I’m 25. By no means do I have all the answers, and I’m not going to pretend I’m wiser than I am. I am constantly learning.
However, in the past year, I’ve quit my job, moved to new states, tried out styles of life I’ve never heard of before, and built a roadmap for my life that I’m actually excited about. My choices allowed me to make amazing friends, build community, live cheaply in some of the most desirable places in America, and make some money along the way.
Some of what I’ve learned is general and applicable to anyone, and some are more specific to me. Some were big changes that single-handedly shifted my life, and some were small one-liners that subtly painted the world in a new light.
I’ve narrowed my experience down to six rules that I’m at least fairly sure are right. They’ve improved my life; maybe they’ll work for you, too.
Rule no. 1: Reducing expenses is more freeing than increasing income
The obvious way to grow rich is to raise your income. But is it the best way? At a rate of 8% growth per year (the average return of the stock market), you only need to save $500/month from 25-65 to be worth over $1.5 million by the time you retire. That’s only $6,000/year to set aside. I’ve seen people who make $40,000/year who do this easily, and I’ve seen people who make over $100,000/year struggle to save even a penny. Why? Because of a difference in lifestyle.
You might earn yourself a healthy retirement by climbing the corporate ladder, dedicating your weeks and weekends to the corporate grind, and hoping that in a few years your hard work will be rewarded enough to start a nest egg. Or… you could start earning more now by reducing your expenses.
Don’t sacrifice your happiness and passion by dedicating yourself to a job you hate. Find one you love and embrace freedom over materialism.
No. 2: I wasn't my happiest in an office (and I never was going to be)
This was difficult to stomach.
I knew that the path I built for years didn’t fulfill me. I couldn’t rationalize that the money, stability, and social status I envied weren’t actually what I wanted. I chose the wrong path.
On one particularly bad day in corporate America, I wrote two sentences in my notes app that I still think of. I was tired of wasting my time on things I didn’t care about, sick of my work not helping anyone but myself, and done feeling detached from the promises of meager future earnings. Here’s the quote:
“If I have to choose between money and freedom, or money and happiness, then so be it. But if there’s a way to get both, I will be the one to find it.”
Corporate is “good enough” at times for most people. It might even be “worth the money” too, but it will likely never grant you the happiness and freedom that you’d get outside the office. If you have a passion, there is likely a job that uses it. It might not be as prestigious or lucrative as a job in the office, but it’s better.
I think most people live in what I call “passive happiness.” That’s when one may be content with their life, but are also unsatisfied in many aspects. They might feel soft appreciation toward their current situation, but rarely would they look at the life they’ve built in awe. When they imagine the future or think of their dreams, their imagined life looks quite different than what they have now.
This contrasts with people I’ve seen who achieved “active happiness.” These people are inherently excited to live the life they’ve built. They live in places that excite them, work jobs they’re passionate about, and fill their free time with things they want to do. When they think of their ideal future or their dreams, they imagine a continued path of the life they already have. They are not just content with their life, but it’s what they’d choose even in a world where they got their way.
This doesn’t mean that actively happy people never feel sad, bored, or unsure of their path. They aren’t magically absolved of any mental health issues, either. It means that, even if they have hard times, they still don’t regret their choices or the life they’ve built. Instead, their daily life helps their pain instead of exacerbating it.
I know that one’s job isn’t the end-all-be-all of their potential to live an actively happy lifestyle. But, when it’s the reason you wake up and your main focus 5 out of the 7 days of the week, it is hard to understate its influence. Your job impacts where you live, when you travel, what free time you have, who you spend time with, and how much authority you have over your life. What you choose to do for work is too important to be something you don’t enjoy
I can’t emphasize this enough: it’s better to be poor and actively happy than rich and detached.
No. 3: The risk of regret is THE most important risk to mitigate
The risk of replaceable things doesn’t bother me much. I can, and have, lost many things that cost me hundreds. Even risking my career, my apartment, and countless other things I’ve gained through life doesn’t bother me if I feel like there’s a better solution out there, even if it’s not promised. That’s what risk is all about.
I’m much less willing to risk things I can’t get back—my health, my body, my family and friends, and perhaps most importantly, my time. I won’t risk my twenties, thirties, or beyond on anything less than what I’m passionate about. My greatest fear is to lose decades wasting my dreams and interests. I can’t get that time back, and I can’t fix that mistake.
I’m not advocating for complete recklessness because I think you’ll also regret impoverishing yourself, not providing any service to society, and ruining your retirement. I’m just saying you should do something you love, something that provides a good living for yourself, and also something you actively enjoy, for a cause you love, and for a purpose that excites you. You owe it to yourself to enjoy your job – it’s one of the most important things you’ll do in this life.
I think the world tries to make us forget that we are alive, or at least convinces us we don’t deserve a lot out of life. But we do, and our time is finite and irreplaceable. Even if you believe in Heaven or reincarnation, this is the only time we will be in this body, in this life, and with these opportunities. It’s the only time it’s possible to live the way we can, and there are no take-backs. That’s powerful.
You owe it to yourself to live a life you want. One that will make you ecstatic to have lived, and one that lowers your risk of regret by as much as possible. At 25, I already have a lot of regrets. But, I have fewer now that I give my passion the respect it deserves.
Rule no. 4: It might not be easy to take "The Jump" but it might never get easier
It’s not easy to leap out of a life you know and into a life you don’t, even if you think that life will be better. It’s hard, but it’s supposed to be that way. The most important thing is that it is not impossible, and it’s also probably the easiest time in your life to do something extraordinary.
If you don’t have a long-term partner, it’s easier. Even if you do have a partner, it’s easier than if you had a home. Even if you have a home, it’s easier than if you have kids in your home. Even if you have kids, it’s easier than when you’re older. Even if you’re older, it’s easier than if you’re no longer healthy. If you’re not healthy, then it’s still easier than if you’re dead.
The point is, you are only promised your present. It’s better to learn to play with the cards you’re dealt than hoping for a better hand in the future.
There will always be reasons why you shouldn’t change – our society is structured that way. But, there are so many more reasons why you should leap now versus at a different time. There might be an imagined situation, either in the past or in the future, where it would be easier to make a choice like this, but you have control over your present. You don’t know when any of the freedoms you have will go away, even if you don’t think you have a lot of them.
Rule no. 5: An extraordinary life is not made with ordinary choices
I’ll preface this by saying that an ordinary life is some people’s dream. Whether it be a chaotic childhood or a desire to settle down and live quietly, an ordinary life is just what some people want. If you want that life, then pursue it! I’m not here to tell you what you want.
Some people, including the famous and controversial hubs.life account on social media are “normalizing the norm.” In Hubs.life’s posts, you’ll see him rarely smiling, but calmly content. He stoically goes to work, sits in a cubicle, works on his laptop, maybe goes home for lunch to eat a pre-cooked meal, and plays with his dog in his suburban home. The movement he champions gives visibility to an ordinary life that most people live – a life many people are just fine with living… the only problem was that I didn’t want it.
I used to bag on hubs.life and the lifestyle he lives, but then I looked inward and discovered I also live his life. Why was I making all the same decisions as hubs.life made? Why did my day-to-day look just like his even though I hated watching him live it? The answer is that I wanted an extraordinary life to suddenly spring out of my ordinary choices.
That’s when it clicked – if I want my dream life, I might as well go for it because I’m not only unhappy on this path, but I don’t even feel like I’m doing my best work here. Sure, the promotions came and went, but all the while I was half-assing and wasting my professional life when I wanted to be passionate about it.
When I thought more about the choices I’d rather make and the life I’d rather live, I realized it was almost impossible for my life choices up to that point to get me there. I felt waist-deep in a world I didn’t want, and it was difficult to get out because I had already sunk myself in it so much.
It was difficult, but I finally left that cubicle, and I made decisions that led me to the life I wanted. They moved my life in extraordinary directions.
Rule no. 6: Youth actually is wasted on the young.
You may know this classic saying, and yes, I realized it’s true. You’ve likely thought at some point, “If only I could go back to high school (or middle school, college, anything) with everything I know now…” I assume you don’t fantasize about that because you’d do everything the same way. As we age, we learn more. We prioritize different things and realize more about how the world really works.
We look back on our youth and wonder, “Why did I worry so damn much about [insert stupid thing you worried about]? Why on Earth did I think dating that person was a good idea? How many weekends did I spend studying for a stupid test when I could have made memories with my friends?”
Chances are, we’ll all be wondering the same thing about the choices we’re making now, ten years from now.
I imagined that when I chose to leave the office behind and pursue a life built around happiness, adventure, and passion, my friends would cheer me on and my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents would tell me to pump the brakes.
I was shell-shocked when the exact opposite happened.
My friends preached caution, confusion, and astoundment at my idea. They didn’t understand why I could ever imagine leaving the office, even if they themselves didn’t like their job, or if they fantasized about leaving, too. They still saw it as something they had to do.
The attitude shifted dramatically any time I talked to someone 50 and older.
They’d lament about how much they dedicated to a company that didn’t care about them, how they thought they were doing everything right until they got laid off, and how they wished they could just be 25 again with no kids, no responsibilities, no mortgages, and go on wild adventures and live.
It shocked me to hear them talk, knowing that everyone my age, the ones meant to take life by the reigns and carpe diem every single day, were the ones who sympathized with me the least. My cheerleaders were the ones who were decades through their professional lives, who surrendered to the office and are now looking back with everything they know now, and wish they would have done the same.
Final Rule: I could be wrong. Live your own life.
I didn’t write this article to be the Nostradamus of my generation and create the sole document needed for every twenty-something looking for more out of life.
I just know what it meant to feel stuck. I also know that, on some level, I’ve known these rules to be true for some time. I just didn’t have the knowledge or courage to live them out. Maybe I just needed someone to put it in an article for me, where black and white pixels would spell it out right in front of my eyes.
So, hopefully this helps. Feel free to take any rules you like, leave any you don’t, and make your own along the way. Just live a life you love.