Are your 20s the best years of your life?

American psychologist Meg Jay has said the way you spend your third decade will define the rest of your life and it is act sensibly.

But do people really have more fun when they’re young? Speaking to Moncrieff, counselling psychologist Leslie Shoemaker said she did “not know what I was doing in my 20s”.

“It’s messy and it’s supposed to be messy,” Ms Shoemaker said.

“That’s just part of figuring out, ‘Who am I? What am I going to be? What am I going to do? Who am I going to marry? Am I going to have kids?’

“All those wonderful life questions and they’re now referring to the mid-20s as the quarter life crisis.”

Life expectancy continues to increase and Ms Shoemaker said this means people have more and more time to embrace life and do the things they want at a leisurely pace.

Bithday cake. Credit: profivideos from Pixabay

“Go, play, travel, be messy,” Ms Shoemaker said.

“Take time out.”

Given that humans are living longer as well, Ms Shoemaker said she dislikes people being melodramatic about hitting their 30s.

“We’re not dead,” she said.

“We’re nowhere near being dead, we still have lots of things to see, do and experience.

“That’s why I get worried when I hear these conversations… [In your] 30s, research tells us your self-esteem starts to go up automatically.

“You start feeling a bit more confident, we start having an idea about our career and things like that.”

Middle age

Even in the decades after that, Ms Shoemaker said there is still ample time to do the things you want and shake up your life.

“If you remember Golden Girls, they were all in their 50s in that TV show,” she said.

“I was like, ‘Jesus, I’m in my 50s and I’m nothing like them.’

“That is how we viewed [people in their] 50s - they were over the hill, grey and dowdy.

“Whereas now, [if you’re in your 50s], go out, play and travel.

“Change jobs, go back to college, do wonderful things.”

The average person in Ireland lives till the age of 80.

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Main image: Clubbers in Dublin. Image: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews