10 Uncomfortable Signs You’re Growing Older, But Not Wiser
1. You feel uncomfortable being on your own.
Growing up involves many painful processes, including letting go of past failures, accepting who you are, and becoming comfortable with your own solitude. In reality, loneliness still feels to you like a scary, disastrous places where you feel crippled by fears and insecure of everything you’ve achieved. You may still feel inadequate each time you have to spend time in your own company, because you haven’t figured out yet how to tolerate who you are, flaws and all.
2. You take everything personally.
One big red flag that triggers failure to mature is thinking everything is about you. When people air their problems or talk about their issues, you take everything personal and grow resentful, without even trying to take a step back and consider that their world does not revolve around you.
3. Stress feels out of your control.
The ability to manage stress efficiently comes with a lot of self education, control of unhealthy habits and understanding of your own emotions. You always complain how stress is ruining your life, but you fail to analyze the real reasons you’re letting it consume you and you reject powerful resources that could help you live a more balanced life – because you simply want to think it’s unfixable.
4. You overspend on things you don’t need.
Expensive footwear, high heels you’ll only wear once because they’re killing your feet, clothes you find irresistible on a supermodel’s body (but that fail to compliment your features), decor objects with no clear utility, much more make-up than you could possibly use in a lifetime, pricy meals that you could be cooking yourself and the whole bunch of beauty products a blogger recommended. Then they all lay around your apartment, and frustration grows as you realise you have nothing to wear. Did I miss anything?
5. You can’t deal with hangover anymore.
Remember those days in your early twenties when you could party all night on a weekday, empty all those beer cans and tequila shots, going to bed at 5 AM after making out with cute but random strangers, puking with your best friend next to a tree and then waking up again at 8 AM, putting on sunglasses, drinking some vitamin C and coconut water with two Vicodins and being all fresh again and ready for some hard work in the office?
Yeah, me too.
But those days are long gone, my friend.
Once you hit late twenties, unplanned partying begins to look like unplanned parenting.
You can barely hold you head up straight if you’ve been drinking too much the night before and the hangovers are brutal. You keep telling yourself it’s not you, it’s the probably cheap vodka that bartender offered you, but in reality, you’re just refusing the plain old harsh reality of your body getting older.
6. You give a lot of unsolicited advice
Just because you’ve read a couple psychology books and went to a few mindfulness workshops (the fruits and smoothies were on the house!), you’re not exactly entitled to tell people how to live their lives.
Maturity comes with the acceptance that you can’t change most people and that solidarity sometimes means sitting with someone in silence and hearing their most intimate fears – instead of lecturing them about the meaning of their dreams.
7. Validation is an ongoing life goal
…and how other people present their lives on social media is a random envy generator.
8. You have no savings.
In spite of how much you’ve earned, nothing seems to have stuck to your economies account. If you’re still wondering why, go back to section 4 and meditate on how to throw a generous yard sale.
9. You keep taking back shitty exes
As you haven’t yet learned to say no, you keep rekindling with old flames and fuckboys that have made your life a mess in the past. While you’re still looking for that forever person (and if you’re still trapped in a toxic relationship), consider heading back to section 1 of this list and take the leap of faith to be single and finally on your way to growth.
10. Everything bores you to tears.
Getting older doesn’t need to be a bore. When you look at life trough a lens that magnifies all your issues – there is little room left for growth and improvement. Healthy individuals are never bored instead: they take every challenge and event as an opportunity to learn, evolve or create – and just like children, they can find the beauty in the most common things. 
