Questions to Ask Yourself Before Turning 30 (A Journal Session)

Hey friends, it’s Lizzie! When I was rounding the corner toward 30, I did the thing everyone warns you about — I panicked a little. I made a list of everything I hadn’t done yet and stared at it like it was a report card. But somewhere between my last few weeks of 29 and blowing out those candles here on the Space Coast, I realized I’d been asking myself all the wrong things. The question wasn’t “Am I behind?” It was “Am I actually living a life that feels like mine?”

So I traded the panic list for a different kind of list — real questions worth sitting with. Not the cute Instagram-caption kind, but the ones that make you put your coffee down for a second. I’m sharing them here, with why each one matters and how I worked through mine, because the best thing you can do before 30 isn’t checking boxes. It’s getting honest.

Values & Joy: What actually lights you up?

Your 20s are basically a decade of trying on other people’s definitions of a good life. Your 30s are where you get to hand a few of those back. These are the questions I’d start with, because everything else — your money, your relationships, your work — flows from knowing what you actually value.

• What did I love before anyone was watching? For me, the answer was kickboxing. I’d let “Liz Lightning” go quiet for a while because life got busy, and asking this question is literally what pulled me back into the gym. Ten years in, it’s still the thing that makes me feel most like myself.
• When was the last time I lost track of time — and doing what? That flow state is a compass. Follow it.
• Whose approval am I still chasing that I could set down? This one stung. Be gentle with yourself, but be honest.
• What does a genuinely good Tuesday look like? Not the highlight-reel vacation. The ordinary day. If your regular Tuesdays feel good, you’ve built a good life.

Here’s why joy belongs at the top of the list and not the bottom: we tend to treat it like dessert, something we earn after the “important” stuff. But joy is the important stuff. The women I admire most in their 30s aren’t the ones who did everything right — they’re the ones who kept their spark. If you want a full pep talk on that, I poured my whole heart into why turning 30 is genuinely the best thing that ever happened to your body, because so much of feeling good in this decade starts with dropping the war you’ve been waging on yourself.

Relationships: Who’s actually in your corner?

One of the quieter shifts of turning 30 is realizing you have less time and energy — and that’s not a bad thing. It just means you get more intentional about who gets it. These questions helped me do a gentle inventory without turning it into a friendship purge.

• Who do I feel most like myself around? Not most impressive. Most me. Those are your people.
• Which relationships am I holding onto out of history, not connection? You can love someone and still let the friendship become an every-few-months thing. That’s allowed.
• Am I as good a friend as I want my friends to be? I had to sit with this. It’s easy to keep score on what you’re not getting and forget to check what you’re giving.
• What do I need from my partner that I’ve never actually said out loud? Brandon and I are engaged now, and honestly, so much of what makes us work came from me getting brave enough to ask for things instead of hoping he’d guess. Turning 30 made me a lot less willing to be quietly disappointed.

A little personal moment: the friends who showed up for my birthday weren’t a huge crowd. It was a handful of people I could call at 11pm, and that felt like abundance, not scarcity. Quality over quantity isn’t a consolation prize — in your 30s, it’s the whole point.

Career & Money: Is this the life you’re building, or the one you fell into?

I’m not going to tell you to have your entire career figured out by 30, because that’s a lie nobody’s life actually follows. But these are the questions that helped me stop drifting and start choosing.

1. If nothing changed for the next five years, would I be okay with that? If the answer is a hard no, that’s your signal. Not to blow everything up tomorrow — just to start steering.
2. What am I doing purely because I’m “supposed to”? The “supposed to” list is where so much of our energy quietly leaks out.
3. Do I actually know where my money goes? This is the least glamorous question and maybe the most freeing. I finally sat down and looked at my real numbers before 30 — not to feel bad, but so I’d stop feeling that low-grade financial anxiety humming under everything.
4. What would “enough” look like? We chase “more” without ever defining the finish line. Naming your version of enough is one of the most peaceful things you can do for yourself.
5. What’s one skill or dream I keep saying I’ll get to “someday”? Someday isn’t on the calendar. Pick a real date.

The career one hit me hardest, because for a while I was doing work that was fine — but “fine” isn’t the same as mine. Building this little corner of the internet, showing up for you all, leaning into the things I actually care about — that came from asking these questions and being willing to change my answer. If you’re feeling that itch to become a slightly different, truer version of yourself, I wrote a whole guide on how to reinvent yourself at 30 that walks through exactly how to start when the whole thing feels overwhelming.

How to actually sit with these (not just skim them)

A list like this is useless if you read it once and move on — trust me, I’ve done that too. So here’s how I’d actually use it:

• Pick three, not thirty. Choose the questions that made your stomach flip a little. Those are the true ones.
• Write your answers down. There’s something about seeing it in your own handwriting that makes it real. A phone note counts.
• Don’t force a pretty answer. “I don’t know yet” is a completely valid response. The point is the honesty, not the resolution.
• Come back in a year. Your 30s are long. Ask these again at 31, 33, 35. Watch how your answers grow up with you.

Turning 30 isn’t a deadline, friends. It’s more like walking into a bigger, better-lit room and finally getting to decide how you want to furnish it. These questions are just the flashlight. You already have everything you need to answer them — you might just have to get quiet enough to hear yourself.

So tell me in the comments: which one of these questions are you going to sit with first? I genuinely read every single one, and I’d love to know where your head’s at. And if this helped, come hang out with me on Instagram @sealillly — I share the real, unfiltered version of all this 30-something life stuff over there every week. 💛🌴