes this is amazing we're going to do this and then i let go of that and go for the whole other extreme i go oh no this other thing is great and i'm going to do this and i just flip between these so so fast it's been this way since the very start with big picture things for example oh i want to live in this country no i want to live in this country i want to be a pure city girl girl no i want to live in a cottage in the woods by myself oh i want to be an artist no i want to be a doctor i want to be a scientist no i don't want to have absolutely never be in the lab so i really really shift between these things this is why i call my newsletter of strong opinions loosely held too because i genuinely feel so passionate and i'm convinced in my mind that i'm going to do one thing before my mind completely changes and this has always been pointed out to be problematic because i'm not only indecisive with big picture things i'm very indecisive with small things like i hate picking what to eat where to live what to do what to wear i just don't like making choices in general and this has always been seen as a negative thing and i get it when other people are involved it can be really really bad to completely change your mind about things so i've kind of got to the point where if other people are involved and i've said i'm going to do one thing i just end up doing it because i don't want to switch around with others but when it comes to myself it's quite dangerous i still do the thing of oh no i'm going to go to medical school i'm not going to go to medical school i'm going to take a gap year i'm not going to take a gap year so i often do this mind switching thing and i used to think that this was a bad thing and i used to try to do exercises to kind of train myself to be more decisive and kind of force myself to make more decisions in general but i think i've come to the point of realizing it's actually a superpower to be indecisive because what that has led to is me often making very opposite choices means that i have lived life in two extremes very very often and i've had to be okay with both of them and i think this has led to me kind of being a lot more calmer as a person and going well you know i don't really care what happens and i think i genuinely feel this way very often with things where no matter what happens in the end i'm like oh whatever it's fine and although this can be quite frustrating if you're the sort of person who says oh yeah you know whatever goes but i genuinely feel that way that whatever goes and i feel like i have a lot less resistance to what happens to me in life and very often i don't have control of things anyway so what is the point of trying to make these big picture decisions because i generally think it's a good thing to be able to be genuinely passive about things that happen to you and kind of go with the flow and feel that it's fine i'm happy either way so i think this has contributed to my happiness exercising long-term non-decision making has contributed towards my happiness so it's a bit of a controversial one i would love to know your opinions on this but i genuinely feel this way at the moment that it's good to kind of be okay with anything so the next thing that i've changed my mind on is that saving money is a good thing now of course to some extent you need to have some money saved in order to be safe and i genuinely do do this and i have this still but i feel like i took this way too far in the beginning when i was a medical student i used to work part-time quite a lot and my salary was like nine pounds per hour so it was quite low and if you work during university you know what i mean when you are kind of putting your money into buckets and being like okay this is my rent this is my food and this is my transport and oh my god i have no money left and these kind of calculations but when i was a medic i would still save so much money and what what i mean so much money it wasn't genuinely a lot like in the end of the year i would have a thousand pounds saved and that felt like so much to me and it felt so good but in order to do this i was skipping out on so many experiences i wasn't going out with my friends i wasn't eating out almost ever i wasn't doing anything and i would just save all the little money i had in a pot because i felt like it was a good thing to save the money i don't think this is a good idea i think beyond some basic level of okay if i get fired today or if i'm unwell or if i can't work for a while i have some money saved beyond that i don't think it's valuable saving during the time that i was in university because 20 or 30 pounds as a university student is about four or more hours of work and it translates to a very good night out almost but as saving this money for the future version of myself who is potentially earning this money in an hour or less and it doesn't contribute that much joy to my life this money is depreciating in value very very fast and it saved for a future me who will not appreciate it anywhere near what i would have at the time so i think at the time i wish i would have saved just a little bit of money to be safe and then beyond that i would have kind of had so much more experiences with the money rather than saving it because very very soon i can save those 1 000 pounds a lot sooner in the future when i'm actually earning a salary than i would be saving them when i was in university so with some caveats i think saving money as a very young adult is a horrible idea and that money should rather be spent on experiences with having some financial safety of course the next thing i've completely changed my mind on is that i can solve all my problems i'm very much a problem solver i like to love to i love to create lists and to write everything down that i need to do and then to solve all of these issues and kind of i get so much pleasure out of fixing things even for myself however i feel like this 99 of the time is a complete waste of time the only thing that is guaranteed is that more problems will arise and by being a problem solver i genuinely feel that subconsciously i was creating issues and self-sabotaging to create problems for me to fix so i could feel good i was associating so much pleasure with solving issues rather than just enjoying the moments and i don't think i was even capable in the past of enjoying the moment in any shape or form i would only get pleasure from solving things fixing things or anticipating the solving of things in the future so i was so much future focused problem-solving focused rather than just sitting down with myself and feeling oh things are okay i almost never was able to do this and i genuinely think that the anticipation of pleasure is so so toxic and so pointless if i think i'm going to be happy once i graduate and i'm a doctor that is not true because i'm going to have a million more new problems at the time and that doesn't mean i can't be happy then just as it doesn't mean i can't be happy now so i genuinely think that everything will be okay when you are okay with everything and this is just a mindset issue i have really really changed my mind into thinking if something doesn't genuinely need solving because it's a blockage in my life or because it affects other people i should just completely ignore this and move on and i've become so much better at kind of living in the moment and appreciating what i have rather than thinking oh this needs to be fixed that needs to be changed this needs to be changed this is not perfect this is not okay i still struggle with this a lot but i'm a lot better than i was in the past the only exception here is emotional issues this i feel completely differently about because i think that in your 20s this is a great time to kind of realize how am i overreacting to things how am i not okay how have i been like shaped wrong or formed wrong or how am i dysfunctional in my life and i feel that we have a hundred percent responsibility at this time to work on these things this i'm completely brutal about i will every time i realize that i overreact to something or that i'm potentially being not nice to other people or that i have instincts to not be nice to other people or that i unintentionally do bad things i go what is happening there can we just solve this and there's so many resources to do this in your twenties i genuinely feel that you really really have the time and space and the intellectual capacity to kind of reflect on yourself and fix yourself because there's no excuse to not do this there are books there are free youtube videos there's therapy if you can't afford it there's so many things that you can do to kind of solve your issues and to uncover your issues at this time that will make you a much more functional adult this is so important especially if like me you really want to be a parent in the future i think understanding as much as you can about yourself and about how you were shaped will definitely make you i think a much better parent so this is something that i'm really working on in my 20s so emotional issues are the only thing that i will definitely try to fix as much as i can or other issues i really just kind of ignore them and i try to be happy in the moment the last thing i've changed my mind on is that resilience is a virtue this has been so internalized for me because when i was younger i was described this way everyone would be like elizabeth is such a strong girl i'm so proud of you for being so strong you stick through things so much you don't complain horrible horrible horrible stuff resilience is not a virtue yes if you are a parent or if you are older or if you are in kind of extreme circumstances being able to stick through things especially for the benefit of multiple other people can be a good thing but making it your personality that you can stick through pain is such a toxic thing and i definitely definitely had this i think it kind of ties into the problem-solving thing where i would genuinely seek difficult or toxic environments for me to sit in for me to get self-worth and to go like i'm so proud of myself for sticking through this and not complaining awful awful awful there is no pride in this i genuinely now feel that i am proud where i can go i don't need to deal with this and just leave a situation this is so much better and i feel that more people should tell each other it's fine it's fine to be a quitter if something is not healthy for you and it's not contributing to anyone else's happiness just leave absolutely leave there's no problem if you can't afford to leave your house leave your job leave your career i just wish someone would have told me this that you can just go you know you'll be fine like you can none of these things are necessary and of course there's an extent to which you can't just like flick and just go wherever you want and you need to be able to accept the situation that you're in but if you sit on the extreme that i sat of going that oh no everything is fine i will just stick through this and i'm such a strong person for doing this that's completely crazy you can cut people out you can leave situations i wish someone would have told this to me a lot earlier because internalizing the view of being equipped for being such a bad thing and kind of taking it as a personal insult everything that doesn't work out is my fault why did you not fix this friendship why did you not fix this relationship why did you not fix this job sometimes things are not worth fixing and you can just drop and leave and move on with your life so if you sit on the extreme of identifying with being a strong person maybe you need to hear this also if you're on the other extreme this is not advice for you maybe you need some kind of um situations longer but yeah i generally think that extreme resilience is not a virtue and it's not necessary there's various different books that have helped me on this journey of self-discovery i'm actually going to link the short form but this isn't video is not sponsored but i'm going to link the short form kind of summaries of these books if you want to have a quick view of them later but yeah otherwise thank you so much for spending this time with me i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day because yourself and others and don't believe everything you think thanks bye

Channel: Elizabeth Filips

Views: 821,606

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Id: DV3x9Zu4PkA

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2022