Turning 30: What My 20s Actually Taught Me | 220

What if turning 30 isn’t about having life figured out... but becoming more intentional about how you experience it?

For the 30 days leading up to my 30th birthday, I shared one thing every day that I know now that I didn’t understand or didn’t understand in the same way at 20. What started as 30 individual lessons quickly became something much bigger. When I looked at them all together, I realized there were a few themes that kept showing up, and those themes tell the real story of what my twenties taught me.

In this episode, I’m reflecting on the lessons underneath those 30 lessons. From learning how to trust myself and speak up in the small moments, to accepting that some people are only meant to be in our lives for a season, to understanding grief, change, and the importance of actually experiencing the life happening right now, this episode is about entering a new decade with intention. I’m also sharing the question that has stayed with me for the past two years and helped guide some of my biggest decisions and might just change the way you think about your own life, too.

💡 In this episode, you'll learn:

💜 Why real confidence is built through self-trust and keeping promises to yourself.
🗣️ How speaking up in the small moments helps build the courage to advocate for yourself in the big ones.
🤍 Why temporary people can leave permanent lessons and why missing someone doesn’t always mean they belong back in your life.
🫂 How my understanding of grief has expanded beyond death to relationships, identities, futures, places, and past versions of ourselves.
🌱 Why you’re allowed to change your mind and let your life look different than what your younger self imagined.
✨ How to stop saving joy for special occasions and start making ordinary days meaningful.
🌎 The powerful question that has helped me make big decisions and think differently about what makes a life meaningful.

⏰ Timeline Summary:

[4:00] How keeping promises to myself, getting quiet, and listening to my own guidance helped me build genuine self-trust.
[7:09] Why speaking up about something as small as my birthday nails reminded me that self-advocacy is built in everyday moments.
[10:09] What my twenties taught me about temporary people, friendship, boundaries, and why missing someone doesn’t always mean reconnecting.
[15:06] How loss changed my understanding of ordinary moments, grief, and showing the people who matter how much they mean while they’re here.
[19:34] Learning to let life change shape, embrace different seasons, and release the idea that changing the plan means something went wrong.
[22:09] Why anticipation for tomorrow shouldn’t cost you today and the importance of actually experiencing the ordinary days of your life.
[25:13] The question that changed how I approach big decisions and what it means to create a life that feels deeply meaningful.

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Transcript

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Why Thirty Lessons Became Themes

SPEAKER_01 0:42

And honestly, it still feels kind of weird to say. For the 30 days leading up to my 30th birthday, I decided to do something on social media. Every day I shared one thing that I know going into 30 that I didn't understand, or maybe I didn't understand the same way at 20. And when I first started this series, I really did think it was just going to be 30 individual things. But somewhere along the way, I realized that when I put all of them together, they tell a much bigger story about what this decade of my life actually taught me. Because a lot happens between 20 to 30. And wherever you are in your journey of life, I'm sure you understand that. And people who were only meant to be in my life for a season. I've traveled, I've taken risks, I've changed my mind, I've shifted my mindset. I've learned to trust myself. I've learned to speak up for myself. I've learned how fucking important it is to get quiet sometimes. And I think, more than anything, I've become a lot more intentional about how I want to experience my life. So I don't actually want to sit here today and read you a list of 30 things. If you followed the series, you've already gotten that. And if you haven't followed the series, you don't need to go back and watch the 30 videos to understand this episode. Instead, I want to talk about the things underneath the things. When I looked at all the 30 lessons together, there were a few themes that kept showing up over and over again. And I think those themes probably tell you a lot more about what my 20s taught me than any individual lesson could. I am sure I'll get to 40 and I'll have an entirely different list. These are just the things today that I know that I didn't know 10 years ago. These are just the things I know today that I didn't know 10 years ago. So

Self-Trust As Real Confidence

SPEAKER_01 4:00

let's get into it. Because so many of these lessons were really different versions of the same thing. Learning how to have a relationship with myself. Confidence is keeping promises to yourself. Now I think confidence has so much more to do with whether you trust yourself. If I tell myself I'm going to do something, do I do it? Because every time I keep one of those promises, I'm giving myself another piece of evidence that says I've got me. And ironically enough, learning to trust myself has also meant doing things before I feel completely ready, or before I feel ready at all. Because I've learned if I wait until I'm not scared, I might wait forever. Another lesson I shared was before you ask everybody else what they think, or before you ask anybody, honestly, ask yourself. Which as someone who can absolutely pull the fucking room when I have a decision to make, this is something I am still learning. But it's really important to ask your own inner guidance before seeking the advice or opinions of others. Because if you ask that first, you are not allowing yourself to see how you feel about the situation. And sometimes the only way I can figure out what I actually think or what I actually want is to remove the noise long enough to hear myself. And now, when I mention getting quiet, I don't mean doing breath work or meditating within your eye mask, closing your eyes. No, I mean removing distractions, removing your phone, removing technology, sitting outside, going for a walk, going for a drive, whatever it is, but not having outside noise. And

Speaking Up In Small Moments

SPEAKER_01 7:09

interestingly enough, one of my favorite examples of self-trust from this whole series actually involves glitter on my ring nail from the nail salon. So I got my nails done. I get them done usually every single month. When I got them done this month, I wanted them to be a little extra special for my birthday. There was a specific way I wanted the glitter to be done on my ring finger. And the way she had the nail tech had done it at first, it looked super cute, but it wasn't exactly the idea of what I had in mind. And it was something super simple that I mentioned and I brought up, and I told her what I was initially thinking for it to look like. And she changed it, it was no big thing. I was so appreciative that she was willing to change it, and that I spoke up. I absolutely loved how they came out. And thinking about this simple situation, this minuscule way of speaking up. Thinking back to when I was 20, I wouldn't have said anything. Because the way she did it at first looked nice. It was essentially good enough. And but it wasn't what I wanted. And I've come to realize that self-trust is built in those small little moments of speaking up, not just in the big things, because you're not as easily going to be able to speak up in the big moments if you can't do it in those small little moments. I think we both felt better about the situation since I did speak up because I liked them even more. It didn't take her very long to do, and it showed me that I have the ability to speak up for myself in any aspect. I've also learned we build the self-trust in small instances, and that's how it gets bigger, and that's how we do it in the bigger instances. We think self-advocacy is gonna show up in these huge life-changing moments, and it's often not that. It's often that's not what I meant. No, I don't want that. Can we change this? Yes, I do want to do this, and maybe that's what self-trust has looked like for me in my twenties. Not knowing of the answer, just getting better at listening, I have one. The

Temporary People And Clearer Boundaries

SPEAKER_01 10:09

second theme was impossible to miss because apparently my twenties taught me a whole fucking lot about people. One of the very first things I shared in this series was that temporary people can leave permanent lessons, and I think at twenty, permanence and significance were much more connected in my mind. If someone mattered, they stayed. And I just don't believe that anymore. Not everyone in your life is your friend. At twenty, I called and considered so many people my friend. Now at thirty, I am so much more intentional with even the use of the word friend. I've been so much more intentional in how I describe the people in my life. There's neighbors, there's friends, there's acquaintances, there's colleagues. There was times in my early 20s I was experiencing disappointment because I had assigned a level of relationship to someone in my life that they hadn't assigned to me. And that doesn't make them a bad person or me a bad person. We just saw the relationship differently. I've also learned that people can matter to you and you can care about them even if they are not your friend. I've also learned missing doesn't mean that you need to atone, or you're meant to atone. And that might be one of my favorite lessons from the series. You can miss something, you can miss someone, and still know they're not meant to be in your life anymore. Missing someone isn't always information. Missing someone doesn't necessarily mean to call them. Sometimes missing something simply means that it mattered to you. The older I get, the less I believe people cross our paths for absolutely no reason. Sometimes someone is in your life for decades. Sometimes they're there for one conversation. Sometimes they plant a seed they will never even know grew inside of you. Which is also why I have become so passionate about telling people when they matter. If somebody changed your life, tell them. And

Ordinary Days And Real Grief

SPEAKER_01 15:06

that's my cousin Kay. I last saw her in person in June of 2024 at my cousin's graduation party. And at the time, I was just seeing my fam, just seeing my cousin. There wasn't anything really about that moment that made me think I need to memorize it. There wasn't anything that made me think, pay extra attention, because you don't know how many more times you're going to get this. Sometimes it just feels like an ordinary day. And I don't say this because I think we should walk around terrified that every time we say goodbye to somebody, it could be the last time. That's not how I want to live. If anything, it's taught me the opposite. I want to be here while I have people here. I want to take the picture. I want to make the call. I want to give the extra long hug. I want to tell people I love them. I want people to know what they mean to me while I still have the opportunity to tell them. Because I knew at 20 that time wasn't guaranteed. But at 30, I understand what that actually means a little differently. And my understanding of grief has changed a lot too. At 20, I think grief primarily meant death to me. At 30, I understand that we grieve so many things: people, relationships, futures we thought we'd have, places, identities, versions of ourselves. And I also think we are really uncomfortable with other people's grief. We say, I'm so sorry, let me know if you need anything. And people usually mean it, but grief doesn't disappear when everybody else's life goes back to normal. So I've learned to try my hardest to be the person who remembers on a random Thursday, the person who brings their loved one's name up, the person who still checks in a while later. And maybe that's also why another one of my lessons was about being better to the people who are good to you. Because sometimes the safest people in our lives get whatever energy we have left. And I don't want the people who love me the best to consistently get the leftovers. So especially those people who are the best to you. Be better to them. Call them. Take pictures with them. Say the things. Tell them what they mean to you. They'll remember it. And so will you. Another

Letting Life Change Shape

SPEAKER_01 19:34

huge theme in my twenties has been learning to loosen my grip on how I think life is supposed to look. Life comes in seasons. And not every season is supposed to look like your most productive season. There's different seasons. There's seasons where you're pursuing fitness goals. Maybe you're competing in an Iron Man. There's seasons you're pursuing career goals. There's seasons that are more based on travel. There's social seasons. There's seasons where you prioritize rest. Not every season is meant to look the same. Just because something didn't go according to plan doesn't mean it went wrong. You are allowed to change your mind. You don't owe your younger self the life they thought they wanted. That doesn't mean twenty-year-old you was wrong or stupid. They made decisions based on what they knew, based on who they were and what they wanted at the time. You're allowed to have more information now. You're allowed to have different desires now. You are allowed to become somebody they couldn't have imagined. I've also learned that sometimes change doesn't start with another fucking thought. Sometimes I need to move my body. Sometimes I need to leave the room. Sometimes I need a new environment, a new conversation, a new place, a new perspective. You are allowed to participate in changing your own life. And I think all of that. Brings me to the biggest thing underneath these 30 lessons. I want

Stop Saving Joy For Later

SPEAKER_01 22:09

to actually fucking experience my life. I spent 30 days literally counting down to 30. And somewhere in the countdown, I realized I didn't want to spend the final days of my twenties wishing they would hurry up so I could get the thing I was excited about. Anticipation for tomorrow shouldn't cost me today. Ordinary days can be special too. Wear that fancy outfit that you love. Burn that candle. Buy yourself flowers. Make the reservations for the beautiful place. Go somewhere. Most of our lives happen on completely ordinary days. And I don't want to save all the good shit for the extraordinary days. Sometimes your life gets to be the occasion. And I've learned that sometimes it really isn't about what you are doing. It's simply who you're doing it with. And it was so much more special because I was there with her. It would have been special regardless. Sedona is a medical place, but it was even more meaningful because I was together with her. And that brings me to the final thing I shared before I turned 30. Except the final thing, the final lesson wasn't really an answer, it was a question. If you haven't tuned in to part one and part two of my conversation with Brett, I highly recommend

The Question That Guides Big Choices

SPEAKER_01 25:13

it. It is a lengthy episode, but it shifted it shifted more than my mindset. It shifted me from the soul. We were talking about making decisions. And I said something about getting curious about what you want. And Brett basically stopped me and said, No, it's so much more depot than that. And he asked me to imagine myself after I've lived a lot of life and I was looking back on my life. And essentially the question was, what would make your life feel so meaningful that looking back on it would bring a tear to your eye? What experiences in your life would make you look back on it and shed a tear because of how meaningful it was? And the thing about this question is the answer is different for everyone. Some of us, it's parenthood. Some of us, it's leveling up in our career. Maybe it's traveling the world, experiencing some sort of magical community. Whatever it is for you. That question has fucking stayed with me for two years. And around the time Brett asked me this question, I had an opportunity to go to Bali and attend a retreat for the first time. I had never been to Bali before. I had not left the country in 10 years. And I had a short period of time to decide if I was going to take this trip. I had a lot of fear. My mind was thinking about all of these what-if scenarios. But ultimately, I realized that when I pictured the old aversion of myself looking back, I knew which answer she wanted me to give. She would shed a tear at how meaningful and how magical that opportunity was. Going to Bali back in 2024, that first time I went, shifted me so much. And it created so much confidence in me that I didn't even know I had. So no. But I think these are the things underneath those 30 things. My 20s taught me how to trust myself. And maybe most importantly, they taught me that I don't want to spend my entire life preparing to live it. I'm sure there are things I believe today that 40-year-old me will completely disagree with. And I hope there are. I hope I keep changing and shifting my mind. I hope I keep meeting new versions of myself. I hope I keep having experiences that challenge what I thought I knew. But as I enter this next decade, I think I'm less interested in having everything figured out, and much more interested in being intentional about how I experience it. So after 30 days of giving answers, I want to end this episode

Final Reflection And Listener Request

SPEAKER_01 30:46

the same way I ended the series with a question. When you've lived a lot of life and you get the opportunity to look back on it, what would make your life feel so meaningful that you shed a tear because of it? I think that that's a question worth setting with. And to 20-year-old me, thank you. To 30-year-old me, I'm really fucking proud of you. And to whoever I'm becoming next, I can't wait to meet you. Here's to 30. Thank you for being here. Until next time. And you got them. As always, if you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five step rating. Leave a review. And show with anyone you think would benefit from that. And don't forget you are only one nine step just away. Thanks, guys. Until next time.