Have you taken any chances lately? Have you risked anything?
If you answered no, why are you holding back? Please do tell me.
I’ve written about what to do after college extensively on here. Today I wanted to tell you why you need to be taking risks in your days after school.
“It’s extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn’t work. The fact that it doesn’t work every time should give you confidence., because it means you’re doing something that frightens others.” — Seth Godin
Life after college is interesting. You’re not sure what to do. Actually most of us don’t know what to do after college. You know more about what you don’t want to do than about what you actually do want to do.
You don’t want a boring job. You don’t want to spend all of your time at work. You don’t want to have any regrets. You don’t want to be stuck at the same job for 30 years
Then reality sinks in. You have bills to pay and have to stress about paying off student loans. You sort of have to work to make money.
I’m here to tell you that you need to take risks in your 20s if you want anything cool to happen.
Why should you take risks in your 20s? Because this is simply the best time in your life to do so. If not now, then when?
You can take different kinds of risks in your 20s. What are the risks that you need to take in your 20s?
You can risk your time.
You have all of the time and energy in the world when you’re in your 20s. I highly suggest that you risk your time to create something cool or to at least try something different. Why follow in the same path as all of your friends? You can use your time to do something worth mentioning. You don’t have to count the days down until your next trip.
You can take a risk with your lifestyle.
We see older people that have luxurious homes and we get envious. We too often forget that these people had a head start on us. We can’t compare ourselves to anyone else. We can’t live the ideal lifestyle at age 24. This means that you might have to suck it up and let your lifestyle take a hit while you spend your money on other things.
You can risk your pride.
What does pride have to do with anything? You might fail a few times. When you do fail, your pride will take a hit. Trust me on that one. I’ve gone all out with projects and completely failed. The good news is that you can rebound easily here. Your pride won’t be down for long after a failure. It becomes easier and easier to bounce back up.
For more general information for life after college, I recommend that you check out my list of 11 things you should do after college.
You don’t have to take risks. You can do the same things that your friends do. Just don’t complain when you’re not happy with your situation or with where you are.
A lot of this depends on where you’re at in life and what kind of support network you have to fall back on. While I agree it’s necessary to take risks, they should be calculated risks.
Just like with investing, you need to research and understand the risks before making a jump. That being said, making good financial decisions helps give you the ability to afford to take those risks in life.
That’s a good point you brought up Justin about support network. Too many of us are around nay-sayers and those that are constantly doubting us. I imagine it’s easy to get sucked in into this negativity.
I would say that risking your time isn’t something limited to recent grads, although they are the ones most likely to have the most free time. At the end of the day, if it’s a decision between watching reruns on tv or working on some project, the answer should be the project.
Good point. Those reruns will always be there. That opportunity might fade away.
I 100% agree with this post. Although I am now in my late 20s (omg), I very much value the risks and failures I’ve taken/experienced in my 20s to get me where I am today. It’s true that now is the best time to take risks before you have too many responsibilities other than housing and feeding yourself!
Right on! I agree with all the commenters above. We have energy and ambition. We haven’t started our “careers” yet, so now is definitely to time. Plus as Her Every Cent Counts said, we only have to worry about a roof over our head and feeding ourselves, and student loans; we generally in our 20s (esp early 20s) don’t have mortgage payments, or wives or children yet, which means if we fail a little bit, the only person that will suffer will be ourselves; we don’t have the risk of negatively impacting others.
Spot on! The best time to take risks are in our 20s. With regards to not knowing what to do after college, been there done that. Actually, I think that I chose the wrong course to study in college because I didn’t really know what I wanted to be when I graduated from high school. I think it is better if kids graduating from high school should take a year off and get a job first before going to college so they could get a grasp of what the real world is like and think about what they would like to be. In college, it’s better if they take up a job too and use what they earn to pay for school that way they don’t get stuck paying student loans for years after they graduate.