Hey, guys. It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet. And this week's video is brought to you by Wealthsimple.

And as you may notice, I am in a totally different space. Although it is technically the same room in which I used to film, but it is now very different in terms of how the room is set up. It's actually my office, slash, our guestroom and if you want to see a little bit more about what it looks like in full, you can head over to my Instagram which is at the link in the description.

And today I wanted to talk about the myths that you might have about what it means to be an adult that are holding you back from living the life you should be. I'm someone who definitely had a lot of misconceptions about what it means to be an adult. And as someone who's about to turn 30, I'm very happy to say that I have mostly gotten rid of these negative ideas.

Adulthood is not going to look the same for everyone financially, or professionally, or romantically, or even in the basic day-to-day life choices we're all going to make. And what's important is to get rid of a lot of these notions that we may have all picked up along the way about what we need to be doing or what our lives need to look like by a certain age. So without further ado, here are eight myths about adulthood that might be holding you back.

Number one is that you're as close to people as social media makes you feel. One of the most harmful things that our social media driven culture has done to us emotionally is give us the false impression that all of the people that we might see when scrolling on a day-to-day basis are really our friends. The truth is amongst the people that you have on any given feed, only a very, very small percentage of those people are actually what could meaningly be considered as friends.

And exposing yourself on a day-to-day basis to the minutia of all these people's lives really makes you feel way closer to them than you actually are. A myth that social media definitely gave me about adulthood is that we were supposed to remain close to these people that we may not have seen in real life for years. Before we had these people living on our phones every day, it was totally natural and expected that, for example, most of the people you went to high school and college with, you would not still be day-to-day friends with at age 30.

And it's not because either of you are bad people or there had to be some big falling out. It's just the natural progression of you both living your lives. And there's no obligation that says we have to keep someone around if they are not adding something to our digital life or actively making us feel bad.

A few times throughout my 20s I've done huge social media purges where I got rid of people who I'd long since stopped being close to and started to feel irritated when I saw their posts on my feed. While at first it might feel a little awkward or unfair to remove someone, the truth is that person you haven't seen for seven years, you don't owe anything to them. So ridding yourself of this myth that a social media connection automatically equals a friend or that you're supposed to keep these people in your life for a long time unnaturally is hugely important to really focusing on the relationships that matter.

Don't define your friendships by who you have when you open your phone. Define your friendships by who makes the time for you in real life and vice versa. And that can be as simple as actually using your phone to call someone.

Number two is that there are certain benchmarks of adulthood that everyone needs to hit. Most of us were probably raised with a notion that we should own a home, for example, by a certain age. And not only is it not financially feasible for many of us to own a home by that age or any age, it's also not always universally a good decision.

For example, when you buy a home, you are making a commitment to realistically live in that area for a minimum of five to 10 years. Which not only assumes that you won't change your life, or needs, or professional opportunities in that time, but also assumes that you will have the financial stability to keep paying that mortgage every day. It's not impossible and being a homeowner can be a great investment, but it's not an automatic for everyone and comes with a lot of asterisks.

There's also a possibility that the market might take a downturn at a time when you want or need to sell. You have to be willing to ride those times out and not everyone is ready to make that commitment in their 20s. But if we hear these things over and over again about how buying is what adults do or renting is throwing away your money, you can really internalize it that if you don't own a home by a certain age, you're not a real adult.

The same thing can be true for when you expect to be married, or to have a kid, or the fact that you should be having kids at all in order to be an adult. My parents got married at 24 and had me at 27. And when I passed both of those ages and was neither married nor had a kid, I admit that I felt a little strange.

It was weird to say to myself, oh, wow, I'm this age. That always felt like I should be at this place because it's where my parents were and I'm not at that place. But that is my parents' life and there's no arbitrary life decision, whether it's marriage, or home ownership, or having a child, that makes or doesn't make you an adult.

Probably one of the greatest myths we all deal with is that there is some invisible checklist that unless we fully check it off by a certain time, we've missed some big goal post. And here's the thing. We probably should have a checklist about what adulthood means to us, but it might have nothing to do with home ownership or having a kid.

For example, for me, I want to really be able to take care of myself and plan for myself financially and professionally in a very coherent way by the time I'm 30. That means things like writing a will for myself, making sure I'm managing all of my day-to-day investments, and understanding what my long-term plans entail. I might own a home in the next two years or I might not.

What matters to me about being an adult is how much control I have over my life. So forget the imaginary deadlines and do what makes you feel like an adult. Number three is that you're not allowed to change career paths once you've started.

One of the biggest myths a lot of us have about adulthood, especially when it comes to your professional life, is that if you get off the track or have a delayed start to the professional life that you want, that you'll always be behind or not get what you really want out of your career. And when it's combined with the pressure that so many of us feel coming out of school to just land a job no matter what the job is, it can feel like once you get that job, you can never leave it. And that goes as well for the interview process.

Which is why we made a video recently about knowing your rights when asked questions at a job interview, which we'll link you to in the description. But many successful people do bounce around in terms of their exact career path or even have a delayed start to their professional life. And more importantly, even if you're not going to totally change industries, moving to a different company can be one of the most powerful tools you have when it comes to advocating for your own salary or role within a company.

When you start at a company fresh out of school, you were probably starting at a low salary. And even if you're getting great raises every year, it's only going to be incremental based on that initial salary. Whereas when you take another job at a different company, you can start from an entirely new salary and work up from there.

The jump represented by moving to a new role and a new company can often be three to four times as high as simply getting a raise internally at your current company. And while the move should not be happening any more frequently than 18 months at a time and even that's a little low, you don't want to trap yourself into staying at the same company just because it's familiar to you. Not to mention, one of the most effective ways to learn new skills is to move to a slightly different position and that may not be possible at the company you're currently at.

And although moving to a different company can be a way to really raise your salary, it also might be an opportunity for some to take a pay cut so that you can do more of the job you want to do in the long term. Either way, a career is almost never a linear path. It's why one of our favorite books here at the Financial Diet is The Career Lattice by Joanne Cleaver.

Her central thesis is that there's no such thing anymore as a career ladder, i.e. Something that goes straight up in one direction at the same company for an entire career. Today, in order to get what you want and be where you want, you have to go up sometimes, but also out and over like on a lattice.

Losing that myth-based fear of diverting from the career path you started on is incredibly important to making the moves that might be necessary for you. Number four is that there are people at work who know 100% what they're doing. Especially when you're just starting out at a career, it can seem like you are a child who has been brought to work on bring your kid to work day, and was mysteriously given a desk and a computer and you're totally faking your way through it.

And you can also feel like some of the people you work with, especially your bosses and managers, have everything altogether and go into work every day feeling total clarity. But here's the secret. Basically everyone is faking it a little bit.

And there is a logical reason for that. As people move up in any given company structure, they're almost certainly coming into a role that involves tasks, and responsibilities, and skills, that they didn't necessarily master at their last role. And while there are some people who, in a professional setting, do have a high level of confidence or at least act like they do, there is never a situation in which someone feels 100% confidence around every decision that they make at their job.

Even someone who might be highly skilled in one area of their role can be totally blindsided by others. And the funniest thing is, if you ever do feel at your job like you have 100% confidence and are never challenged by it or put out of your comfort zone, you should probably leave that job. The idea that anyone ever walks around feeling like they know 100% what they're doing is a total myth.

And the sooner you realize that everyone is having to figure it out, the sooner you can be confident in your own abilities instead of constantly questioning yourself. Number five is everyone is looking at you. Maybe one of the number one myths about adulthood that is holding you back is this idea that people are really watching you and are very concerned with what you're doing.

And maybe the key to being the happiest and freest in your adult life is remembering this fundamental rule. The vast majority of people are not thinking of you at all. They don't really care about you.

And their decisions are probably not based on you. And this isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean you're alone in the universe.

It's an extremely good and freeing thing because you can live the life that matters for you and make the decisions you need to make without worrying about what everyone else thinks of them. Obviously, there are times when you have to be concerned about the opinions of others like your boss, but for the vast majority of the people in your life as an adult, they have their own shit to worry about. Most people are too busy working their own jobs and taking care of their own lives to be overly focused on you.

And actively, even out loud, reminding yourself of that fact from time-to-time can be incredibly freeing. Just keep saying, and you can even put this on a sticky note on your mirror or laptop, it's not about you. Number six is that special occasions are always going to be the highlight of your year.

So one of the worst things you can slip into in an adult life is this life that is based around working really hard and keeping your head down, and ignoring everything else until the designated periods of enjoying your life and the people around you, whether that's weekends or vacations or holidays. Because not only is it statistically proven to make people more unhappy and actually make you less productive, it's also so important that we not reserve the time for enjoying what we have to a few specific moments. But with a demanding job and limited vacation time, it can be incredibly easy to slip into that dynamic.

So force yourself to break it up. For example, instead of doing all of your social activities on weekends, designate at least one night during the week to be a fun and not overly tiring social engagement that allows you to do something you enjoy. And when it comes to vacations, instead of saving all of your vacation time up for these very big, very expensive trips, break some of that time up into smaller weekends away, which are psychologically demonstrated to have the same benefit on your happiness and productivity as those longer vacations.

And when it comes to seeing people you love, don't expect that the only time you'll see or even really have meaningful conversations with people like family members you love are at big holidays. Have a dedicated night every month to call certain family members or make plans to go surprise them one weekend for their birthday. Start distributing the time in your life that is meaningful and you'll stop feeling like you have so little of it.

Number seven is feeling like you owe people explanations for your life choices. Another thing that social media does to us as adults that is so damaging is making us feel that these people, who are not really our friends in most cases, are owed an explanation or even a conversation about your life choices. Whether you're having four kids or no kids, whether you're married or not, whether you're renting or owning, whether you're a lawyer or a waiter or a circus performer, all of this is about you and the decisions that are right for you.

And when it feels like so many of your choices are on display for everyone you've ever known since middle school, it can be really hard to just make them for the reasons that matter. One example for this that I've had to kind of get over in my own life is when telling people that I don't think that I want kids, I automatically leap into explanations and justifications about why. I do this is a reflex because I know that on some level not everyone will love that decision and some people might take it as a personal slight against their own decisions.

But then I remember that rule of probably no one cares about me, which is extremely liberating. But more importantly, I remember the idea that I am a healthy adult who is competent to make choices based on what's right for herself and I don't owe anyone an explanation so long as what I'm doing doesn't affect them. Yes, you may decide that you want to have honest and forthright conversations with people you love about things that are big life decisions.

But in general, we should get out of the habit of explaining and justifying to one another why we might be doing something. Because it only creates a further culture of feeling that there are right and wrong decisions, which then reinforces the idea that there are certain things we have to do by a certain age. And if we let ourselves, we can make everything like the mommy blogger internet, which is an often very scary place of people being really, really angry at each other for making different decisions.

And number eight is being honest is the same as being dramatic. It is very easy in adult life to become really constrained by this idea that being honest and forthright with your feelings is automatically an unfair or dramatic thing to do. Now, obviously we should always be conscientious of each other and not intentionally hurt each other, but being an adult doesn't automatically equate only having really polite small talk with each other.

If someone is doing something to you that might cross a boundary or hurt your feelings, you have every right to, in a polite way, say hey, I'd rather not talk about that. Or hey, I know you didn't mean to but that really hurt my feelings. Or even hey, I think I might need to take a step back here for a while and get some air.

There's nothing dramatic or immature about being honest about what you need. And while, yes, some people do get more and more afraid of any kind of confrontation as they become an adult, there's also nothing inherently immature or adolescent about not being afraid of a little bit of necessary confrontation. Even the word confrontation is misleading.

You're not getting in a fist fight with these people, but you have to confront things that may make you uncomfortable. Even somewhere like at work, if you have a manager who's not respecting your time or your boundaries, you have to confront that issue and set up the boundaries that are necessary for you. Like, for example, hey, I know we have a lot going on right now, but I really can't be on my work email after 10 PM.

The point is, confusing being an adult with always being polite and deferential and non-confrontational, even when it comes at the cost of your own mental health or needs, is not right. And, in fact, being a conscientious and honest person with others about what your needs are is one of the most grown up things of all. And maybe the biggest myth when it comes to adulthood is the idea that you need to wait until you're really old or have a lot of money to start investing.

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You can get started with literally $1 and it only takes a few minutes. No excuses. So as always, guys, thank you for watching.

And don't forget to hit the Subscribe button and to come back every Tuesday and Thursday for new and awesome videos. Bye.