Rev. Dr. Mike Wooton

One of the biggest surprises of entering my 20s was discovering that I wasn’t a finished product. I thought I knew who I was and where I was headed. Then adulthood arrived and shockingly informed me that I still had some work to do.

Looking back, three lessons I began learning in my 20s have stayed with me ever since. I still use them today, and I see many people in their 20s wrestling with the same things.

1. You need boundaries.

One of the strangest things about entering your 20s is realizing that many of the boundaries that shape your growing up suddenly disappear.

Nobody tells you when to go home, how late you can stay up or watches how you spend your money. You can eat Taco Bell at midnight (the closest thing I got to a salad was the tomatoes on my taco), play video games until three in the morning and spend money you don’t have. Congrats, you’re an adult. I had to learn that freedom without boundaries can get expensive quickly.

I had some great friends in my 20s, including people I had known since childhood and my teenage years. I loved them then, and I still have relationships with many of them today. Yet, as we entered adulthood, we weren’t all heading in the same direction.

Sometimes being a good friend meant staying out much later than I should. Sometimes it meant going places I really didn’t want to go. There was partying and drinking. Some friends could play video games until all hours of the night. Others always wanted to go somewhere or do something that required spending what little money I had.

None of those decisions seemed enormous at the time. That’s part of what makes boundaries difficult. Most of the things that pull us away from what’s important are tiny parts of us at first.  A little more time and money. One more night and one more yes. Before you know it, a little has now become a lot.

Eventually, I began to realize that trying to be a good friend was sometimes putting me in places I didn’t want to be and pulling me away from the person I wanted to become.

When I was younger, other people created many of my boundaries for me. My family, school, coaches, and teachers did the scheduling for me. Then suddenly I was an adult, and nobody was going to do it for me. Here is the startling realization I stumbled upon…

I had to learn to create my own boundaries.

That didn’t mean I stopped loving my friends. It meant I finally understood that loving someone doesn’t require saying yes to everything they want from you.

That’s a lesson I still use today. You have to decide what matters most to you and then build some boundaries around it. Your relationships, time, and money all need boundaries. Guess what, champ? You’re in charge now.  

If you don’t decide what gets your time, attention and energy, somebody else eventually will.

2. You need to know your limits.

Boundaries taught me that I couldn’t say yes to everything. Limits taught me something harder: I couldn’t help everybody.

I really got into helping people in my late teens and early 20s. I saw what could happen when you sacrificed for someone who was struggling. Maybe they had made some bad decisions. Maybe something terrible had happened to them. Maybe they were lost and trying to figure out what they were supposed to do with their life. If I could help, I wanted to help.

Truthfully, it feels good to be needed. I made myself available. I’d talk with people in the morning, afternoon and evening. I’d take phone calls late at night. If somebody was going through something, I wanted to be there. There is something beautiful about that because caring for people is a good thing. I hadn’t yet learned that even good things have limits.

I kept pushing myself harder, trying to be available and then started carrying other people’s problems along with my own. Eventually, my body had enough. At one point during that season of my life, I ended up in the hospital.

I remember a doctor looking me in the eyes and saying something I’ve never forgotten: “You’re not Superman.” Apparently, the cape wasn’t fooling anybody. He was right. I wasn’t Superman and I’m still not. There are limits to how much I can carry on my shoulders. I can only help so many people and my time, my energy and ability. They all have a ceiling.

I used to think having limits was admitting weakness. I learned in my 20s learning limits is actually part of becoming mature. You can still care deeply for someone without carrying their entire life on your shoulders and be generous without running yourself empty.

Sometimes the healthiest sentence you can learn to say is: “I can’t do that.” Not because you don’t care, it’s because you have discovered your limits.  

3. You can’t do it alone.

This may have been the hardest lesson for me to learn. I was stubbornly independent growing up. Somewhere along the way, I got the idea that accepting help from someone else meant I had failed. If I could possibly do something myself, I was going to do it myself.

Of course, there was one small problem with that philosophy: I was a kid. I wasn’t nearly as independent as I thought I was. My family was providing for me every day and receiving help constantly. I just didn’t recognize it as help.

I was stubborn about not getting help, too.  I can remember being a teenager and walking across town in the pouring rain. No jacket. Soaked with about a gallon and a half of water in my shoes. Someone I knew and trusted would pull up beside me and say, “Hey, do you want a ride?” My response? “Nope. I’m fine.”  For some reason, getting soaked seemed preferable to admitting that I could use a little help. That faux idea of independence followed me into my 20s.

“Nope. I’m good.” I was not good.

Eventually, started learning that we aren’t autonomous beings. We need each other.

There will be things in life you simply cannot do by yourself, problems that you don’t know how to solve and decisions where you need someone else’s wisdom. And yes, occasionally you just need somebody to give you a ride. Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re incapable, it means you’re human. Maturity is learning when to ask for help and being humble enough to receive it.

Yep, your 20s are a strange decade. You’re finally given independence, and then you spend years learning what to do with it. The good news is that we’ve all gone through it. You are not alone. Hang on, keep learning and the lessons will stick with you the rest of your life.