Chapter One: Choosing Your Hard in Your 20s

Hosted by three sisters in their 20s, The 20 Something Playbook is your guide through the good, the bad, and the ugly of this defining decade.

In this intro episode, Madison, Ava and Elle break down navigating the cross roads they've faced in their 20s, and "choosing your hard" - the mantra for making difficult decisions. We get into the mission behind The 20 Something Playbook, what to expect from future episodes, and talk over each other a little too much - it's an epidemic, we know.

We have a lot of exciting guests and conversations on the horizon, full season is available NOW! New episodes every Tuesday.

In the episode: 

0:00 – Intro: Welcome to the 20 Something Playbook
Setting the tone: vulnerability, authenticity, and what it means to navigate your 20s with intention.

1:32 – What No One Tells You About Ambition & Early Burnout
Why we felt ahead in high school and how that created unrealistic expectations post-grad.

6:09 – Losing Yourself After “Success”
The identity crisis that follows early achievements — and how we started redefining value.

10:47 – Post-Grad Loneliness & the Search for Belonging
Feeling invisible in rooms full of people, losing our group, and choosing solitude over shallow connection.

15:12 – Friendship Is Worth the Wait
How choosing to be alone led us to real, soul-filling relationships that surprised us.

20:08 – Dating When You’re Not Desperate
A parallel to friendship: choosing alignment over availability, even if it means waiting longer.

25:50 – Disco Era & Introvert Struggles
Going out to meet people, pushing against our introverted nature, and questioning what we’re really seeking.

31:20 – Giving Yourself What You’re Looking For
Learning that what we seek in others — comfort, security, pride — has to come from within first.

35:10 – Letting Go of the Timeline: Love, Career & Control
The myth of “packing it up” and having everything fall into place — and what we’re doing instead.

39:30 – Twenties Nonsense: Tears, Baking & Hypochondriac Dog Moms
Lightness meets reality: stress baking, crying over Lost, blaming everything on bananas.

44:00 – Failing Forward: Lessons from Job Interviews, Tech Fails & Perfectionism
The only way we’ve learned anything is by failing — and that includes mic setups and trampoline workouts.

47:37 – Final Thoughts: Who Are You Becoming?
Our dad's advice, growth over results, and why we wouldn't take any of it back.

Transcript

Maddie (00:00):

Hey, it's Madison, Ava and Elle and this is the 20 something Playbook.

(00:19)
Okay, Maddie, can you please tell us about your 25th birthday?

(00:22)
Yeah, so

(00:23)
Fateful day.

(00:24)
Yeah, so I turned 25 last year. And a little backstory, I have a health condition called cystic fibrosis and it's a life-threatening health condition. And for the past five years leading up to this 25th birthday, I was just in pure survival mode. I didn't have the capacity to have a relationship. I barely had the capacity to do work and just live a normal life. So when I turned 25 and I started this miracle drug, I'd been on it for a couple years. I felt like okay, I have the capacity to be a normal 20-year-old.

(00:52)
Yes you do.

(00:53)
And I was really struggling with where I was at. I felt behind and I came across this book called The Defining Decade by Dr. Meg Jay. And it was really interesting reading this book because it made me realize that I wasn't behind and that the twenties can be the most transformative decade of a person's life. And there's so many things in there that put to words what I was feeling, what I had gone through at this age, and no one really talks about it. And that kind of started conversations with you guys and our friends and we realized everyone's going through this decade, this defining decade.

(01:32)
And when I was a teenager my idea of being 25, mom and dad were married with a house and had a full-time job, by 25. So I felt like

(01:40)
In the back in your mind.

(01:42)
What's wrong with me? Am I doing okay in life? I didn't know. So reading that book really gave me a lot of clarity and just

(01:50)
we want to get Dr. Meg Jay on this.

(01:52)
Yes.

(01:52)
To talk and try to help you and us kind of figure out

(01:57)
figure it out. We're in this together. I'm twenty five, Ava and Elle are twenty two.

(02:02)
We are twins.

(02:03)
Yeah.

(02:04)
Yes.

(02:05)
And we're sisters

(02:07)
we all look exactly the same.

(02:08)
Yeah. So we're going to start off with being anxious about doing something that you're proud of.

Ava (02:14):

I get anxious about doing something that is the road less traveled. I'm going to be anxious doing anything. So you might as well be proud of the thing that you're doing, even if you're going to be anxious about it.

Maddie (02:29):

And when you're in your twenties, you think about the beginning of your twenties turning 20, you're supposed to be in university. I think back to when I was 18 and the 18 year olds we've spoken to your last year of high school, people are expecting you to choose what you want to do for the rest of your life, which is really hard. And you have to decide, am I going to do school? Am I going to do, what am I going to do? What's the right path? And we don't know what the right path is. I think another thing that's really scary about the twenties is that everyone's in a different place.

(02:58)
Up until high school, everyone's kind of on the same track. And I'm 25, we know people who have children, we know who are married, we have friends who are starting their own business and we have friends who are working corporate jobs and everyone is in a different place in their personal life and their professional life. So it's hard to get a gauge on where am I and am I doing okay? I don't know because everyone's in a different place.

(03:21)
Also, applying for jobs is hard. When you're on LinkedIn, you're applying for jobs. Even if you try to get into a corporate job, it's hard. It's all going to be hard. So for me it's so important, and I mean mom and dad raised us this way, is to do something that you love and are passionate about. It's going to be hard either way.

(03:37)
So choosing the road less travelled, just a little context for us. So we all started in competitive dance and then through competitive dance we got agents,

(03:47)
Elle and I were on a TV show. I was on TV playing Aliens.

(03:50)
They play aliens. It's is really funny.

(03:52)
Crawl around, insert picture.

(03:54)
And when we were on set we realized this is something we really love. Storytelling has always been a passion of ours, whether it's dancing or writing or acting or drawing. Storytelling was always our passion and working on set made us realize and we're really grateful for that. It really showed us what we wanted to do. So when I was 17, you guys were 13, 14, we decided that we wanted to self-publish a book and turn that into, adapted into a movie or a TV show. So we kind of started the road less traveled as teenagers and he decided on not to go the university route, which has its own set of stigmas because I remember we had the serving job last year and the members will always ask, oh, are you in school?

(04:36)
Yeah. Are you in school?

(04:37)
And you kind of tell 'em what you're doing and some are like, wow, that's amazing. Good for you. We're cheering you on. And others you had someone who literally was like, go back to school even if you make it

(04:46)
You know what's funny too, as I look back to, so we wrote a novel first and we self-published it. So by the time I was 20 and you guys were,

(04:56)
I was 16.

(04:57)
Oh. Okay. So I didn't turn 20 yet. Yeah. So it took us about three years to self-publish this young adult novel with this successful kickstarter campaign. That was a huge winning curve in and of itself.

(05:08)
But what was weird was I was in high school at the time and in high school that is the last thing you want to do is bring attention to yourself. And I remember Ava and I were abnormal attention. Yeah, abnormal attention too. And Ava and I, we literally, we wrote an entire 400 page novel and didn't tell soul. We did not tell anyone. No one,

(05:26)
I was embarrassed by it honestly.

(05:27)
We were embarrassed and

(05:28)
it was like life's passion and I was so embarrassed.

(05:30)
You embarrassed to tell people

(05:32)
no one's doing that.

(05:34)
Especially in high school. Everyone just, they judge you for everything.

(05:37)
It was embarrassing in a way. It was again, back to that thing of if you care about something it's going to be embarrassing because you care. And we would have to, because we had a Kickstarter campaign so we had to reach a certain amount of money to be able to publish the book or it's like we would lose all of the money. We were raising $15,000.

(05:56)
Yeah. So we had 30 days to raise $15,000. If we didn't raise the $15,000 to the $15,000 mark, we would not get any of the funding. So pressure was on, we had to reach out to everybody to share.

(06:09)
And our parents were like, you guys are going to have to email your teachers. And Ava and I were like,

(06:14)
I don't know why but at the time, that was just the last thing I wanted to do. Yeah. It was so embarassing

(06:19)
I remember in class I emailed one of my teachers and he put up his email on the monitor and I was terrified that he was going to show the class the email that I sent him. But he didn't and he never responded to the email. So it was like whatever it's fine.

(06:32)
That was interesting too because some of your teachers were really supportive and others kind of, it wasn't like your writing class teacher all of a sudden.

(06:39)
There was one that I never really talked about it at school, but because we reached out to everyone, some people took it better than others for whatever reason.

(06:50)
I don't know why, but I feel like that's part of that taking the road less traveled. And some people have this weird

(06:55)
it's hard to deal with people misunderstanding what you're trying to do or trying to antagonize, which we've also experienced what you're trying to do or just not getting it. But it's also hard to not do the thing and that you know in your spirit, this is what I want to do and I know I can do this. So it just comes with the territory of going your own way. You could have let that stop you.

(07:19)
Yeah.

(07:20)
At any point, I can't take this. I don't want to be negatively perceived.

(07:25)
If I wasn't so passionate about it, then I probably would've stopped.

(07:29)
Whenever a good movie or TV show comes out, I get so much anxiety and that's part of the journey for me

(07:35)
she gets anxiety

(07:37)
regulating my emotions in these situations. Especially when shit hits the fan, which it does. We've hit so many crossroads. When we started after we published the book,

(07:48)
let's talk about regulating our emotions by situations because something

(07:54)
okay, working as sisters as siblings is not for the faint of heart. You're together all the time and we've been again, technically working together since we were 13, you're also sorry the most brutally honest with your family.

(08:08)
Even setting up for this, I was doing the mic recordings, just testing them and everything and just the sound of me talking to you guys sounded so aggressive. I was like, oh my god, it sounds like I have aggressive, but we have to learn how to or have had to learn how to communicate with each other. It's impossible to be productive when we're trying to do so I don't know if we mentioned this, but the writing we're doing, it's together. We are a writing team. Everything we do is together for some reason. I just feel like our brains work better together and it's just like we all kind of cover a different area and we have had to learn how to communicate and at the end of the day too, our brains work differently. You have a completely different way of thinking than we do. And that's affected when things happen, when shit hits the fan. We recently, last week we had producers. Yeah we had producers we were working with, we enjoyed working with them and they really were like our guiding light in such a crazy industry that we're trying to navigate.

(09:12)
entrepreneurial or even often creative route is you don't have any guide. No. You apply to get the job. No, you get the entry level border shot, you work your way up. It's not a straight line up a down.

(09:28)
There's a million different wings you can do it. I don't know which one's the right one. we've gone on

(09:32)
Well one of the pivots we had was after we published the young adult novel with this talk about failure, we submitted, we submitted, we had a successful Kickstarter campaign and then we submitted this version of our book to, so someone we knew who had a really good publisher and they had a bestselling book on Amazon and they basically got back to us and was like, this is so bad. I can't share this, this is not good. It's not sellable. And so then we had a conversation with publishers and they're like, this could be a 10 year timeline. And the whole thing about publishing this young adult novel is that we're actresses as well and we want to create this story and play the sisters in the story. And we just realized we don't want to wait 10 years or something.

(10:16)
And we also had to dig deep down and be like, yes, we did this novel but maybe we treat it as a learning experience instead of something that we have to make another one or have to re-edit this one and make it good enough to publish out in the world. And we had to pivot. We had to have that hard conversation of we love this but is there a different form of this that we need to pursue instead of this one?

(10:41)
So that was the pivot into screenwriting, which was a huge learning curve. It took us years, I'm not even exaggerating, it took us years to get a sellable pilot going, so much failure. So so hard. Calling people, we had to network on LinkedIn. It was, we're basically self-taught too. It is not like we studied this in school.

(11:03)
At one point we had a professor at UCLA in screenwriting help mentor us, but we didn't get there because we went to UCLA. We got that through a connection of connection of connection just like networking. And yeah,

(11:15)
I think that also goes back to having humility in these situations in the sense of I feel like whenever we reach out to new people and we want to hear their feedback on something, we always say don't be afraid to hurt our feelings. We literally say that to some people say, are you okay with feedback? And we're always, yeah, it makes you better. It hurts, obvisouly, it doesn't feel good. But, you need it to get better and you need it to improve whatever you're doing.

(11:39)
And again, to come back to what we were talking about is all these years and phases that we went through, it's been like three or four

(11:46)
the screenwriting phase has been five years

(11:49)
and so after maybe four years of just us trudging it out on our own, taking random calls, we also try to move forward or get feedback. No, it's okay. I was just going to say

(12:00)
we have a problem with talking over you too.

(12:02)
We do. It's an epidemic but it's four years of trudging through everything. We finally found these two people that we loved working with and they wanted to stick it out with us and we still love working with them, but it's like they mentored us for an entire year. We thought like, okay, we have these people who are going to be with us till the end and just last week they called us, they cannot help us anymore. They just do not have the capacity to help us even though they want to. And that was shit hitting the fan for us. It was like the two people that were mentoring us through this very chaotic time of entrepreneurship where it's just like you don't know what to do next

(12:42)
and now it feels like we're back at...

(12:44)
Can you walk us through how you broke down? Tell us about your personality and how you're, if you're okay, yeah. And with, you were telling me this the other day. You were talking about how your perfectionistic style, I dont know if im saying that right. Yeah, but just explain that so that everyone can understand. Yeah. So what goes on in.

(13:01)
In my head it's a mess.

(13:04)
We can't barely keep up.

(13:04)
Yeah. So I read this book called A Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control a couple months ago and there's five different types of perfectionism. The perfectionism I am so lucky to have is one called the intense perfectionist. And basically, I am so intense and the intense perfectionist gets really angry. One of the examples they gave of people who have intense perfectionism is Steve Jobs and he was known to have a temper because he was so perfectionistic. Everything had to be perfect and God bless Ava and Elle. That's what I'm like and I can be really hard to work with.

(13:39)
She feels it all up here

(13:39)
And so it's like not only am I drill sergeant us to perfection, I am also very emotional about it. And the emotion is anger, which is not a fun emotion to deal with for anybody. And one of the things that can help and one of the things that help with intense perfection of the perfectionism is physical movement. Getting out your agression. At one point last week, I'm not proud to admit I punched a wall twice.

(14:05)
I don't know why your knuckles aren't like.

(14:07)
I'm fine and the wall's fine. So what happened was every single day for the past two weeks since we had this conversation, I would wake up, I do heart align meditations and I'm fine, I wake up, I do my meditation, I'm fine. And then

(14:22)
she wasn't fine.

(14:22)
If I'm reaching out to somebody I'm in research for something, something would throw me so dramatically and so intensely that I didn't even understand until after the fact that it had happened. I remember at one point there was one day where I was getting really upset about something that wasn't even relevant and I said to Ava and Elle, I'm sorry, I don't even know how I got there. I don't even understand.

(14:45)
Just to paint the picture. And when she punched the wall, Ava and I who were in the living room, Maddie was in her road and we just hear these two bags and Ava and I were like, is that what I think it was? We are very ceremonial people. They're water signs, I'm a fire sign. Spicy, the spiciest aries you're ever going to meet. We could not be more opposite. We need to hit her with a tidal wave to calm the fire.

(15:14)
Elle and I are in the living room. We've got our breakfast, we've got our fun drink. This was around a dinner time. I don't know what you're talking about. No, no this.

(15:22)
So this is what happened. I'm going to give a little backstory. So I started listening to this screenwriting podcast that someone had recommended I listened to and so I'm trying to gain insight into remember where we are. We feel like we're on no man's land again. So I was like, listen, reading doing everything I can to try to find a path forward for us. So I'm listening, I'm trying to get insight into what's going on in the industry, how I can move forward and these guys start talking about something that really makes me mad. I was listening to that and these are two people who are supposed to be very esteemed in the industry and working screenwriters and all this bullshit. So then I start spiraling I think is there no space for us? Is there no space for a script like ours that doesn't have this thing in it that they say is crucial? I am spiraling at this point and I'm going on a walk to calm down, I'm heated up, I walk in, I slam the door, I go in my room, I have this little laundry hamper in my closet. It's so stuffed it starts falling apart and I'm frustrated as anything because that's falling apart. It feels like my life is falling apart.

(16:22)
Everything is a metaphor. She's like, it's just a metaphor.

(16:24)
And I get so mad that I find myself punching the wall of my closet and then

(16:29)
wouldn't recommend.

(16:29)
Yeah. And so that's kind of what those two weeks were like and it was either so there's anger and then there's sadness and there's another day where I broke down crying because even I was like, we are working so hard. We've been doing this for five years. When are we going to have something to show for it?

(16:46)
So to explain where she won't get into it, it's not going to get into it. We have this joke with Maddie where she goes, but we're, I'm not going to get into it. She's sort of. I know. So let's explain the fact that your brain works like that and mine is like I hear a problem. I'm like, oh man, that sucks. And then I'm just like, okay, well you can't change it. So what are we going to do now? And then I go to practical action.

(17:19)
I'd say we're the same in that way.

(17:20)
Elle and I are both kind of the same in that way. We're identical. So we were once one. So that probably makes sense.

(17:25)
Maddie, then I'm going to ask you another question. I know I'm kind of drilling you

(17:30)
That's fine.

(17:31)
But I feel like a lot of this comes from being a very successful child.

(17:34)
When I got into my twenties I looked back, I was a successful, a very successful child. Things came very easily to me.

(17:43)
She organized an art gallery at the age of 10 and the art gallery was good. It wasn't like, it looked like Modigliani vibes when I was seven. No, but this was the feedback I got, I'm not just making this up. So that happens and then I'm valedictorian. I won a speaking competition when I'm 12 years old. Every year it was my teachers would say when I was 10 they're like, she's writing at a high school level, she's operating at a high school level. It was always, I was 10 years ahead of myself. So I have this sense in my head that if something's hard I start to doubt myself and be like, oh maybe I shouldn't be doing this if it's not easy because things can very easy to me as a kid in a lot of different areas. It is not like there's just one thing I was good at and I'm not saying this to be obnoxious, it's just when you grow up with that sense of everyone praising you. Yeah and it's also, it wasn't just me telling myself that. It was like people, would come to my parents and be like, this child is gifted at this

(18:40)
and Ava and I were not as such

(18:44)
We all caught up.

(18:46)
I think that's why Ava and I, when things are hard, they're not as scary. Nothing came easy to us. It was like we didn't win anything. We were like, I tried to be what's the class president in middle school, which I would get every year and everyone had, everyone had to put their head down when everyone voted. I peaked. I was the only one that voted for myself. So sorry, I know I would've voted for you, but it didn't phase me because I never won anything anyway, it was just like another failure on the board. It was for the opposite.

(19:20)
I remember even my grandparents coming to one award ceremony I was at and I cleaned up on the awards and they were literally, and I was like 11 and my grandparents to my parents were like, I'm actually feeling concerned for her because what's going to happen when she doesn't win.

(19:36)
And that's what happened last week. The twenties have been the little shitstorm that happened with the wall function. I really had a moment where I was like, I think I peaked in middle school. I think she peaked early. I think that was it. And even talking about also.

(19:48)
You're going to be okay. I tell her everyday.

(19:48)
No, even we learned how to drive. I learned how to drive when I was 22 and that was a whole other thing. I failed my first driver's test and even our driving instructor, literally my last class before going to get the test was like, Elle's the best driver. Ava is the second best driver. You're the worst driver of the three. I was like, thanks. Why would he say to you? I appreciate that. I know that I'm not a good driver. I'm getting better at it. It all balances out.

(20:16)
The practical things in life I'm not good at. I'm just not. So I'm working on it but it's

(20:21)
I'm going to bring this back to the point you're trying to, sorry, which is that all of these emotions going on in here make it difficult to work together because the emotions come from like, oh my God, whatever she's feeling about work and her own success and Elle and I have to kind of, because we need her. I can't just - you make it sound like I have a huge ego. Ego. No, you don't have an ego so you just, you're an emotional person which is understandable because you care. Yes, exactly. She already asked- I care too much. But it's important to have the hard conversations of okay, instead of me just being like, okay, I can't deal with this. You go somewhere else.

(21:03)
No. Instead of what are you trying to say to me? You get to the bottom of it. Yeah. What are you trying to say to me? Is this feelings that, is this emotions or is this something that we actually need to talk about for work? Is this something that's going to productive. Another question we like to ask ourselves is, is this going to be a productive conversation? Do we want to vent or do we want to get things done, and what sorry about last week for me on my end was that, so after two weeks of turmoil, I came back to my book on perfectionism that I read a couple of months ago and one of the things that stood out to me was this technique called explain and express. So for me in the past few weeks I was so caught up in the emotion of it.

(21:44)
I just remember saying that I feel scared, I feel confused. I was like, I'm scared too what's happening where every day I'd be thrown off by something. And what I read was that if you share what happened and how you felt about it, you actually gain insight from the experience because I was like every day living the same day, I wasn't gaining any insight. So when I read that, I tell myself, I explain to express it in my own head where I tell myself when I read this article I feel scared. And as soon as I do that I actually calm down on the inside and I feel like you guys have noticed a difference. I actually haven't, I haven't had any breakdowns and I'm grateful for that. And just so you know, I was trying to regulate myself those two weeks.

(22:28)
It's not like I was like whatever. Come what May. I was trying, I was reading stuff, I just reframe. I like Maddie really hard. I said, I was like, Maddie, what's going on? She was like, I don't know. At one point I was like I am depressed. I don't know. Is this a mental health issue? therapy? Yeah. Do I need to take something for this? Let's talk about mental health. Let's talk about choosing your hard for mental health. Maddie you have often said to us, we talk about this a lot. We work with a mental health nonprofit called T.E.A.M. (Teaching Everyone About Mental Health) - @myteam.social on Instagram. And we often talk about how not going to therapy is hard and going to therapy is hard and you have to choose your hard and Maddie you always saying that you chose the hard of going to therapy because you knew that you could get out on the other side.

(23:15)
You just want to ignore it. So would you like to talk about your experience? Yeah. So the health condition I had was very severe. People are not supposed to live past 18 years old and I was in my twenties so I was suffering a lot with this health condition to the point it was taking over my life and I had complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which is really scary because I would feel really dissociated from my body. I didn't feel connected to the present moment and I was constantly just fighting. I had really severe depression. Well I remember you saying to me, and this was, it started back, I think Ava and I were 16, turning 17 and Maddie was I think 19 at a time or 19 turning 20. And I remember you saying to me once you were like, I just don't feel safe.

(24:03)
And I remember being like, what do you mean we're home? You're safe, you're in your room, you are safe. And that goes back to it. But she didn't feel safe in my body. I felt like I was dying on the inside, which was partly true. So I was terrified and I would get x-rays from doctors showing my lung function, my lungs was scarring and then my lung function would go down and I'd cough up blood and I'd start running and I was very physically active but I noticed that I couldn't perform at the level I wanted and it was really scary even just talking about it, I can feel my body feeling like, ah,

(24:39)
The reaction. So I had a choice at that point, which was to either just trudge on as I had been my entire life out of panic attacks at movie theaters, at family events, functions. I think you had panic attacks at the movie passangers or guardians of the galaxy. Both. To be fair we were very close to the screen and there was people who were dying. Any death stuff really triggered me understandably. And I'd wake up with panic attacks anyway, it was a rough time. So it was basically she was going on like that or do I do something about it and therapy's really hard. I think of it, we talk about weight training or exercising. Exercising. You get stronger in the long run. It's really good for your health when you're doing it. It's painful and it's really hard. It took me years to get through it

(25:30)
And as I was going through it, whenever thing's got hard, I'd just remind myself of the paths that you can choose. This is hard. So is not taking care of my mental health, so I just have to choose my hard. It's going to be hard either. So is having panic attacks in theaters. Exactly. So it's going to be hard either way. You just have to choose. And that was the choice by the way. We've had these conversations many times. That's why we joke about it, gotten to the point they're not being insensitive. She has been through so many phases and stages of her health. There was a point where she was 88 pounds and Elle and I had to carry her out of the chapters, which is a book store in Canada and she couldn't walk. She suddenly in chapters collapsed and could not get to the car and Elle and I were used to it at that point. It's the chapters workers are like, oh they look terrified, they're opening the door. And I was like, thank you so much for carrying her out of chapters. It's just like we're very used to having these conversations and we've also talked about it a lot since it happened and that's why we can talk about it like this. Because also I think, and I think because she's, yeah, when I started, luckily there's a drug called Trikafta that became available which basically because since the health condition I have is genetic gene related, it's cystic fibrosis if I haven't said that already. And so the drug modifies the genes which makes my body operate normally, which that's a whole other conversation to get into what that was like and getting out of survival mode.

(26:59)
And it was interesting because I think all of us, we didn't really come to terms with what we went through until I was better and safe and better and on this medication and I came to terms with the fact that I could have had an early death and I grieved a lot and I faced my own feelings around all of that that I didn't have the capacity to deal with at the time because when I was dealing with it and I wasn't on this drug, I was kind of in denial and I was like I will get better and every day it was going to be okay. And from the support angle, anyone who's supporting someone through their health issues or mental health issues, it's a different kind of hard. It's like

(27:33)
You feel for the person, you don't always know what's going on inside their head. You don't always know what they're feeling and you feel normal and yet you don't. You love them. Exactly. It's because you care that you're almost not working at full capacity. I think going through moments that are just tough moments in your life makes you, we call you have less, BS. And I've noticed this with a lot of people because you kind of understand the importance of life and how important it's to spend it with the right people and how if there's people who don't make you feel good or maybe you realize they don't want the best for you, et cetera, et cetera, don't waste your time. And I think this most kind experiences, and this might sound cut throat to some people, but I just think when you go through something like this you realize how short life is and how much you need to protect your energy.

(28:25)
That's a hard decision too and it's a hard decision because these people that are making you feel this way aren't necessarily bad people and I don't wish these people harm. I genuinely want them to live happy, successful lives. It's just that thing of being conscious of your energy and how other people are making you feel and being okay with maybe distancing yourself. I also think as you enter your twenties, this past summer I had almost three jobs and I did not have time to hang out or a see or catch up with people who I didn't absolutely love. It sounds so bad but it's about saving your time and energy. That's a hard decision and some people aren't going to take it well and also it's not fun. It's not like, oh yay, I'm going to distance myself and as a recovering people pleaser, it's something I fight all the time.

(29:15)
Even sending emails, I'm like, I just want to put at the end, I'm so sorry and I remember my mom having this conversation with us. You have to build that muscle to be okay with not pleasing everyone. You have to kind of start that early, otherwise it's just going to get harder as you get older, life gets busier and you don't want to spread yourself too thin and I start trying to mend relationships or you take care of relationships that aren't actually worth, a segue into it's hard not to be in a relationship and it's also hard to be in the wrong relationship. And we talk about this a lot. I consider myself a very independent person and I have a lot of really great, you were talking about this on the car on the way here with our videographer Audrianna and we were talking about how we have such great friendships and that's a healthy thing to do and I think that's why we don't necessarily crave or I don't need a relationship right now. And I think that could be why. I mean if anyone has those things and they still, that's fine. It's interesting is when I was in my teens I had a really hard time, I had my dance friends and they were amazing and then everyone kind of leaves dance and is in a different space and I had a really hard time finding my group of friends. I remember having a moment being, I guess I'm just a loner, I guess I'm just not going to have any friends the thing is I'd rather be alone than be with people that don't resonate with me, that don't make you don't connect because the people I was around at the time, I felt invisible in a room full of people.

(30:45)
I felt so isolated and alone and I could be in a room of 20 people with 20 and it was a hard time. And it's so interesting because once I made that decision a year later I met some amazing friends who have now connected me to a bunch of other amazing friends and I'm so grateful that I have that it's so important to cultivate those great relationships in your twenties because then I don't feel desperate for friends. I don't feel like the next person I meet has to be my best friend. And I think the same goes for dating. I think I'm in that place of dating in my life where I was before I met my good friends being like, I don't know. I don't know when I'm going to meet the right person and I'd rather be alone than be with somebody because I just don't want to be alone. Yeah, it's like trading what's good for what's right that Olivia Rodrigo song.

(31:33)
Yeah, it's so true. Such a, I was listening to the other day, I've been on Hinge and I've been on dating apps and I'm not, again, we're all long term relationship kind of people and sometimes it's not that the person's an asshole, whether they're a bad person, it's just like there's just not a connection and you just have to trust your gut with that instead of being like, oh on paper this person is perfect and we make sense because even with my friends, the friends I have now, I couldn't even foresee how amazing these people are and how much they bring to my life. It's a really beautiful thing. So my opinion, it's worth it to be alone. And you know what? There's a positive side to being alone and it's learning about yourself. I think

(32:18)
I was on a dating app for six months and then I got to a point where I was like, you know what? Because I also went full out. I was trying to go to discos and go out to town and go, where would I meet a guy? And I was thinking, although I thought you would meet a guy in a disco guy, I didn't think I'd meet a guy at the disco. She trying to get Ava and I to go too and Ava and I are homebodies. I'm on my couch reading a book or watching a hockey game. It's couch a clock. So that was interesting because I was in my social era and I'm an introvert so I am really pushing myself to get out there. I'd try to approach guys on, I remember once there's a guy who had headphones on and I thought he was kind of cute.

(32:56)
He was in the no talk section. We got back from a concert. Oh I don't, I was like, excuse me. I was trying to low key get his attention but he just ignored me And that was a moment where I was like, what are you doing? It got to a point where I realized what am I looking for in these relationships? I've got to give that to myself. Yeah, it's just that I also think pursuing passions outside of relationships, whether that be romantic or platonic, pursuing passions outside of that is so important. You can get fulfillment and connection from things that you're passionate about. They make you feel good, they make you feel proud of things and I just think that that's something that we've always been very lucky. We're very lucky that our parents let us pursue our passions and aren't forcing us to do something we don't want to do even if it's hard and they have to watch us go through difficult things. But

(33:45)
Again, choose your hard. We chose the difficult path of doing something you're passionate about but isn't necessarily going to work right away. Our father had to watch us go through a business disagreement recently and he was like, it was so hard not to get involved and I asked them not to get involved. We have a way of communicating and we're very nice and we are very healthy and it's taken us a while to get, I mean I guess we still must 10 years now. It's not having arguments. I mean it's both dealing with them effectively. Yeah, it's hard to have, again, choose your hard. It's hard to have hard conversations, the difficult conversations. It's also hard not to just not express how you're feeling And we always say too between all of us, we always have an open mind with each other and I feel very lucky for that.

(34:34)
We want to listen to each other for this to be the best that it can be. We have to again, have humility and listen to each other. And I always say too what you guys say something that you want and I don't agree with it. I always say let me sleep on it. Hey, if I'm wrong it's okay if I'm wrong. I don't agree with you right now but maybe I will tomorrow. And there's been a lot of times where I do wake up in the morning, I'm like, you guys are right, but just keeping it but choosing humility over your ego is again very hard in the moment. It makes you feel shit and last week when I'm apologizing to Ava and Elle for having a freak out that makes me feel like crap about myself but I feel more like crap if I don't take accountability for what happens.

(35:20)
I also allows you to have a clean slate moving forward. There's not like a pile up of things that we haven't discussed. So just we're having this conversation with our friend Audri about relationships and I think it's just really healthy to not wait for a partner, live your life, do the things you want to do that you imagine doing with a partner. If you want to go on a hike, go on a hike, go with your friend, go with your parent, go with your dog, just do the thing. I realized that I was like, I'm going to go to the disco. I'm not going to wait for a partner to go out and go to the disco with my friends. Start living your life now instead of waiting for some change outside of you because you're within your control and you're going to eventually meet this person and not much is actually going to change your life.

(36:00)
It's actually healthy. Instead of recap everything we've kind of discussed today, we don't know much. We are still only 22, 25. This is our experience up until this point. The goal of this is to get guests on that can help guide us, can answer the questions. One of the questions I read those video I saw on TikTok talking about questions that they actually ask 20 year olds, what are they actually asking themselves and one of the ones I'd love an answer to is love. You'll find love when you stop searching for it. I don't know the answer to that. You don't think it's true, it's like that Gracie Abrams song Packing it up. Yeah, it's like I packed it up and it's like, I swear though, pack it up and that's just when you happened. No, I packed it up a year ago and I still haven't met somebody but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen and I'm not Again, I think you find, I think okay to answer that question she won't go.

(36:51)
She won't get into, but I think that you find yourself self love. You don't love yourself. It doesn't matter who loves you. I love you. No, I know, but it's like it's important to love yourself. You will find yourself and that's really important. Well sometimes I'll literally ask that of you because you were so hard on ourselves sometimes I'm like you just love yourself and I've gotten so much better just right. I'll get aggressive. I've gotten so much better. I like so now, okay, we went into our final segment, which is just a few questions called twenties nonsense and we will ask each other a few silly questions. I'm going to start Madison Faith, how many times have you cried this week? I'm proud to say zero. What? Yes. Really? Not even in your room. No.

(37:41)
Last week. Last week I cried every day. There's one day I cried twice. I cried once on the couch talking to you guys and then I cried in the shower and then that turned into a panic attack. Then I was learning, tapping, crying. I'm not calming down and then that was making me panic so I had to put my hand in really cold water to calm me down. We were watching Lost the other day, the show that's been out since 2010 that we haven't seen it yet. I cried and she's sitting there, we're all watching Lost and I just hear this look over, she's like, okay, tapping. She's it's like survival stuff.

(38:31)
I'm like, it's a PG show. What are you on about? I feel scared but also I feel safe. I look at the parent guide and it's like mild swearing, mild gore. I'm like, okay, Maddie can watch this. She's still, she's like, well girl couldn't catch her breath. She also was like my ears. She goes, my ears feel really full. She goes, I think it's because the sun wasn't out yesterday too. Too blame thinking on a headache and the stiff here she's like, I cough today. I think it's the banana. She blames everything on either what she ate or the weather. If the sun's out it's that fault. If she ate something that's different from what she usually eats. There's a while she blamed everything on bananas. Yes, everything. I don't know what Bananas ever did to you. Relax babe. Ava answer question.

(39:35)
Oh. Oh. How many times did you stress bake this week? Me? Yeah. Once. It was just once I made brownie cookies. Anyone who knows me well knows that these brownie cookies are a staple. They're great. Our friend, Elle and I's best friend lives just down the street. Every single time I go to her house for dinner, I bring these cookies. It's a staple and whenever I'm upset I just get the eggs and we get in there. That's my, I like calm things. She's just stressing baking. We call her Betty, like Betty Crocker. I have a recipe book that says Recipes by Betty. Yes. Is it? I love when she stress bakes, it benefits all of us. I'm sitting on the couch and says, Ava, when are you going to bake something? But the chocolate muffin you made last week, I want you to make those more often. I always put to your request, but you do it usually. I'm not trying to throw you but I don't like your brownie as much as the muffin and I don't like the muffins as much as the brownie and who's in charge have the hard conversations. How many hypochondriac dog moments did you had this week? How many? Tell them that Maverick. We have a dog. He's a almost two years old. He's named after top gun Maverick. His name of Top Gun Maverick. I don't know how he wasn't even my choice and even pick, my dad was the one who wanted a dog. Somehow I became his, but it was on their vision board after our first dog Hershey passed away. We don't want to talk about Hersh. It was really hard. That's grief. A moment of silence for Hershey. Yeah. No seriously, he slept in my bed for the last six months. That was a whole thing. She wanted more cuddles with dogs. Yes, but my goal was not to be dog mom that just chose me. He's our life and he's my child but he's my brother.

(41:35)
I think I did have one yesterday, but that's just because we're going away and we're going to leave him for a bit. So I think that's why I had, I've been pretty good about the whole Well we're relieving him for a bit and I just was, well, okay, we do have to get his flea in tick, right? Yeah. Here we are. So we have to get that it's every three months and there's a mild winter. Yeah, I could go on for dog mom moments. He needs to be walked three times a day. He needs very attentive care. He needs reassurance. He's the boss on, he got a bunch of snow last night and I had to take him on a very quick walk this morning for his little pee and poo for the morning and he saw my dad from down the street and he just bolted. I was in my nice little outfit and I had my makeup on and everything and I was like, the snow on my jeans was up to my thighs.

(42:39)
I went and inside and just shook off my pants and were, she must shook it off gap jeans are waterproof. He also had some random seizures which scared us, which weren't seizures, but we were confused. I don't want to know if anyone is going to comment about this. I don't want to know. We're just claiming him healthy. Me we're deeming him fine and we're not neglectful either. Elle went down a whole rabbit hole for days. I'm fine. I've been pretty good this week. Look at us. We've had a healthy week. What did we fail at this week? It can be big or small. And what did we learn from it if anything?

(43:28)
I mean that wasn't this week, but I had that job interview about a week and a half ago. It didn't feel like that went very well. I think what I learned from it is I should have caffeine before, if I'm being honest. A great lesson for all. I wasn't feeling well that day and everything just falls on the same day. But I wasn't feeling well and I decided to take an hour nap beforehand. I did, but then I didn't do anything after. I should have had caffiene.

(44:19)
We failed at setting up the mics. The mics failed you. They did. They didn't even connect to the computer. They just didn't work. So I failed at that. The reason we have this question is just because this is inspired by Sarah Blakely. And one of the things she talked about was how she normalized failure. Her dad would ask them every day at the dinner table, what did you fail at? Because we want to break the stigma around failure and being in your twenties. It's constant failure and it's supposed to be, you were reading a post by Steven Bartlett and I follow him on LinkedIn and one of the things he talked about was how important it is to have failure because that's the only way you're going to learn and that's what I'm learning as a recovering child prodigy is that failure is actually good and that's how you can learn things. And everything we've learned until this point in our joint career

(45:07)
Is through failure. It's all been someone says the script isn't good for this reason, so we fix it. And then someone says that, oh, you mean next time you're on a call, don't say this, say this instead. Or we go on a call and nothing comes of it. What could we have done differently? So it's all failures that have brought us here today. Yeah. We've really had that really hard week. Again, part of my perfectionism is that I'm very results oriented. So if I don't get the result I want, I feel like I'm a failure and it was a waste of time.The reframe for me is that I asked, I was reflecting on the past 10 years, the past, however, or many years we've been doing this together because it felt like we failed.

(45:47)
Right? I was like, oh my God, all of this for nothing. We didn't get the result we wanted and we're still working on this by the way. It's not like we gave up doing it. It's just, yeah. It's another pivot. And one of the things that helped me was thinking about what have I learned in the past 10 years? What did I learn each year on this journey? And when I think about that, I feel so proud of myself and confident and I've actually gained something from the experience. We're better people in our project and our skillset and our script is in a better place now than ever. And as we continue to fail, I get us to the success that we want it to. You're learning, I feel like we've talked about this too with social media.

(46:27)
It's so easy to feel like a failure, but it's important to remember this is someone's highlight reel and everyone has different circumstances. You can find 20 people our age who are doing amazing work and it can make, especially me feel like a failure. When I was 17, my dream was to be a millionaire by 19 and be on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Very ambitious. I respect the ambition, but it's just like you respect yourself and maybe again focusing on results you feel like shit. But then if I think about how much I've grown as a person, that is invaluable because also if you take everything you have away, what you have left is what you've learned and who you have become. I would not take back any experience I ever had. I feel like everything that has happened has made me the person I am. It's like what dad says, which is a great mantra for me. And I think we've all talked about this is it's not about what you have, it's about who you are becoming. Yeah. I didn't say what I failed at this week. I feel like I said enough.

(47:37)
I think have really said all the things I failed at. I think another thing if I want to add to it is just working out as much as I'd like to this week, but I just learned that I do want to work out at certain times. I tried to work out at 12 o'clock and I felt exhausted. She jumps on a trampoline too. I do a rebounder that helps lymphatic drainage. It sounds cool. It's just a tiny little baby trampoline. Looks terrible. That concludes the first chapter of The 20 Something Playbook. If you have any questions about navigating your twenties, please comment below or go to our Instagram @20somethingplaybook. Thank you for joining us and if you like this conversation, please like, share and subscribe and we look forward to seeing you again soon.

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