Things I was completely wrong about in my twenties

There is a specific kind of cringe that only hits when you remember something you said with total conviction at 24 years old. Not embarrassed-at-a-party cringe. The deeper kind. The kind where you’re like — who was THAT person and why did anyone let her talk.

I was so sure about so many things. That’s the part that gets me. Not just that I was wrong, but that I was wrong with confidence. Loud, unearned, absolutely-not-up-for-debate confidence.

So here it is. The list. Completely honest, a little mortifying, and — I hope — kind of useful if you’re currently in your twenties thinking you’ve got it all figured out. You don’t. But what do I know?

I thought being busy meant I was important

Busyness felt like currency in my twenties. The more packed my schedule, the more I mattered — or so I thought. I wore exhaustion like a badge. “I’ve been so slammed” was practically my catchphrase.

Turns out, being perpetually slammed usually just means you haven’t figured out how to say no yet. The people I actually look up to now? They have time. They’re not performing productivity for an audience.

Busyness is not the same as purpose. I know that now.

Did I actually believe renting was throwing money away?

Yes. Yes I did. I said it out loud, with my whole chest, at least a dozen times.

Here’s the thing — the math on homeownership is genuinely complicated, and telling someone they’re “wasting money” on rent ignores about a thousand variables: flexibility, maintenance costs, your actual life situation. Renting buys you options. That’s not nothing.

I was repeating something I’d heard from adults who bought houses in a completely different economy. It wasn’t wisdom. It was a hand-me-down opinion I never examined.

I thought the loudest person in the room was the most confident one

Loudness is not confidence. I know that sounds obvious but I genuinely did not understand it until well into my thirties. In my twenties I was trying to be the loudest because I thought that’s what confidence looked like.

Actual confidence is quiet in a way that used to confuse me. The person who doesn’t need to fill every silence. The one who lets their work do the talking. I mistook volume for authority and it made me exhausting at meetings.

Was I really that certain I knew what kind of person I was?

I had a very strong sense of identity at 23. I was THIS kind of person, not THAT kind. I liked these things, not those. Hard lines everywhere.

What I didn’t realize is that identity is a lot more porous than that — and that’s actually a good thing. Some of my favorite parts of who I am now came from doing things the 23-year-old me would have rolled her eyes at. She would have been wrong to roll her eyes. She was wrong about a lot.

I thought you could control what people thought of you

Oh, this one. I spent so much energy curating how I came across. The right thing to say, the right way to say it, making sure everyone left with the correct impression of me.

You can’t control it. Not really. People will think what they think, and most of the time they’re not thinking about you at all — they’re worried about their own version of this exact same thing. The sooner you accept that, the more time you get back for literally anything else.

Did I actually think emotions were a sign of weakness?

I cringe typing this, but — kind of, yeah. I thought keeping it together at all times was the move. Stoic. Unbothered. Professional.

That’s not strength. That’s suppression with good posture. The people who can actually name what they’re feeling and communicate it clearly? That takes way more guts than pretending nothing bothers you. I learned this the hard way and it took longer than it should have.

I thought everyone who disagreed with me just hadn’t thought about it hard enough

This is maybe the one I’m most embarrassed about. I had opinions — strong ones — and when someone pushed back, my default assumption was that they just hadn’t considered it the way I had. If they had, they’d obviously agree.

That’s not a debate. That’s a monologue with audience participation. Some of the most interesting things I believe now came directly from someone challenging me and me eventually having to admit they had a point. That used to feel like losing. Now it feels like the whole point.

How wrong was I about what “having it together” looked like?

So wrong. I thought having it together meant a clean apartment, a five-year plan, and knowing what you wanted to order before you got to the front of the line. Like, externally organized = internally sorted.

Having it together — to whatever degree that’s even real — is mostly about knowing how to handle it when things fall apart. Not preventing the fall apart. Nobody prevents the fall apart.

In my twenties I was very focused on looking like I had it together. In my actual life now, I care a lot more about actually having it, even on the days when that just means getting through the day.

I thought advice from older people was automatically outdated

This one is funny to me now because I do it from the other direction. Someone younger dismisses something I say and I can see exactly what they’re thinking — she doesn’t get it, things are different now.

Sometimes things ARE different. The economy is different, the internet changed everything, I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But some things — how people work, how relationships function, what actually makes you feel okay at the end of a hard week — those haven’t changed that much. I was too quick to write off experience as irrelevance. That was arrogant. And I missed some genuinely good advice because of it.

Was my sense of urgency about everything actually necessary?

Everything felt urgent at 25. Decisions felt final. Paths felt permanent. Like if I made the wrong call I’d be locked into it forever and there would be no course correcting.

Almost nothing is as permanent as it feels when you’re in it. That’s not an excuse to be flippant — some decisions do matter — but the constant low hum of urgency I carried around in my twenties was exhausting and mostly unnecessary. Most things can be undone. Most things can be tried again differently. Most roads have more than one exit.

I wish someone had handed me that information at 22. But what do I know? Maybe I would have dismissed it as outdated advice from someone who didn’t get it.

The thing about being wrong in your twenties is that it’s basically required. You can’t get to knowing better without first knowing worse. I don’t regret most of it — I regret the confidence more than the actual opinions, honestly.

If you’re in your twenties right now and you’re reading this thinking “okay but I actually DO have it figured out” — I genuinely hope you’re right. I also genuinely know that I thought the exact same thing. Check back in a decade. I’ll be here, probably writing a follow-up list about everything I was wrong about in my thirties.

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