To Get Where You Haven’t Been, You Must Do Things You Haven’t Done

By Alyssa Falk 11/19/25

When you’re a kid, most things in life are provided for you. Your routine is created by your school schedule, sports, and band practice. Your friends are determined by who lives closest or whose mom is willing to carpool you home. Your lens of life is small and you have very few decisions to make. All of this compared to the slap in the face that is your early 20’s where decisions range from what you eat for breakfast to what you choose to do with your life (P.S. I could have eaten ice cream for breakfast and never took advantage of it?!) There was never an “Adulting 101” class in high school; how were we supposed to know what to do? In the span of just a few short years, you go from being chauffeured everywhere by your parents to living on your own and trying not to kill your first houseplant- how are you supposed to feel ready to figure out your whole life?

Despite common assumptions, you aren’t supposed to have it all figured out in your 20’s (let alone when you’re 18 and graduating HS!). Your 20’s are meant for taking risks, making mistakes, and discovering who you really are outside of your family of origin. This huge journey of self-discovery can lead to a lot of different outcomes. For some of us, we confront the examples we saw growing up and are faced with the decision to follow their footsteps or carve our own path. Daunting, right? Forging a path untread can feel so intimidating when the world of opportunities is so big. Where do you start?

For a lot of my 20’s, I felt like I was only discovering the things I didn’t want to do and not the ones I did. I felt like an outlier, as if all of my peers had it figured out and I was the lost one. In truth, appearances rarely tell the whole story and I’ve come to learn that most people’s trajectories aren’t a upward trending graph like the ones you see in the Q4 Strategy Meeting. Social media and our ever-presence in each other’s lives has skewed our perspectives. So if no one’s trajectory through life is a straight path, how are people being successful? The real secret that all successful people share isn’t that they’re perfect, but that they aren’t afraid to fail.

There’s a famous quote that says, “To get where you haven’t been, you must do things you haven’t done”. And we also know that, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. Coincidence, or pattern? Since our moms are no longer pouring our cereal and our homeroom class assignments no longer determine our best friends, it’s up to us to start making mindful, intentional decisions to carve our paths. Simply put, if you aren’t where you would like to be, it may be time to try something different. You must forgo any fear of failure for an opportunity toward success. Some of the greatest joys lie right beyond your limiting beliefs.