406. How to romanticise your 20s (even when they suck)
The Psychology of your 20s
iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Your 20s are sold to you as the “best years of your life” - which is hilarious, considering how many of us spend them underpaid, overthinking, heartbroken, living in transitional housing, and finding a new identity every 6 months. So what does it actually mean to ‘romanticise your 20s’? In this episode, we break down romanticising as a real psychological skill - how your brain constructs meaning, why attention shapes what feels like reality, and why building a coherent life story matters most when your life feels messy.
We explore:
• Why your attention changes your experience
• The neuroscience and cognition of meaning-making
• The role of emergent adulthood
• Why narrative psychology is so important
• Five grounded ways to romanticise your life
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Our favourite sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4324396/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224545.2025.2563539
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3045747/
The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. |
| 0:08.6 | Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spike and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. |
| 0:26.0 | Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have |
| 0:31.4 | you here back for another episode of the show. Today, I am finally doing it. I am doing a much requested topic or episode, which is |
| 0:41.6 | my guide to romanticizing our 20s, even when they suck. I think we've all seen videos or |
| 0:49.2 | posts online about the importance of romanticizing your life, of like romanticizing your nine to five, |
| 0:56.2 | romanticizing your commute, your morning routine, whatever it is. But why does this actually work? |
| 1:02.5 | What does the psychology and the science say about these practices? And the biggest question |
| 1:09.3 | of them all, is there any evidence? Is there any |
| 1:11.7 | evidence that buying yourself the flowers, pretending you're the main character, using the good |
| 1:16.2 | cutlery, the good candle, work? The answer I'm going to give it to you straight away is yes. |
| 1:22.2 | There is so much evidence. Honestly, so much evidence I could make this a two-parter that romanticizing your |
| 1:28.2 | life does things to your mind, does things to your brain, does things to your body, |
| 1:32.4 | that improve your quality of life. So today, we are going to talk about that. What romanticizing |
| 1:37.8 | your 20s should actually look like. Of course, the neuroscience and the psychology behind |
| 1:43.9 | why and how this practice will quite |
| 1:46.8 | literally change your reality and change the timeline you are on, but also my five personal |
| 1:52.4 | favorite, you know, romanticizing techniques and tips that you probably are not doing or |
| 1:59.5 | you may not have even heard of. So without further ado, |
| 2:02.7 | let's get into the episode. When people talk about romanticizing, it often gets confused with |
| 2:07.9 | sugar-coding or even toxic positivity. Like, kind of like you're supposed to spin everything into |
| 2:14.2 | a lesson and you are immediately meant to treat your pain. Like it is this gift. |
... |
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