The crossroads of your 20s

After watching @millygfitness's recent Instagram reel, I felt inspired to share my own thoughts on the challenge of finding balance in your 20s. 

Your 20s are a weird place to be. Everyone calls them the "best years of your life," but no one talks enough about the pressure, the comparison, and the constant questioning. You’re standing at a crossroads almost every day, trying to work out what’s more important: working hard or living more. Is it smarter to grind and build your future? Or to say yes to every chance, every trip, every wild night and moment that might not come again?

Sometimes you think you’ve cracked it-wake up early, go to the gym, work hard and save money. Other days, all you want is to be impulsive. Get on a last-minute flight, blow your budget on memories, or just sleep in and say, “screw it.” Because the truth is, your 20s won’t last forever.

You want to live fully, but you also want to be stable. You want to be spontaneous, but also successful. You want the nights out and the nights in, the freedom and the discipline, the fun and the financial cushion to fund it. But what you slowly realise is that it’s not about balance- it’s about sacrifice. Every “yes” to something is a “no” to something else. You can’t do it all, not at once, and definitely not without something slipping.

People say, “just find balance,” like it’s that easy. But the realest thing is this: if you want something badly in your 20s, something else will have to wait. If you're chasing your dream, you might fall behind in other areas. If you’re focused on enjoying the moment, you might miss chances to build long-term. It doesn’t mean you’re failing. It just means you’re choosing. That’s what this decade is about.

No one talks enough about the parts where you’re trying so hard, and still feel behind. When you're falling apart in one area while trying to hold it together in another. When you’re failing, succeeding, rebuilding, starting over, watching others “get ahead,” and wondering if you took the wrong turn. It’s all a bit messy.

Your 20s are not linear. They’re not supposed to look perfect. There’s no right answer to whether you should work hard or live more. You’ll do both. You’ll swing between extremes. You’ll spend seasons locked in and others letting go. You’ll make sacrifices, some that pay off, some that don’t. But every version of you- grinding, resting, failing, winning is part of the process.

And maybe that’s the whole point: not to have it all figured out, but to live through it all. Fully. Honestly. And on your terms.

The crossroads don’t mean you’re lost. They just mean you’re in your 20s.

Love, Aria 

XO