Elizabeth Day

So rom-coms, like the stuff that you watch on television, what that's telling you, or it's your peer group.

And in the age of social media, that's so much more pressured than ever before.

So you will...

My experience, and it was a world before Instagram, was very much like, I'm not doing as well as X. I'm not as far along in my career as I should be because of Y. I am not having a footloose, fancy, free life of the sort embodied in Sex and the City or Friends.

And should I also be having a long-term relationship or should I be having one-night stands?

I just don't know where I sit in this.

And so that's why your 20s, I think, are tough.

Yes.

And interestingly, when I started How To Fail, my podcast, the first few seasons, so many people came and chose their 20s as one of their failures.

And it became something that I'm really passionate about.

talking about.

Because I think so many people in their 20s feel that they're the only ones feeling that they're failing.

And I promise you that you're not.

And also, I think that we've been sold a myth that life is a race, that we need to be achieving greater things younger than ever before.

And I think that comes from the wrongheaded idea of

that as we age, our power somehow diminishes.

And that has been the opposite of my experience.

I feel that I have got more powerful.

I know myself so much better the more that I age.

And my success, conventional CV on paper success, has only really come from my late 30s onwards.