Your Thirties: Untangling and Rediscovering

Marianna Jaross

Each developmental period brings about unique challenges.

For many people, your twenties can be about experimenting, trying to meet the milestones you feel pressured to; and looking around to see what everyone else is doing. You are navigating young adulthood, the call of independence, ideas around study and career, and milestones you are filtering through. Dating? Marriage? Babies? Travel? A degree?

By your thirties, you may have accumulated a whole lot of experiences, a couple of heartbreaks, and data about who you are and what you truly want now. You are sometimes navigating the potential or reality of parenthood, whether the career or life you’ve built is sustainable, and evaluating whether the friendships, family, and relationships around you are healthy.

Here are the things to remember:

1.) Appreciate the small things. They are the big things. The cup of coffee. The career pivot that scares you but that you’re doing anyway. The first time you sign a lease on your own. The friend you’ve known for a decade. The therapy and healing you’re showing up to.

2.) Make it a habit to frequently ask yourself what you want and need from your life. You can’t run on the fumes of someone else’s dreams forever without this catching up to you. Ask yourself: What do I truly want to be happy? Sometimes, it is less than we thought we needed. Other times, we may realise we have been playing small.

3.) Embodiment is the key to change. Be the kind of person that you want to be, and embody it. In an era of vision boards and manifestation, the best way to ‘become her’ is to ‘be her.’ Act, think, move, and even dress like the best version of yourself.

4.) Some dots you will be able to connect now, others will come later. For me personally, one of the funniest elements of my twenties was how I stop-started so many things: Different degrees, projects, roles, and ambitions; that have now all funnelled into what I am creating now. Things may weave together in unexpected ways.

5.) Don’t let your dreams die. There is a siren call of practicality that arrives in your thirties. While some of this may be due to maturity, sometimes this happens because we have been burnt or heartbroken one too many times, and are tempted to retreat from the world. Don’t retreat. Remember you can come back to life and find your spark again; and you have plenty of time to do it. You will never be as young as you are now.

6.) Only have room for reciprocal and clear connections: Refining your friendships and relationships may come up: When you are dating, you can date knowing you don’t have to chase anyone, that the right person for you will be available, interested, and consistent. This applies to your friendships, too. Drama-free connections free up leaking emotional energy; and with this freedom we have more time for reciprocal connections, the people who deeply matter to us, or ourselves.

This is a beautiful time period where our feet are on the ground, and we can refine what we have built; or start afresh.

© Marianna Jaross 2026