Realize that the
highs and lows of
your 20s don’t have
you running
around in pointless
circles.
Live Life in
upward spiraLs.
Sometimes it may feel like you are
making the same missteps again
and again, starting and stopping
without direction, never really
learning any lessons.
Realize that the highs and lows
of your 20s don’t have you run-
ning around in pointless circles.
Your life isn’t just a two-dimen-
sional thing—with every cycle you
weather, every relationship you go
into, every job you start and quit,
you move upward, little by little.
You’ve learned a lot already, yes,
but not enough that you don’t have
the capacity to accumulate more,
change more, and gain more.expand YOur
perspective.
As you move into your 20s, you are
wont to believe that you are the
center of the universe. It may seem
like everything revolves around
you. The most important part about
this time of your life is to listen, and
then, to live beyond your bubble.
To realize that the upward spiral
you live your life in expands wider
too—that the breadth of your reach
expands as you live more authenti-
cally, as you live more humbly, as
you live more bravely.
You define the success and the
pitfalls of your 20s through the
mistakes you make and the suc-
cesses that come after. Take heed
of the voices that you sometimes
feel drown out your own. They’re
only there to help because ulti-
mately, the decisions you make
are yours alone.
And though you will probably
fight against it, you are blame-
less in your 20s. And that’s a good
thing. Because it teaches you to
start from scratch, again and
again. It teaches you to be grateful
for the benefit of time. It teaches
you to define who you are again
and again, until you realize that the
world is big enough to accommo-
date all the versions of you.MAY 2017 • Cosmopolitan 69