Picture by Designm.ag – Creative Commons. Design by Paul Angone
We’ve been lied to.
And these lies are holding us back.
Too many twenty-somethings are driving through the twists and turns of their 20′s with windshields covered in mud, lies, and half-truths. And then we wonder why so many of us have crashed?
We need to hose these lies off right now or spend our 20′s stuck on the side of the road.
Last week I wrote about the 11 questions every twenty-something needs to ask. If you didn’t get a chance to work on some of your answers, please check it out.
However, if we’re going to walk forward with those answers, taking our 20′s by the ears and snarling at them, then we need to stop believing the following lies right now.
5 Lies Twenty-Somethings Need to Stop Believing. Right! Now!
1. I’m the Only One Struggling
WHAT A LIE!
If you’ve read much on All Groan Up, you know that I’d love to lock this lie away in a Serbian prison and give the key to a pack of Arctic wolves to defend. You are not alone in your struggle, questions, wondering what’s next?, now what?, or do I have what it takes?
Our 20′s are tough. That’s the truth. Too many twenty-somethings are struggling through a quarter-life crisis all alone.
We all need help. We all need support. We all need nudges, prompts, advice, and encouragement.
No one has it all figured out.
The twenty-somethings who think they do are the ones in for the biggest shock of them all.
2. I Should Be Successful by Now! Like Right Now!
WHAT A LIE!
I fully expected to walk straight into a crazy-successful twenty-something life with accolades, salaries, bonuses, a big-ol-fat-book-deal, and a plethora of people who wanted to learn my secrets to success, all by 23 years old. Maybe 25 if I really hit some serious setbacks.
I didn’t realize that success takes time — loads of time.
Success is not an Egg McMuffin, delivered to us for a $3, three minute investment.
No, success is the Sistine Chapel — it takes years, pain, frustration, thousands of brushes, colors, and crumpled up sketches before you have your masterpiece.
Countless famed figures we idolize, like Abraham Lincoln, failed drastically in their 20′s. Success is not a sprint, it’s an Ironman marathon and our 20′s aren’t really about running the actual race. No, our 20′s are simply about building our endurance so that we can run the race in the future.
If you take one step towards your dream today, you are a success.
Success happens in the details.
3. Life is Not Turning Out Like it Was Supposed To
WHAT A LIE!
Well, kind of. Yes, life is not turning out like it was supposed to, but what the heck is supposed to? There is no supposed to. Supposed to is a lie. Supposed to is built on the perception of someone else’s perceived success. Live your life right now exactly as it is and do your best to keep moving forward into where you want to go. That’s what you’re supposed to do.
4. I Don’t Have What it Takes
WHAT A LIE!
I 100% guarantee you have what it takes. I triple-stamp a double-stamp, 100% money-back guarantee you have what it takes.
It’s just going to take some time to figure out what exactly “it” is.
Our 20′s are a process not a surprise party.
You don’t just walk into the door and all of the sudden your calling jumps out from behind the couch.
You’re extremely talented at something. We just need to start pulling off the layers to get a glimpse of what that something is. (See 11 Questions Every Twenty-Something Needs to Ask and How to Find Your Passion)
5. I am a Failure
WHAT A LIE!
The only failure of our 20′s would be if we never had any.
The only failure of our 20′s is if we fail and then call ourselves failures.
Our 2o’s are going to be riddled with failure. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a liar.
Failure is not a period, it’s a comma. And only if you stop trying will you really fail.
There’s only one way to be successful in our twenties — fail, tweak, then try again.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments below:
What lie is holding you back?
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Hearing twenty-somethings talk about going through a Quarter Life Crisis can feel like such a joke, until you’re experiencing one yourself.
Oh yes, the infamous Quarter Life Crisis.
One day you’re jogging along with bounce and buoyancy as upbeat music confirms with every step that you can take on the freaking world.
The next day, you’re sprawled out on the couch wishing you could live in a 90′s sitcom, Death Cab for Cutie in the background confirming with every melody that you can’t even take on your laundry, let alone the world.
I’ve written about the “25 Signs you Might be Experiencing a Quarter Life Crisis”, and why I think a “Quarter Life Crisis Might be the Best Thing that Can Happen to You”. Now let’s talk about when you’re smack dab in the middle of one. How do we journey through a Quarter Life Crisis and come out the other side alive and kickin?
Seven Cures for a Quarter Life Crisis
1. Crisis is Normal
Experiencing crisis in your twenties is like having gas after a steak and cheese burrito. Just because we don’t want to admit it, doesn’t mean we don’t all go through some bad spells.
Even our own parents most likely went through intense questioning and crisis in their twenties. They didn’t just teleport to success and stability. If we ask them what their twenties were like we might find out that as our parents got their stuff together, they went through their own stuff that sounds a lot like yours.
I love what author and teacher Parker Palmer wrote, while in his 60′s, about his own long season of turmoil and distress that started in his twenties:
“When I was young, there were very few elders willing to talk about their darkness; most of them pretended that success was all they had ever known…I thought I had developed a unique and terminal case of failure. I did not realize I had merely embarked on a journey toward joining the human race” – Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
2. It’s More Transition than Quarter Life Crisis
Transitions start with an ending. Just like a break up with someone you hoped was “The One”, in major life transitions you’re breaking up with an important season of your life. You’re cutting the anchor that held you in that port, and as it splashes in the water it’s bound to produce some waves.
When you graduate from college, move across the country, leave friends or family – you’re not only leaving that place, familiarities, routines, and memories, but you’re also leaving who you were in that place. You’re saying goodbye to a season and even more dramatically, waving goodbye to who you used to be. Sure bits and pieces will come with you, but just like that huge, comfortable couch in a bachelor pad, some big things will get left behind.
However, it is stuck smack dab in this void of “what now?” where you make the most progress. Maybe a Quarter Life Crisis is not just a stage to pass over, it’s a transition process to marinate in. Let the overwhelming questions of “I have no idea where I’m going” guide you to where you want to be.
3. Limit Obsessive Comparison Disorder
Yes, I talk quite a bit about the new OCD that I think is running rampant through our generation, but until we cure our obsessive comparison disorder we will continue to light our internal crisis on fire and then feel the burn. Obsessively comparing yourself to others, becoming more and more frustrated that your _____ doesn’t look like theirs, is the absolute most effective way to take your crisis to unhealthy, eating raw cookie dough with a serving spoon, levels.
4. Kill Unmet Expectations
Maybe it’s time to put to death the unrealistic ideas of how instantly amazing your life should have been before these unmet expectations kill you over and over again. Success doesn’t happen in a day, it happens in decades. We are in the exact spot we are supposed to be, it just looks nothing like the picture on the front of the brochure. All the time, effort, struggle, and strain that we’re experiencing is not the roadblock to success, it is the stairwell that takes us to the view we were praying for all along.
5. Engage with a Crisis Community
We need to get better at talking through the struggle. Let’s stop putting on the “My Life is Amazing” Magic Show when no one’s in the audience to even watch. You are not alone in this. So many twenty-somethings are struggling, we’ve just become proficient at living by the deadly condition of MCDS — My Crap Doesn’t Stink — even when it’s smelling up our entire living room.
6. Don’t Sit and Stew and Simmer
Open up the windows. Let in some fresh air. Go for a run. Heck, maybe sign up for a marathon. Start yoga. Go to a church service. Read some books. Volunteer at a retirement home. If you have no idea what you’re doing in your life, just pick something that you know can’t be bad and just run with it. Sometimes the best answers come when we stop sitting around obsessing over finding them.
7. Have Faith in the Future
It might sound cliché, but we need to cling tight to our faith and hope in our future. Our belief in a rockin future, even when our present is currently rocking us, can be a piggy-back ride through the thorns and glass of a Quarter Life Crisis. Vicktor Frankel, WWII concentration camp survivor and author of “Man’s Search for Meaning”, wrote about this power of belief:
“The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future –was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.”
Maybe your faith in the future should also re-incorporate your actual faith as well. Maybe in your life God has felt as cold and distant as an Alaskan King Salmon. Ask God for clarity in this crisis and see what is revealed. Maybe it’s time to bring back your faith into your future.
Quarter Life Crisis Cures
Being 20-something can feel like a pug trying to climb a mountain. It’s slow, noisy, and un-pretty, but one tiny step after another and you somehow make it to the top.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments below on what ideas you have for making it through a quarter life crisis. Did you resonate with any of the tips above?
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1. Never looking at your budget and never making a budget is the exact same thing.
2. The possibility for greatness and embarrassment both exist in the same space. If you’re not willing to be embarrassed, you’re probably not willing to be great.
3. Feel no shame in seeking help from a counselor or therapist. We all have crap we try to wrap and hide under the Christmas tree. Get rid of it before it smells up your entire holiday.
4. All job listings on Craigslist lead you to a warehouse in downtown LA “wearing something nice with shoes you can walk in”.
5. Don’t ever, ever check Facebook when you’re:
A. Depressed
B. Drinking.
C. Depressed and Drinking.
D. Unemployed.
E. Anytime after 9:17 pm.
F. Struggling with being blessed with singleness while all your friends seem to be blessed with 2.4 kids and that blazing white-picket-fence shining with the glory of Jesus Christ himself.
6. All those amazing college friends you swore you’d never lose contact with after college yeah, well, you might lose contact. Moving all over the country, getting married, having kids, all make that forty-five minute conversation with your sophomore roommate a little more complicated than it used to be over a game of Mario Kart. Making and keeping friends in our twenties takes intentionality.
7. Your twenties will produce more failures than you’ll choose to remember. The key is when you fail, don’t begin calling yourself a failure.
8. Every break up has two break ups. I’m no physicist, but this is a law of physics, of this I am certain. Yes you’ll have the first tearful “It’s over” sitting in the front seat of your Honda or on a park swing. Then 1-2 months later after there’s “been talk”, you’ll have the “real breakup” because she forgets to call like she used to or he checks out the waitress like he’s a judge for Miss USA. And gird those loins because in the second break up there will be a lot more breaking.
9. The Freshman-Fifteen is nothing compared to the Cubicle-Cincuenta. Don’t sit at your computer perched like a Roman gargoyle. Don’t let office birthday cake be forced on you like a cigarette behind your middle school. Bust out before your butt does.
10. And yes, cubicles don’t make sense to anybody other than upper-management. I would be willing to bet that only 3% of all “Cubicle Americans” actually have a positive outlook on life. And half of that 3% is stealing from their company.
11. If at some point between 22 – 27 you feel like you’re six years old again, lost and alone at the San Diego Zoo (it’s a big-frickin-zoo), frantically searching for a familiar face – hold tight, you’re experiencing a bit of a Quarter-Life Crisis. Stay put. Pray a lot. And in no time someone will call your name across the loud speaker to tell you where you can be found.
12. Reckless drinking and reckless flirting have a direct correlation. Friends don’t let friends drive, or flirt, drunk.
13. If you grew up going to church, at some point in your 20′s you’ll probably stop going to church. If you grew up with faith as a central part of your life, at some point in your twenties faith might move to the outskirts of town next to the trailer park and three-legged squirrel refuge. Your twenties are a process of making faith your own apart from your parents and childhood. Sometimes that means staggering away so you know what you’re coming back to.
14. Don’t ever begin dating someone you first met whilst in swimsuits. Doubly-don’t if you’re both in swimsuits whilst holding an alcoholic beverage.
15. Obsessive Comparision Disorder is the smallpox of our generation. 9 out of 10 doctor’s agree this disorder is the leading cause to eating a whole sleeve of Oreo’s while watching Real Housewives of OC. Say no to obsessive comparison disorder before it starts. Remember everyone’s too busy putting a PR spin on their Facebook profile to care much about yours.
16. Life will never feel like it’s “supposed to”. Being twentysomething can feel like death by unmet expectations. However, let me be so brash to say that you are right now, at this moment, exactly where you need to be. But you’ll only be able to see that five years and thirty-eight days from today.
17. You might have your first kid and realize what it’s like to be young, a parent, and have no freaking clue what you’re doing. And for the first time in your life, you also might actually understand your parents for the first time.
18. Marriage WILL NOT fix any of your problems. No, instead marriage will put a magnifying glass on how many problems you really have. We grow up carrying bags with our insecurities, fears, bad relationships, problems with our parents — you name it. Begin to ditch these bags now. Newly married and living in a small apartment is no place to store a luggage set full of shiz.
19. An assortment of crappy jobs are a twentysomething rite of passage. Figure out what you need to learn there and learn it. If you don’t, an assortment of crappy jobs might be your thirty, forty and fiftysomething rite of passage as well.
20. Great ideas alone mean nothing. Your ability to persevere through 16 major setbacks, a lack of passion, forgetting why you started this great idea in the first place, and all the people who allude that your great idea is actually quite terrible — well, that means everything.
21. The grass is always greener on the other side, until you get there and realize it’s because of all the manure.
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Quarter-Life Crisis (def): Experienced in one’s twenties, involving anxiety/fear/confusion over the direction and quality of one’s life. Not sure if what you’re experiencing has the makings of one? Here’s 25 signs it might be a quarter life crisis.
But what if I told you that experiencing a quarter life crisis is the best thing that can happen to you?
This turbulent season in your 20′s where you’re emerging into adulthood, and in the process, feel like you’re getting the insides ripped out of you like crab legs at a Las Vegas buffet. Yes, this season will be the most important season of development in your entire life.
Let me explain.
Life Lived Linear
Growing up, we live life so linear. Middle school. High School. College. Grad School. Cubicle job.
Climb that step so you can climb the next and the next and the next…
don’t question. don’t look back. don’t turn.
Climb you fool. Climb!
higher.faster.farther.further.
We earn degrees, corner offices, 401k’s — but is plodding up a stairwell the way we want to live?
Time to Explore
The Quarter-life Crisis is simply when you finally stop climbing the stairs and start exploring the unknowns of the 15th floor.
The door locks behind you. You strain your eyes but can only make out a dimly lit hall that appears to never end. You feel stuck in a Stephen King novel and at any second train headlights might start hurdling toward you.
No syllabus. No textbook. No professor with a flashlight to shed light on all the answers.
No, just you and an endless amount of rooms.
All you can do is start opening doors.
And it’s a tad terrifying, if we’re honest. Because exploring the dark has always been that way.
Because we’ll enter rooms that smell like mothballs and old pee.
Because we’ll get lost and there’s no assurance that we’ll ever find our way out.
Value of the Quarter-Life Crisis
But the more rooms we go in, the more the maze begins to make sense. Exploring in the dark is not easy. But our eyes begin to adjust. We start learning how to really see.
We learn how to fail.
And struggle.
And persevere.
We learn that sometimes life must suck before it’s sweet.
We learn how to explore again like we’re eight years old in the field behind our house.
Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”
― Gilda Radner
We think back to our life on the stairwell and realize it wasn’t much of a life after all.
So yes, I’d rather we experience crisis now. I’d rather we ask questions when we’re twenty-six years old and have the rest of our lives to live it. Than when we’re freaking-fifty-five with so much of our lives already cashed in.
Lost With Confidence
A Quarter-Life crisis, as Professor Robert Quinn writes in Deep Change, is really about being willing to get “lost with confidence”.
I can honestly say now, I’m thankful for my quarter-life crisis.
Because if you explore the 15th floor long enough you’ll begin to hear the music.
And it’s beautiful.
Have you experienced moments of Quarter Life Crisis? Can you see any ways it’s benefited you?
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1. You glare at your cat in the morning as you get ready for work and say, “God, I wish I had your life.”
2. “Am I ever going to feel like myself again?” Is something you ask. Every day.
3. A Bon Iver or John Mayer song comes on and you start crying. By yourself, or around friends. Or in the middle of a coffee shop as strangers slowly usher their children away.
4. “When is life going to feel like it’s supposed to?” Is something you ask. Every day.
5. You’re reading this article right now because you Googled: “Quarter Life Crisis?”
6. Visualizing yourself 15 years from now doing your bosses job makes you throw up a little in your mouth.
7. You’re having arguments with your mom again about cleaning your bathroom and being home at a reasonable hour.
8. Your monthly routine of expenses being greater than your income is dawning on you as a serious problem.
9. You’re having arguments with your newly cemented spouse and/or roommate that sound awfully like the arguments your parents used to have, that you swore you’d never have, yet are having.
10. You’ve moved six times in the last four years.
B. You’ve had six jobs in the last four years.
C. You’ve had six boyfriends in the last four years.
D. You’ve had six girlfriends in the last four years.
E. You’ve had no boyfriends/girlfriends in the last six years and you’re scared your boyfriending or girlfriending is broken.
11. You’d pay top dollar for a moment of clarity.
12. That young mom with the crazy hair and stains on her shirt and bags under her eyes that kind of smells like rotten milk who you rolled your eyes at throughout college. Yeah, well you roll your stroller into a coffee shop after waking up six times with your baby and see a college girl look you up and down with that same disgust. And it takes everything within you not to walk over to that snooty college princess and punch her in the face.
13. Your part-time, temporary job at Starbucks has lasted three and ½ years.
14. You binge on buying brand names to try and cover up that you’re broke.
15. You find yourself repelled and compelled by church at the same time. You ask God for help one day and then you’re yelling at him the next. Your faith is a roller coaster and you’re pretty sure your seat belt is about to come undone.
16. You see so clearly the two roads in front of you. A life of comfort and a life of risk. And you’re not sure you have the right car or directions to go down either one.
17. You surf the internet so much at work every day that you literally hit a point where you don’t know what else to search for.
18. You laughed, and cried, when you read 21 Secrets for your 20’s.
19. Making a budget is completely debilitating.
Even thinking about doing your taxes. Debilitating.
Buying groceries. Debilitating.
Doing dishes. Cooking dinner. Looking for a job. Calling your mom back. Calling your best friend back. Picking up the phone at all. DEBILI-FRICKING-TATING.
So you watch four seasons in a row of _________, while Facebook stalking exes and enemies.
20. The phrase you dread hearing the most at work is, “Congratulations, you’re getting a promotion.”
21. You feel like every time you’re a bridesmaid/groomsman, an angel loses it’s wings.
22. You dream about going back and punching your Smug-College-Self who was so sure had all the answers.
23. You seek out a mentor for answers one week and you avoid them like the 8th grader with bad BO, the next.
24. You have no idea where to go for answers.
Yet…
25. You’re 99.7% sure a road-trip would fix everything
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