Heart to Heart with Hads

Navigating Your 20s: When Life Feels Like Going Through the Motions

• Hadlea Shaw

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Life's unexpected challenges don't have to derail your progress. Even when facing stressful situations like my dog's health crisis, we can still prioritize our well-being by adjusting our schedules rather than abandoning our routines entirely.

• When stressful situations arise, don't abandon your health routines completely
• The mindset you adopt during challenging times determines your ability to stay consistent
• Many women in their 20s struggle with feeling lost after college and entering the workforce
• External achievements like fitness goals, career success, or relationships won't fulfill you without internal purpose
• Finding what "lights you up inside" requires trial and error with different experiences
• Working at a supplement store and exploring bodybuilding helped me discover my true passion
• Social media creates unrealistic pressure by showing only small slivers of people's lives
• Focus on discovering activities you genuinely enjoy rather than comparing yourself to others
• Everyone's timeline is different, and no two people's experiences are the same
• True fulfillment comes from knowing yourself, not from external validation or accomplishments

If you're struggling to find what fulfills you, try incorporating activities you enjoyed as a child into your routine and be patient with yourself as you discover your authentic path.


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Speaker 1:

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Heart to Heart with Hads. Today I just kind of want to give a little life update but also share just several things that I've been thinking about as I enter my 20s, mid-20s, but just some relatable things that I feel like a lot of women specifically in their 20s may be feeling right now and just kind of navigating life in general. The first thing that I want to talk about is my baby boy, steele, so my little Frenchie. He is about to be four years old Five days actually he'll be four, and this past week was like super stressful because my dog, my other dog, hosmer, he's also a Frenchie, he's only two and he bit my dog Steel in the ear and I think that caused some sort of reaction, something. I'm not quite sure, but he tensed up and now his back is not in commission and he can't move his little back two legs. So that's been very stressful, to say the least, just because now he's peeing on himself and he was wearing a diaper now, and so we have to keep him clean at all times, changing his diaper every hour and a half, two hours, and doing red light therapy. I'm taking him to the vet every single day at this vet that's 30 minutes away, so it's like 30 minutes there, and then he has like a 25 30 minute appointment 30 minutes back. So it's just a lot of extra things that I'm having to account for time-wise and my day, and so it's making things a little bit stressy stressful, to say the least, but I'm still making shit happen.

Speaker 1:

So this is just your friendly little reminder that, even when things get crazy, you can still steal. Thinking about steal, you can still hit your meals. Steel, you can still hit your meals. You can still go to the gym. You can still make things happen. All you have to do is rework your days. I think we get so consumed on I need to hit the gym on Tuesday, thursday and Saturday, and if I don't, then it like and I'll be out. Or if you have one meal out to eat, you'll let it affect the rest of your day and or the rest of your weekend, the rest of your week, and reality doesn't have to do that.

Speaker 1:

It's your mindset towards what you're doing, just being consciously aware of like, hey, I'm actually going through it right now, but I'm not going to push everything to the wayside. Yeah, I may be stressed. Yeah, I may be a little more snappyppy, but that doesn't mean that I just completely shove everything out the window just because life is hectic, like your health does not take, does not go on the back burner on the wayside just because something stressful comes up. And if if you're someone that every time life happens, something crazy happens and then you completely shut down, say something like something big at work, happens, super stressful at work, then you automatically just stop your fitness routine. I've seen this many, many times time and time again from clients. They're like, oh my gosh, you know work is so stressful and so then they rely on food or other things to give them comfort and that sweet, that dopamine hit when in reality it's like if you were to just continue to do the hard things, even whenever life sucks so badly, you would feel so much better about yourself and you would not have this guilt and shame of like, oh my gosh, I actually fell off plan and now I'm guilty and I'm shameful and I don't want to do anything at all. No, that's, that's not how we go about things at all. So just wanted to share that a little bit.

Speaker 1:

But anyways, getting into today's episode topic, I just want to talk about. There's some several things that I've seen. So, for one, I have a client and I've seen this from lots of women in their 20s too, and even in myself. But I see this a lot in my client specifically. I see a lot of me in her and there's this period where you know, we finish college, or maybe we don't go to college, but we, you know like, join the workforce and we start to quote-unquote adult and then we kind of lose sight of like okay, what am I actually doing with my life right now?

Speaker 1:

Because it feels like I'm just going through the motions and nothing feels real and fulfilling. And you know, chasing the body, chasing the physique, chasing the money, chasing the business, chasing the dream, climbing up the corporate ladder, you know all of those things. None of that leaves you fulfilled. You know, finding a romantic partner, or you know dating on Hinge and whatever. None of that is going to leave you fulfilled unless you can't truly find what lights you up inside.

Speaker 1:

And I'm not going to sit here and say that I have felt or I truly know 100% what lights me up inside, but I do know that, at least within my career and what I'm doing lights me up inside because I am helping women. That's my passion is helping, or my purpose is to help these women go after their goals, achieve their goals, know that they are badass women, that they can do anything that they're capable of and, at the same time, like that is still career driven and career based right. It still needs to be something that I enjoy doing, that I love doing Like I want to wake up out of bed every morning and totally love my day. Now, obviously, we're not going to love our days every single day. My goal is to find the things that I want to do inside my days that are going to make me continue to feel good and want to show up and want to show up for my clients and want to do the things.

Speaker 1:

Because I think if you don't really find what you love to do, say like in your career, and then you're just showing up and you're just going through the motions, it can just feel like you're stuck, like you're kind of trapped, because I remember about okay, so two years ago I got a job. I got a corporate job. I was freshly out of college and I was like I just need something, I just need to give me money. And, yeah, it gave me money, right, it gives you that security, and you're fresh out of college, like you've never made that much money before. So I was like, wow, this is nice. But then, as you get into it, you're like this is not leaving me fulfilled in any way at all, and so that's essentially why I decided to leave the corporate world and go all in on my own. But even then, even if you do that, that doesn't automatically mean that you're going to be quote unquote fulfilled and that you're going to know like this is exactly the path that I should be on. And so I think it's just trialing and erroring different things.

Speaker 1:

And I was talking about that client. But anyways, she graduated college and she's like still kind of struggling with like, oh, like I'm a retired athlete, like I miss my friends at college, and she's like, but I'm struggling to figure out what I want to do, because she wants to be a personal trainer, kind of follow down the same path I did. She's working at, uh, I think, american Eagle, and she texted me last night, I think, and said that she there was like a personal training for this shit, and I was like, jump on that. Like you need to jump on the things, even if that's not what you want to do long term. You have to think, okay, what's going to serve me right now and what's actually going to build up for long term, so that I know like, hey, this is actually what I don't want to be doing, because I obviously she's not going to want to be a retail manager forever. But her saying like, hey, I want to try this part-time job, like just getting your foot in the door of things, like even for myself.

Speaker 1:

I think that me you know quitting cheer in college. And well, I guess I didn't quit. I finished out my school year and then I stopped cheering the same time the school year was over, came home, I kind of got into the bodybuilding realm, the bodybuilding scene, and I worked at a supplement store shout out supplement world, shout out Dan for coaching. And that's kind of, really, when my love and passion for fitness took off was because of those things, because I had that background. Now I would have never gone into that had I not moved back home, had a friend that influenced me to get a coach and then be exactly where I'm at now.

Speaker 1:

So this just goes to say just because you're not where you want to be doesn't mean that that's where you're going to be stuck forever. You have to find the things that you love essentially. For me, I loved health, I loved fitness and I loved helping people and it's like okay. So what are like little avenues that can get me into that? Okay, supplement store yeah, I don't really want to work at a supplement store my whole life, but it's health and you're helping people, right and so, and same with bodybuilding. Yeah, it it's health and you're helping people, right and so, and same with bodybuilding. Yeah, it's like I'm not helping people, but I, you know, I'm working on myself and my own health. So, yeah, that could help me later on down the line, and just, it's like putting all the little puzzle pieces together to try and figure out what you need like to do. But back to the back to the.

Speaker 1:

Where I'm going with this is we get into this in our heads of like is this, is this what I should be doing right now? And I think the biggest thing is just like be where your feet are, keep growing in what you know is to be true to you, and I think it comes out of like, oh, like, I'm not making as much money as my friend, or you know, my friend is having a baby and is married and there's so many different things. And I feel like the biggest thing that is kind of making this pressure, or like the biggest influence of the pressure that we feel in our mid twenties I consider myself mid twenties, even though I'm only 23,. I still consider myself just because, anyways, it doesn't really matter, but I do think I consider myself that because I am mature for my age and I think the biggest thing is like we were influenced by so many things online. You know, you see this influencer doing that, you see this person traveling the world for their job and it's like well, how the fuck are they doing that? And like having the money, but also and there's just so many things that go into every little person and what they do in their journeys and the biggest thing is like just focus on you and sit with really what you want to do, eliminate all outside distractions and really focus like hey, like what do I love? What are things I love to do? Going back to kind of what I was saying is finding things that you love to do throughout your day, because for me, I was getting to this point where I was just strictly working, I wasn't having any fun and I was like this there's got to be something more to this. And so actually today I'm going to hip hop class for the first time adult hip hop and I'm nervous, but like that's going to take me back to my childhood. It's going to be something that I enjoy doing.

Speaker 1:

And when we get in our twenties, when we get to, we have to make money, we have to pay bills and like nobody prepares you for that Right. And so we kind of get sucked into this world of like work, pay your bills and, you know, go out and get shit face drunk. If you hate your life or if you, if that's how you want to have fun, that's totally fine. But even then it's still masking something that you're trying to uncover, because you're not okay with just being still and just being you. So really doing a deep dive on, hey, what do I love and what do I want my life to look like? And even if you know it's not going to happen soon, know that it will happen.

Speaker 1:

I always, whenever I'm in my meditations or like doing affirmations or things like that, I'm always thinking okay, I know my timeline is not going to be the same for what the actual timeline is going to be. So it's like showing up and doing the things anyways and still dreaming and imagining and envisioning yourself doing said thing, even if it's not on the right terms or timeline that you're associating it with. So, everything being said, I know that I've kind of rambled and not really had an outline of what I was going to say. I just wanted to get on here and kind of yap what was on my mind. I don't know if that was all that was on my mind, but mostly just like navigating, feeling stuck or lost in your 20s. Maybe you know you're trying to achieve everything and or make just achieve every little thing instead of just really living like everyone's on their own little path.

Speaker 1:

But I think that just realizing that every single person has been in our same age age range before and no two people's experiences are going to be the same. So you might as well just focus on what you love to do, what you you want to do, exploring different things, and not comparing yourself to everybody on social media, because it can be hard. I've done it and I've seen like, oh, this person lives in this city, I want to live in that city and it's like you can have that ambition. But at the same time, is that really what you want? Or do you just see the lifestyle, the like 20% of what they do, and think, oh my gosh, they're so happy, that looks so fun, right? Because when you see those people, they're only posting a very small sliver of their life and they could be hating their lives. They could be miserable. You know there's so many influencers like money is not everything. You have to be able to find things that let you up inside, because you can have all the success in the world, you can have the most banging fucking body, but if you're not right up here, like you don't feel your best up here and something's going on up there, you're not going to feel fulfilled. So hopefully you guys enjoy this little episode.

Speaker 1:

I only talked for 15 minutes.

Speaker 1:

My episodes are pretty short but I don't like to throw a bunch of things out there because I can yap for a long time. But also I'm trying to get into more recording myself on the camera and just excuse me flowing and not having to come up with like a script, just just telling what's totally on my mind and things that I'm kind of feeling at this time. So also, I have no nails right now because my nail lady is in Vietnam, so it's like I have not had my nails like just free-balling for a while. So I mean, I think I just needed to give them a little bit of a break. They're still kind of like very they're not frail by any means, but my nails have been, have been done for like three, three years without a break, so it was definitely due for a little break.

Speaker 1:

Anyways, guys, I'm gonna wrap this episode up. I hope you guys enjoyed and kind of got some good insight and just know that like hey, we're not alone, we're all in this together, we're all navigating things together and there's no need to try and be somebody else, just be who you are. Okay, love you Bye.