This turned out to be a pretty long post, but I felt it was important I shared this with you guys. I turned 25 on July 12th and I made a promise to myself to quit drinking alcohol, and THAT has been the best decision I have made in the past 4 years...Alcohol used to make feel confident and I became a lot more social with people, but it was only for one night and the next day I felt more anxious, paranoid, suicidal, and depressed. Apparently alcohol does make you more anxious in the long run so I finally decided to give up all the partying, clubbing, enjoying cold beer, tasting wine, sipping expensive cognac etc.....I just figured that if I allow myself to drink a couple of beers once in a while then I will let myself get drunk eventually, which happened plenty of times before. So quitting drinking for me was for health reasons, physical and mental, and I already feel a lot better waking up each morning. This is just my personal opinion AND decision, all people react to alcohol affects differently and of course we all drink differently. But if you're kind of thinking about quitting, be it your 25th bday or 24th or whatever day you have a bad hang over, just try to go without alcohol for 90 days and see if it makes your life better, then if after 90 days you still decide to drink, then you got your whole life ahead of you to get piss drunk
As for the financial life, career, personal relationships, friends and everything else that we try to grasp in this life so that finally we can feel "complete", you know how it goes "If only I had that nice house", "If only I had a beautiful with and kids", "If only I had more money". Well, since I quit drinking I've been really trying to figure out what I want from life, and I can't say that having more money in my bank account, having a nice house, a nice car has made me feel any happier. And even though, I've had few short relationships, I wouldn't say that falling in love with somebody will make you fell happy for the rest of your life, if only for a couple of months while you're "in love". So I started digging deeper in the spiritual stuff, but non of the religions ever appealed to me, I never believed in "God" and so I wanted to find some kind of REAL practice, to look at the life the way it is, not looking for a savior jesus christ to come save my miserable ass or any other god out there, but to truly discover who you are in this life that will inevitably end, its just a question of when.
What I discovered is meditation and Buddhist Psychology which is not a religion nor philosophy but rather techniques and practices of really seeing life as it is and discovering what all of us really long for which is -- LOVE. And primarily love for YOURSELF. "That which we long for which we have been looking and longing for is nowhere else to be found, but HERE, in this very moment.
Now you're probably thinking "yeah right, there is no practice that can make me feel happy about my life and the way I am without me acquiring things or more friends or beautiful wife or kids etc...." And the fact is that its not easy, it requires a lot of patience and concentration, and basically taming your own mind to be at peace. Anyway, I could go on and on about how cool meditation and Buddhist way of life is, its just something I discovered that can really work for ME and I wanted to share it with you guys so that maybe you can give it a try and see if it also can work for you.
By the way, I come from the bottom of the bottoms, my life was empty, and I saw no meaning at all of continuing to live, I felt very depressed and at some point I wanted to go out and by a gun and end all this misery, that was in some extreme cases of being hung over.
Anyhow, instead of thinking what you should have at the age of 25, I think its more wise to really look at your and yourself and really discover who you are and how you want to live your life. Mindful way of living is far better than grasping, aversion, and disillusion. If you're interested in learning the true way of living and the way to your own happiness I recommend audio books by Jack Kornfield, just go to this site: audible.com and type in Jack Kornfield, there are several good audio books by him, the ones I'm listening to are called "The roots of buddhist psychology" and "a path with heart" (
http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/pr...p?productID=SP_TRUE_000201&BV_UseBVCookie=Yes) and its helping me overcome my social phobia and discover where the real happiness really is - within you.
May you be filled with love, may you be well, may you be at peace, may you be happy.
