I'm a bit older than you are, and for me - most of my 20s were wasted. I wasn't an active participant in planning my own life. Things just happened, and I went with the flow, mostly trying to avoid anything that looked too hard or too uncomfortable. I bucked that trend in my late 20s/early 30s, and now as I enter my 40s... it's pretty clear to me that everything I've ever done that was truly worth doing was difficult. It took time, effort, and hard work. At the same time, my 20s were full of anxiety and depression and dread. My 30s were full of hard work, a lot of learning (and thus feeling dumb a lot), and a lot of ownership of where I wanted my life to go. They were infinitely better than my 20s. And now that I've mostly settled into what I wanted to be doing, how I wanted to be doing it, and all that... life's only looking better in my 40s.
The hard work will be worth it. You can do it. I believe in you.
I share the sentiment, I was spending half of my twenty in depression and that hinders me from choosing the uncomfortable. I mean, life was already uncomfortable at time. So, it makes only sense to cope and escape from it. Only in the last couple of my 20s I realized the bad choices I made are starting to take an ugly shape; financial instability, a sense of behind, and unhealthy lifestyle. I had to train my discipline which actually is still work in progress. It is excruciating to live with our consequences of past actions but hey, time heals everything.
Hearing your story, that is a relief to me that somehow everything has its end and as long as we put in the work, your life will only get and look better.
Thank you so much for this inspiration and encouragement 🙏
Discipline is hard - I'm still learning too. You've got this!