530. 9 Things I Wish I’d Known In My 20s

I don’t know about all you all, but being 22 for me was difficult. It wasn’t as exciting as it seems like it was for Taylor Swift. There were some fun parts. I loved being independent, being on my own, meeting lots of new people, going to college was fun, but it was also a difficult time of life in that there’s a lot of decisions to be made, a lot of unknown about what’s going to happen, and sometimes I didn’t navigate it so well. But if I could go back in time, these are nine things that I would tell my 20s-ish-year-old self. This is Better Than Happy, episode 530, nine things I wish I’d known in my 20s. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

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Hey there, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. I got a great episode in store for you. Last week, I did an episode on nine things I wish I’d known as a new coach. You guys seem to really like that. It was a lot of fun for me, so I thought we’d do another version that is just me talking more to my younger self in general, not so much about my coaching business. And that’s what we’re diving into here today. First of all, how’s your week going? What’s happening for you? How is September going for you? I hope it’s going beautifully. I hope you’re having an amazing time.

I want to mention a couple of updates about things happening here at Jody Moore Coaching that you’re going to want to know about. The first one is that we are going to be opening up the priority list for coach training. If you want to be trained as a coach and you want to have all the skills and tools and resources that I use as a coach, that I’ve been using for over 11 years now to help people, to make an impact, and to build my business, that’s what I teach in my Better Than Happy Coach Training. It’s an awesome program. I have a group getting ready to graduate this fall, and I’ve fallen in love with every single one of them, and I know they’ve all fallen in love with each other and it’s just been such a magical experience.

So we’re doing it again. It’ll start early 2026, but we’ll be opening up the priority list, telling you all about how the program works, how to get a spot, and all those juicy details you’re going to want to know. So if you want to get on that priority list, go to JodyMoore.com/priority. Okay? That’s the URL, JodyMoore.com/priority, and you will be the first one to get the details and get the chance to grab a spot. Last year, we sold it out in three days. So you’re going to want to be paying attention.

All right, let’s dive into episode 530, shall we? We’re going to talk about the nine things I wish I’d known in my 20s. Let’s just dive right in. The first thing I wish that I had understood is that our thoughts are creating our feelings. This is the one tidbit of information that when I am talking to someone brand new, and maybe I only have a little time to help them, to make an impact, or I go speak to an audience somewhere on a stage or whatever it is I’m doing, if they take away one thing, I always hope that it’s this: your thoughts are creating your feelings. Because this has limitless application in terms of how it makes your life better.

When you realize that other people aren’t creating your feelings, the weather isn’t even creating your feelings, your teacher, your boss, your spouse, your children, what’s going on with them, none of that is creating your feelings. Your thoughts are creating your feelings. Then suddenly you become empowered. It doesn’t mean you should feel good all the time. Doesn’t mean you should feel positive all the time, young Jody, I would say to her. It’s okay to feel negative. It’s okay to have thoughts that make you feel bad. There’s nothing wrong with negative emotions as part of the human experience. You’re going to want to sometimes think thoughts that generate negative emotions. That’s appropriate. That’s human.

But in the end, it’s your thoughts creating your feelings. Good to know, don’t you think? Don’t you think someone should tell us this when we’re younger? I’m telling you right now, you can tell anyone else that’s open to hearing it, and it will set them free if they choose to notice it and embrace it and see the reality of it in the end.

Number two, you are not responsible for other people’s feelings. Okay? When I was newly married, which didn’t happen until in my 30s, but I’ll talk to that version of me too, I really struggled with, and of course, I’d struggled with it a little bit before then, but it really landed for me when I suddenly had a spouse. And it felt like the right thing to do to take on responsibility for his emotions, that if he was stressed or unhappy or worried or sad or whatever, that I should also be stressed or worried or unhappy or sad. If I didn’t, it felt like I didn’t care about him, right? And I didn’t even know that I didn’t have to or that there was a way not to, to be honest at first.

But I remember when I first started learning this concept that I’m not responsible for other people’s feelings, because back to number one, thoughts create feelings. If my thoughts create my feelings, that means my spouse’s thoughts are creating my spouse’s feelings. So when I try to take responsibility for them, it doesn’t serve me or my spouse in the end. Okay? Now, I want to be clear. This does not mean that I don’t care about other people’s feelings, or that I’m not aware of other people’s feelings, or that I don’t do my best to offer them the opportunity to feel better if it seems like they’re open to it, okay? That I wouldn’t want to try to be a positive influence on people. I’m all for doing all of those things personally, and I would invite you to do all those things as well, but that is not the same as taking responsibility. How do you know the difference? The difference is when I take responsibility, it means I don’t get to feel how I want to feel until they feel how I want them to feel. Okay? This is how you know you’ve crossed over into taking responsibility for them.

That’s different than deciding, I kind of want to feel worried about my spouse right now, or my child right now. I’m going to choose to feel worried. It’s okay that I’m worried. I’m worried because of what I’m thinking, but that’s okay. That’s different than, how am I going to get my spouse to feel better? How am I going to get my child to feel better? You see the difference? Okay? So you are not responsible for other people’s feelings. You do not have as much power as your little brain is telling you. You cannot actually make people feel better. If they’re going to feel better, it’s going to be because of what they decide to think. You can offer them new thoughts. Sometimes we’re open to new thoughts when we’re feeling down and or bad and our friends offer us new thoughts.

But sometimes we’re not. Have you noticed? Sometimes we go, no, because of this. You don’t get it because of this. Why can’t you just listen? Right? The reason why we resist sometimes feeling better is because we don’t always want to feel good. Sometimes allowing ourselves negative emotion, moving through the experience, processing it, learning whatever maybe we want to learn because of it, is a really healthy, natural thing. Okay? So, remember again, back when I was young married, I started to gain this knowledge and I decided to try it out. I was like, okay, what if my husband’s going to be stressed, but I’m not stressed that he’s stressed. What? What would that even be like? Right? I remember thinking like, how would I do that? I just had to go, it’s okay that he’s stressed. I don’t have to be stressed about his stress.

Or it’s okay that he’s worried. I don’t have to be worried about his worry if I don’t want to. I can be at peace. I can decide everything’s going to be okay. It’s going to work out somehow in the end. And it doesn’t mean I have to get him to believe that even. Again, I can offer it, and if he’s open, cool, but if he’s not, no problem. I say, I’m so sorry that you’re stressed. I love you so much. That’s it. You don’t have to fix it. You don’t have to get them to see it differently. You don’t have to solve it. You just say, I love you so much. I’m so sorry that you’re feeling stressed. It’s okay to be stressed. Let me know if I can do anything to support you.

That’s so much better for both of you because they have to work through a lot of things internally often, and maybe they don’t want to feel better. All right, now number three piggybacks off of this. So number two is I’m not responsible for other people’s feelings, but number three is that I am 100% responsible for my own feelings. So this means I don’t delegate my feelings to other people. I don’t say, I’m so mad because my friend said this thing. I’m not mad because of what my friend said. I’m mad because of what I’m thinking, because of the meaning I’m giving to what my friend said, because of what I’m making it mean or the story I’m believing or the predictions I’m giving it about my future. That’s the reason I’m mad, because of my own brain.

And again, it’s okay to be mad. I just don’t want to delegate the responsibility for it to anyone else. You know why? If other people are responsible for it, I have to try to control those other people. Super frustrating because it’s not doable. They don’t like to be controlled. Have you noticed? Just like we don’t like to be controlled. So I like to keep 100% responsibility for my own emotions. I do not give the credit to outside things. I keep the credit.

Now, this is not only true for negative emotions, it’s also true for positive emotions. When I’m feeling really good and happy and joyful, it’s not because of anything outside of me. It’s because of my own brain, my own mind, my own thoughts, what I’m thinking, what I’m focusing on, the meaning I’m giving to things. This goes back to number one, thoughts create feelings, right? You can see why that’s such a powerful one. So far, it applies to everything we’ve talked about. But I like to remember again, oh, I’m responsible for my feelings. If and when I want to feel better, I need to figure out how I’m going to do that for me. You with me so far? All right, let’s move on.

Number four. Circumstances are neutral until we think thoughts about them and show up for them and create something in our own lives. Okay? Now, this one, I’m going to go back and talk to young Jody again in her 20s. I got married when I was 30. And so in my 20s, especially in my late 20s, I started feeling lonely, worried that I wasn’t going to get married and be able to have a family like I wanted, just kind of lost and struggling a little bit. And I thought that everything would be better if I just got married, if I could just find that guy, that Mr. Right, and get married and settle down, then it would be happier. Then I wouldn’t feel lonely. I wouldn’t feel scared. I wouldn’t feel lost. I wouldn’t feel like my life was going the way it was supposed to go.

Now, it’s possible that getting married would have made it easier for me to believe those thoughts, but what I want to tell that young version of me and all of you today is that, and this is obviously not rocket science, but I want you to think about it. You can be unhappily married just as easily as you can be happily single or unhappily single or happily married. Being married, being single, those are circumstances. Marriage doesn’t create happiness, just like marriage doesn’t create unhappiness. Marriage is a circumstance. Being single is a circumstance. Being in a serious relationship is a circumstance. Being divorced is a circumstance. Okay? 

Those circumstances are never creating our results. We are with what we’re thinking and feeling and doing, what we’re focusing on in our minds, first of all, what we’re believing about ourselves or our lives, or the people around us, or our future. Okay? And what we’re thinking then is creating what we’re feeling, and then we show up in our lives, or we don’t show up in our lives, and we create ultimately our experience.

So, again, I wish that when I was younger, I had understood this because if I could go back to younger me and tell me this, I know that I would do a lot more focusing on what’s happening internally, who I’m being, and a lot less crossing my fingers that things outside of me would just turn out how I hoped they would. Okay? And it’s okay. Everything obviously went exactly how it was supposed to in the past. But going forward in the future, knowing this has changed everything for me because it means I can create whatever I want. I don’t have to cross my fingers and hope that things work out. I can show up and create what I want. I can create it right now in the present experience. I can feel however I want to feel. I can enjoy something or not enjoy something. I have the capacity to. And again, it’s okay to not enjoy everything. It’s okay to have downtime and negative time and all of that.

But I can, if I want to, I have the ability to love my life, love my circumstances, have fun, enjoy things if I want to. And also, if I’m not and I want to, then I know how to focus on that, how to create that. I can show up and do and create anything I want to. This is really good to know.

All right. Number five. Discomfort is a sign of growth. Okay? Now, I should have probably said discomfort is usually or often a sign of growth. I don’t know that I want to give it an absolute, but in many cases, sometimes discomfort might be a sign of harm happening, right? But in most cases and in many cases, anyway, discomfort is a sign of growth. Now, this is true physically, first of all, right? I went to a tough class at the gym last night, and this morning my muscles are hurting. And that is uncomfortable physically, but what it means is that my muscles have been broken down and now they are trying to rebuild, and they’re going to come back stronger. I’m growing my muscles physically, literally.

This is also how we operate emotionally and mentally. Okay? The discomfort, the fear, the overwhelm, the uncertainty, sometimes the worry, sometimes the stress is a sign that you have the potential to grow. You’re being broken down a little bit, but when you overcome it, you can come back even stronger. 

I just saw an experience like this happen with someone that I love. Something happened in her life that really scared her and worried her and caused her to panic. And as we together worked through it and talked through what is really going on here, what does this mean, and how do we handle it? How do we respond to this challenge, and also what does it mean about you and what does it not mean about you, right? And we talked through all that and she really connected dots. I’m not here to say I’m the one that helped her. She had a lot of awareness, but we had some conversations about this.

And just the other day, I talked to her and she said, you know what? I’m actually so glad I went through that experience. I feel so much better, not only because it’s handled and I know what to do, but I can handle stuff like that. I see now that I don’t have to go into panic and fear and worry and that it doesn’t mean something negative about me. I can handle stuff like that. That’s growth, but it only came on the other side of discomfort. Discomfort is a sign of growth.

All right, let’s go on to number six. Number six. Your most important relationship… what do you think I’m going to say next? What’s your most important relationship? Your most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. If I could go back to my younger self, I would tell her this. I would tell all of you this, and I tell myself this on the regular. You have to be focusing on your relationship with yourself. What does that even mean? It means how do you think about yourself? How do you talk to yourself? Do you even pay attention to yourself? Do you acknowledge that you have needs and weaknesses and faults and that’s okay? And do you say, we’re going to figure out how to meet those? I’m going to be here for you.

How can I support you? Just like with my spouse, right? When I say, I love you, how let me know if I can do anything to support you. I say the same thing to myself. I love you, Jody Moore. I see that you kind of had a rough day today and you dropped the ball, or you didn’t show up, or you did this awful thing. What’s going on? I love you and I know you’re capable of more. That’s not even like you. What’s going on? What do you need? How can I support you?

Okay? Other times it’s like, I’m so proud of you, girl. Look what you’ve done. It’s amazing. You did a great job today and you didn’t want to do any of that and you did it anyway. And I’m so proud of you. Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for showing up for future me and thank you for what you’ve created thus far. That’s a healthy relationship with yourself. You got to have a healthy relationship with your current self, with your past self, and with your future self. Okay? 

Don’t beat your past self up for all the ways that she fell short. There’s zero upside to that. You’re not going to hate yourself better. You’re not going to judge yourself into improving. You have to be compassionate and open and hear yourself out. You have to make a safe space for yourself to become aware of what’s really going on.

Hey, I know we said we were going to do that thing yesterday, or we said it was really important to us that we work on our business. We said that we really want to eat better, but then we aren’t showing up in that way. We’re not executing, we’re not following through, we’re not honoring our commitments. What’s going on here, hon? Maybe this isn’t a worthy goal. Maybe we should abandon it, or maybe it’s too hard. Maybe I’m expecting too much from you. Maybe I’ve pushed you and we need to take a smaller step. Or what is it? Are you feeling judged? Are you feeling down? Are you feeling not supported? I got you. That’s how I talk to my past self, okay? When she’s dropped the ball.

I also spend a lot of time, like I said, acknowledging when she does a good job, which I know most people don’t do. Doing that has made it so that I can take better care of my future self, right? I say things all the time in my own head like… actually, this podcast. I’m recording this podcast on a Friday morning. I have another meeting coming up right after this, and I usually don’t like to do it when I have something else scheduled because if I, I just like to let my brain wander as I’m talking to you and really receive inspiration, and I don’t like a timed deadline. It gets in the way of that. But I have a full day today. And if I don’t do it today, I’m going to have to do it tonight when my kids are home and I want to hang out with them and I know I’m going to be tired.

And so I was like, hey, future Jody, I’m going to hook you up and do this podcast right now. I’m going to record it right now. Even though part of me wants to go, I need to relax a little before my meeting. Okay? So I hook up future me because I’m really good at taking care of past me and present me. Your relationship with yourself is the one that matters most. It also not only impacts, you know, how you’re living your life, your habits, your goals, and all that, it impacts your relationships with everyone else in your life. You cannot connect with someone else more deeply than you’re connected with yourself. So if you have a very shallow connection with yourself, you’re likely only going to have shallow connections in your other relationships.

Until you connect more deeply with yourself, you will not be able to do that for others because it requires vulnerability. If you can’t be vulnerable with you, who can you be with? You see what I’m saying? So that’s why it’s your most important relationship. Now, some people will say to me, isn’t your relationship with God your most important one? To me, that goes hand in hand with my relationship with myself. God already knows my value and my worth, and He loves me and supports me. He or she, whatever you believe about God, right? I can’t feel that and really know that and embrace that and accept that in my own life if I’m not understanding that myself. That is my relationship with divinity, right? The better my relationship with myself, the better I understand and connect with divinity.

All right. Let’s talk about number seven. Number seven. The faster you make decisions, the better your life will be. This one might sound kind of trivial, but it is not. It is a game changer. We have major decision fatigue in today’s world because we have so many options. We have endless options about what we’re going to wear, what we’re going to eat, where we’re going to live, what we’re going to watch, what we’re going to click on, what we’re going to give our attention to, what we’re going to buy, what we’re going to do with our money.

There’s endless options, as you all know, thanks to technology especially, for anything we want to do in our life. Even without technology, you walk into the grocery store now to buy a drink. Like, let’s say you want to get a sparkling water. It used to be there was one kind of sparkling water. Now there’s 75 kinds with all different levels of flavor and colors and… there’s endless options. You used to just go buy a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Now you can get a big cup or a thin cup or a dark chocolate or a milk chocolate or a pretzel-filled one, or I even saw there’s a caramel one, there’s a peanut butter and jelly one. I mean, why do we need so many options? I don’t know, but we have a lot of them, which is kind of fun, but also exhausting.

And what it does is it depletes us emotionally, all these decisions to be made, number one, and number two, it’s slowing us down because we are not great decision-makers. And that is why I say, the faster you make decisions, the better your life will be. Okay? A lot of my success in my business, I realized just a couple of years into it, after talking to a lot of other coaches who were not making progress as fast as I was, was that I make quick decisions. I always have been a fast decision-maker. 

So I do feel lucky that I was just for some reason born with this little bit of an ability, and I’ve nurtured it to make fast decisions. I don’t overthink things. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. And I actually just taught a class in The Lab called Confident Decision Making, where I’m teaching you how to do it, how I think about decisions, and why I can make them so quickly.

But that is the reason I made much faster progress, and I continue to grow and be successful is because I make fast decisions. Okay? So if you want to grab that course in The Lab, go to JodyMoore.com/workshop. All of you in the lab, it’s posted in the replays. Go check it out if you missed it. We’re going to be focusing on it all month. But if you’re not in The Lab, you can get it at JodyMoore.com/workshop. But the faster you make decisions, the better your life will be, the easier it will be because the better you will feel, and the faster you will make progress towards whatever it is you’re trying to do.

All right, let’s go on. Number eight. Failure is not the worst-case scenario. Inaction is. Okay, I love thinking about this. So let’s say you want to, I’m just going to use a teenager’s example. Maybe you have a teenager that wants to try out for a sports team. They’re going to try out for the volleyball team at school, okay? And they’re like nervous about it, because we get nervous about things like this sometimes. But if you break it down and think about it, what are we nervous about? Well, maybe we’re afraid of looking dumb or something, but ultimately what we’re afraid of is not making it onto the volleyball team.

What if I try out and I give it my all and I let myself in my mind envision myself as somebody on the volleyball team, I get excited about it, and then I don’t make it. Okay? That’s what we’re afraid of. The disappointment, the letdown. But the truth is, the other alternative is we don’t try. We don’t try out for the volleyball team. And then you know what happens? We for sure don’t make it. Okay? So that’s what I mean by inaction. Not trying, not taking action is more tragic than trying and failing. So number one ideal scenario is success. We try out for the team and we make the team. Cool.

But the number two most ideal scenario is we try and we don’t make it. The last scenario that we want is not trying. So this goes back to what we talked about with number five. Discomfort is a sign of growth. So even if you try out for that team and you don’t make it and you have to experience the disappointment, which is optional, by the way, because it’s a feeling, so remember it’s created by your thoughts, you could just go, I’m so proud of you for trying to yourself. You could say that if you wanted. But at any rate, even if you don’t, even if you experience disappointment, okay? That is an opportunity for growth and it is an opportunity for learning. And you could be, along with being disappointed, you could be proud of yourself for trying, for getting out there and trying. And trying is the only way that we ultimately accomplish what we want in our lives, right? So, failure is better than inaction. Don’t forget that.

Number nine. The final thing I would tell my younger self if I could go back in time, I can’t. So I’m just reminding myself today, and I’m reminding it to all of you, is that you can think and believe anything you want. You’re allowed to. You don’t need permission. A lot of times we look to others like, do you think this is normal? What we’re looking for is permission to believe that we’re not broken. You’re allowed to just believe that, no matter what. Did you know this, my friends? No one can stop you. You’re allowed to think this is going to go great. You’re allowed to believe that everything’s going to work out in your favor, and it is constantly working out in your favor, and that nothing’s gone wrong in the past, and that everything’s going to go exactly as it should in the future. You’re allowed to believe that you know what age you’re going to die. You’re allowed to believe that everybody dies right on time.

Now, I’m not telling you should believe any of these things. Some of the beliefs I’m offering you right now, you might be like, I don’t like that one. Cool. You don’t have to believe anything I’m giving you either. You’re allowed to think and believe anything you want. You don’t have to have proof. You don’t have to have evidence. You don’t have to have other people agree with you or back it up. You can just think and believe anything you want. When you get this, then the world becomes full of possibility and your potential becomes full of possibility because you realize, wait a second, if I really believed I was going to be successful, I would go try. If I really believed it’s okay to fail, I would go try. If I really believed in what I want to believe in, and we’re looking often to outside sources or we want to see the result before we believe it. We want to know the how before we believe it.

But if I really believed it, I would just keep going until I found the how. I would just keep going until I created the result. Like if somebody had a crystal ball and they’re like, I looked in the crystal ball and you totally get there in the future. Then what would you go for? What would you try? Did you know you’re allowed to just believe that? You’re allowed to believe and think anything you want. So choose it carefully, my friends. Choose it with intention. This is what coaching has done for me, is it’s helped me choose with intention and to prove to myself that I’m allowed to think and believe anything that I want. And that what I think and believe shows up in my life in reality at some point, like magic, except it’s not magic. It’s just human nature. It’s just the way God made us. It’s so powerful to know. 

Those are the nine things I wish I had known in my 20s. I hope it helps somebody today. Thanks for being here. I’ll see you next week on another episode. Bye-bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.