Building a Strong Foundation as a Young Adult

Building a strong foundation as a growing adult comes with its own challenges, especially with the transitioning part. Transitioning from teenagehood to adulthood comes with so many uncertainties. 

Maturing is acknowledging these uncertainties and finding various meaningful ways to overcome them. Most adults who realized this have been able to establish a strong foundation for themselves one way or the other. Building a strong foundation comes in soo many forms like personal growth, intellectual growth, career growth, social growth, all these come together to ensure major human development. These growths can be obvious efforts and sometimes it happens maybe out of experience or interactions with people from different background, in other words we indirectly have nothing to do with such development. With these new insights how then do we ensure that our foundations as young adults are made solid? How do we focus our youthful ambitions to be in alignment with our developments. This article delves more into these thoughts.

Personal Growth

This is basically the act of developing oneself as an individual. It encompasses developing anything that makes you, from mental, physical, emotional, etc. It deals with self-discovery. Self discovery is very crucial for self-identity.

How can you build a strong foundation without knowing yourself and facing your personal challenges, that is things that are a hindrance to your growth. Ways young adults can discover themselves include, 

Reflecting on your past: This is a very bold step to take to build a strong foundation. The past sometimes holds the answer to the reason why we behave one way or the other, how we relate with others, how we think, whether positive or not. Some people prefer not to remember the past and focus on the present. According to George Santayana, "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it", hence the past is just a framework for us to look on to avoid making certain mistakes previously made. This is because the past cannot be changed but the future is yet to happen and is in your power. This will help in discovering one's flaws and working on them. 

Professional Growth

1. Intellectual development and the essence of skill development: 

Career-wise, I believe intellectual development together with skill development is very crucial for one to find his or her standing in his or professional growth. In our today's world with the influx of technology and easily made information anyone can become an intellectual. Some of these opportunities does not have to necessarily be in-person but also online, others are free, and others are paid. In other words, opportunities in the 21st century have been made flexible and accessible. Some opportunities include ALX, Simplilearn, Duolingo, Udemy, Alison, also fellowships like the Millennium Fellowship, the Mandela Washington Fellowships, among other things, all these are opportunities available to the public and are very relevant means for developing oneself professionally. In most of these programs, it is not strictly based on your background but rather your ambition to take on new opportunities and make good use of it. Acquiring skills comes in two forms hard skills like technologically practical stuffs, critical thinkings, etc or soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence, etc. 

2. Embracing challenges and learning from failures: This aspect is very crucial, as the ability to persevere and overcome challenges is enough to build resilience. majority of prominent people are known to have encountered this phase and overcame it successfully. Some include Colonel Sanders of KFC, who was rejected countless times by restaurants before finding his success with his franchise model, Thomas Eddison who failed countless lightbulb prototypes, Henry Ford who went bankrupt before starting the Ford Motor Company, and a whole lot of success stories. Everyone has their own success story, and it is written by themselves, not any other person. Overcoming this phase shows persistence, learning from past mistakes, and resilience, and this is very crucial to help in professional and personal development, a solid psychological foundation.

3. Developing a Strong Support Network: This part of building a solid foundation is very critical, it has to do with building relationships.  Building relationships with peers, mentors and professionals is very critical. It is critical for career growth that is helping to find new opportunities, professional advice and increasing chances of getting recommended for a particular role or further studies. Developing this network is also made strong, as this relationship is crucial for building reputation, building confidence, growing one's knowledge and access to information, etc. It can be in a formal setting or not; building good, respectable and strong relationships with others is very necessary to enhance one’s growth. 

4 One major factor on building a strong foundation is financial responsibility. According to Warren Buffet, his concept of financial literacy is, "do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving". Being financially literate is very relevant. 

Some importance of financial literacy is to support financial wellbeing or to manage one's money by making important financial choices that align and ensure their growth as individuals. Being financially literate is enough to prevent you from acquiring too many liabilities that drain your finances, as no one likes to be broke. Making investments, buying stocks, bonds, saving, etc is necessary to grow one’s finances and these are some relevant decisions a young adult should make. 

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be". Acknowledging the essence of self-improvement is very powerful, as our destiny is shaped and revolves around the decisions we make; therefore, make decisions that will grow and align with your ambitions as a growing adult.