The Importance of Your 20s

Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20 | Video on TED.com

This is an important talk on something that many of us believe that we know now days, but in reality rarely follow due to new social constructs. Your time is important, do not waste it at any stage of your life. There is never a time where you can just completely wind down, because it all builds up into what your life is, and will be.

I think this is especially important to people dealing with mental health, because often 20s is the start of where issues seriously come into play, and it's how you deal with it when you're young that sets the course for the rest of your life. It's where you choose to stand strong and learn to get on, or go into adulthood very dependent on others, where you choose to let mental illness define your life, or learn that mental health is just another part of life.

What it comes down to is that your 20s are more important than people let on, and that you cannot waste time.

That's true!!!

Excellent point. People change a lot during every decade of their life but teens and 20's are very crucial. In addition, a lot of psychological and mental problems tend to pop up in middle/late adolescence which can cause lots of problems and issues for the person and those associated with him/her.

I don't know for someone who has a mental illness or multiple ones it can be a pretty large and very difficult part of life since it interferes with everything. Also most people don't have a chronic mental illness so its not 'just another part of life.' at least not the way I see it.

Sure everyone has to deal with mental health issues at some point I am sure but that is not the same as being disabled by a ongoing condition. But just my opinion, I don't think it so much a matter of 'choosing' to have it define my life, but sometimes it does take over more than I would like.

TheDragon, thanks for posting that video. I passed it on to my two younger brothers; we are all in our twenties. I'm the one who's married so I hope it will be more useful to them.

Some of us develop our conditions much earlier than the 20s, unfortunately (like me).

I was first diagnosed at 23 and am now 27 and the last few years have been very tumultuous.

All times of our life are important, I think 20s is important in learning to become independent and developing a sense of self-efficacy, which is vital.

Same here.

You are dead on. I am still paying for the mistakes I made in my twenties. Some of those mistakes will follow me forever. I wasn't diagnosed until my twenties and didn't want to accept my diagnosis at that time. I refused medication and participated in a lot of harmful illegal behavior and eventually turned to using illegal drugs and that was a hard long road. I did a lot of things I regret and hurt a lot of people. Some of my many mistakes are now on my record forever. So now years later I am doing better, have children, and trying to make a life for me and my kids and am having an extremely hard time because of past mistakes. I wish others understood the extent one choice can make on the rest of your life. I pray most will not make those life altering mistakes that I made. I wish once one made mistakes all others learned from it so as not to be repeated, if only.

20's ??? - umm, What the ____ happened then??
Honestly most of it I have no clue now, I know at about 25 I was DXed with something called "Menieres disease" and shortly afterward Generalized Anxiety disorder - that is common among those with Menieres - but didn't do much about either until about 29, when the anxiety, vertigo, and tinnitus got totally rediculous, the vertigo was solved with a medication called AntiVert, and it's fine when in some sort of an institution - but at home, I found Cannabis works better and faster, and without cause me to sleep like AntiVert dose, IF it dose cause a little drowsiness, coffee cures it so....
And the GAD, Well Xanax was used at first, but really didn't work too well except at pretty high doses, but BusPar, that's the stuff!
Anyway back to the point - pretty much my 20s is basically a lost and forgotten decade, I can't remember it if I want to......

If only I could go back to my early 20's (after my no-good relatives moved out), knowing all that I know now, with the ability to change my future.

I hear ya, Maven.
I got sober in the last half of my 20s. The first half was a nightmare. I mean, I thought I was having fun for most of it. But the truth was, I was angry, hateful and scared, and I blamed everyone else around me for it. I'd had a major mental health episode when I was 17 that carried on for a few years that I was never treated for (lived in a tiny town, no psych help there, plus I was living at home and my parents didn't know how to help me either) and I really had no clue how to live life. I worked, I got loaded, lather, rinse, repeat. I dieted, I acted out on my ED (bulimia), I moved around a lot. Lived in mutually abusive relationships. Increasingly spent a lot of time isolated. Became a birth mother. My 20s were lonely. Nobody should have to live their 20s like I did.
I too wish I could go back, though at least I finally see how the things I did then and the experiences I've had in life make me the person I am today. A lot of my anger I have directed into determination to get back on track with school and other things in life and find out how to really live.