The best advice I received in my 20s

Your 20s - despite what many believe - can actually be quite hard.

It's a time of trial and error with career choices, learning how to look after yourself, becoming independent, and facing ambiguity.

It's also easy to feel like you're falling behind—whether compared to your peers or, even worse, those few people on the internet who seem to have life completely figured out (or so it seems).

During this time, having one or —if we're lucky— a few trusted confidants who provide advice, perspective and maybe some inspiration when we need it most is invaluable.

I was lucky enough to live with two of these confidants (my stepdad and my mum) and to cross paths with others who shifted my perspective on a few important topics.

What follows is a collection of the best advice I received in my 20s from these trusted people. I love to come back to them because they ground me and help me feel at peace with where I am.

My hope is that, if you need them, they might do the same for you.

1) What would you tell your friend if they were in your shoes

The other day, I was feeling guilty - I was torn between looking after myself and fulfilling what I thought were my responsibilities.

For days, I went back and forth, overthinking the situation and getting nowhere.

Then, I talked to a friend, and something she said completely shifted my perspective.

She asked me a simple but great question: If I were in your shoes—same situation, same context—what would you tell me?

Then I was like, aha - that's a great point.

I said, of course - look after yourself. This thing isn't worth your energy, let alone compromising your health over it.

That conversation made me realise that sometimes difficult to make a decision when we're the main character of the story.

When you’re right in the middle of it—feeling the emotions, juggling the stress, and thinking about all the “shoulds”—it’s easy to lose perspective.

And no, this doesn’t mean ignoring your responsibilities whenever you don’t feel like dealing with them.

It’s more about stepping back and looking at the situation like a good friend would—someone who isn’t afraid to give you tough love. That friend might tell you it’s time to push through and get the job done, but they’d also tell you when it’s okay to take a step back and give yourself a break.

When you’re not so emotionally caught up in the story, making a judgment call becomes a lot easier.

Sometimes, all it takes is asking yourself: What would I tell a friend in this situation?

2) Your life is like a tree (bear with me; this is actually good)

You know how we all have different people we turn to for support depending on the situation?

For me, I’ve found that different people in my life have their unique ways of helping me see things differently. Either giving me comfort and understanding or kicking me in the butt, motivating me to act, or sharing their wisdom in very accessible ways - like through an analogy that just sort of sticks with you forever.

And one of my favourite pick-me-up analogies is from my stepdad, and it goes as follows:

When you’re facing a problem, it’s like sitting in the crown of a tree.

Up close, it feels like complete chaos—branches twisting in every direction and leaves blocking your view.

It’s overwhelming, confusing, and hard to make sense of anything.

But when you zoom out and look at the tree from a distance, you see the bigger picture.

What looked like chaos up close is actually a structured system: a solid trunk splitting out into large branches, which split into smaller ones, each covered in leaves.

From this perspective, it all makes perfect sense—there’s order, structure, and purpose.

When you think about it, it captures exactly how it feels like to be in the middle of a tough situation.

When you're in it, all you see is chaos, which doesn't make sense and feels too overwhelming to deal with.

But if you step back and view it in a broader context, you can start to see it differently. That overwhelming chaos might be a shitstorm, but one that will eventually pass.

I think this is particularly hard to see when you're very young.

You don't yet have evidence of this being true, you (hopefully) haven't gone through many shitstorms just yet, and when things get difficult, you feel like they're going to stay this way forever.

But as time passes, you start to see that life ebbs and flows. Problems come and go, and each one you overcome becomes proof that you’re capable of handling the next, which, I think, makes difficult situations easier to bear when they happen.

They stop being this all-consuming, defining problem, but something you can actually distance yourself from, let it do its justice while you figure out how to navigate it, and then you just move on.

My point is that if you’re in the middle of a tough time, remember that what you're seeing is a chaotic crown of a tree. But if you zoom out and try to see how this moment might fit into the bigger picture—not just in terms of today or tomorrow, but a month, a year, or even a decade from now—it can help you find a little more clarity and a lot more hope that things will get better.

4) Go pick some stones

While doing my clinical nutrition MSc at UCL, I was introduced to a professor who was a program director of the Entrepreneurship Master's at UCL.

He was quite impressive - he sold his company for a lot of money, wrote a book on entrepreneurial finance and was now exploring a completely new career in teaching.

When I met him, I was trying to get an education startup off the ground but was at a crossroads: should I keep going, pivot, or quit altogether? And if I did quit, what would I do instead?

I was full of questions, and our conversation turned to business and entrepreneurship pretty fast.

During that conversation, he gave me advice that has stuck with me ever since. He said:

Imagine there's a beach full of stones.

Under each stone, there's a hidden business idea.

You know that one (or more) of these stones hides a successful idea, but you don't know which one.

As an entrepreneur, your first task is to pick up each stone to find the one hiding your business idea.

I love this analogy because it’s not just relevant to entrepreneurship—it carries three lessons that can apply to so many areas of life:

1. Picking up stones—trying out different things—is a fundamental part of the process. Whether it's a career, friendship, or a business idea, it takes time and exploration to land on something that sticks.
2. Not every stone will have what you’re looking for. Some will lead to dead ends, and that’s just part of the process. When that happens, just move on to the next one.
3. The stone you're looking for is out there; it's just about testing, failing, and adjusting until you find it.

The bottom line:

Nothing good will come from waiting for the perfect idea, friendship or career to appear. It comes down to taking action and trying things out.

It's always about balance - extremes are almost never an answer

Another mantra my stepdad keeps on repeating:

Everything is about balance.

Eating well isn't just about eating nutrient-dense foods all the time but also about being able to incorporate indulgent foods into our diet.

Being positive is great, but only if we allow ourselves the space to address negative feelings.

Stability is wonderful, but we also need excitement - whether in the form of partying, learning something new, exploring new places, or simply getting to know ourselves.

Productivity is amazing, but only when it's balanced by sufficient rest and play.

Discipline can be life-changing, but only when it’s balanced with the ability to listen to your body’s needs and know when to pause before pushing yourself to exhaustion.

And being considerate and empathetic towards others is great, but only if we’re also taking care of our own needs.

I can't think of anything where balance isn't the best option in the long run.

The problem is, though, that balance is also the hardest thing to achieve.

It's fairly easy to commit to something 100% - at least for a while.

It's easier to say that you're going to XYZ every single day without exception than to say, you know what, I will consider the context of the given day and do what feels right for me right now but also balance it with what is right for me in the long term.

This nuanced approach is undeniably harder—because where do you draw the line?

I guess you decide.

What I’ve learned is that finding balance and developing the ability to draw that line—often in a different place each day—is a skill. It takes practice, and the journey to mastering it usually involves a process of trial and error before you can truly settle into balance.

Take me as an example - I used to struggle with discipline A LOT. I couldn't stick to any routine for long enough.

On the discipline spectrum, I was leaning towards the left - I was close to zero.

When I realised in my late teens thatctually a useful discipline is a skill, I hugely overcompensated and went to thee: I followed ve opposite extremry rigid routines and did not give myself time to chill.

Or when I tried to be more positive, I initially avoided my negative feels because I thought they were at odds with positivity.

It took going to those extremes to understand that true positivity includes acknowledging the tough stuff, and real discipline includes knowing when to pause.

But I could reach these conclusions only after I went all in and figured out that the happy medium is right in between.

Of course, in an ideal world, we'd be able to find balance at the first shot - and if you're able to do that, bravo - but in my experience, it is rarely the case.

I'm not suggesting you should go to extremes when changing your behaviours.

All I'm saying is that balance is the way to go—but don’t be surprised if, in finding it, you lose it for a while. That can be part of the process.

Wrapping up

That's about it for this week.

If this resonated with you, you might also enjoy the following article, which is more of a tangible guide for navigating your 20s: https://www.karogsr.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-survive-your-20s/

Speak next week xx