In my mid 20s, I was about $100K in debt, failed in the career that I thought I'd have after undergrad, compounded my problem by running to a grad school program because I thought it would give me a new chance at money post program and make my family proud. In my late 20s I was about $200K in debt, in a bad marriage, still unsure of what I wanted to do in my career. Fast forward to today (early 40s). I make more money than I ever imagined I could, I have a wonderful (2nd) marriage, I'm out of debt, life is good.
Learnings that led me here (in no particular order):
* don't think about what others think of you, think about what you want and what makes you happy. i know that I can't force myself to work hard on something i'm not interested in, so this was very important for me to figure out
* read "7 habits of highly effective people" - there's timeless advice there
* read "non-violent communication" - changed the way that i communicate and made my second marriage much healthier than the first, learning how to communicate in different contexts will help in your career as well
* learn to forgive, especially yourself
* accept responsibility- you're responsible for your life, no one else
* your 20s are for taking risk and figuring out what you're interested in, don't be afraid of risk, learning how to take risks and becoming comfortable with risk will help you in the long run
* luck is certainly a big factor for success, but you can set yourself up to create luck or take advantage of luck by cultivating your network, reducing debt, increasing your skills
* this was advice given to me by someone I respect- "don't chase a network or career, be interesting and add value, the rest will take care of itself." If you're interesting (had interesting experiences, have interesting thoughts and are able to communicate those things) people will be drawn to you, if you add value people will want to work with you and you'll capture some of that value back.
* Edit, one more: you can train your mind like you train your body. If identify something that's holding you back, you can change. Concrete example- in my 20s I was one of those people at parties that sits in the corner and doesn't talk to anyone because they dont know many people there. I decided that was holding me back, but I couldn't all of a sudden become "social" (just like when you first start training your body, you're not going to squat 200lbs), so I devised little exercises for myself to make me more comfortable talking to people I don't know- complementing people on their shoes while in line at a coffee shop ("those are cool shoes!"). Then when that becomes natural, asking follow up questions- "where did you get them?" and building from there.