More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Erikson spent some of his youth having an identity crisis. But along the way he was also earning what sociologists call identity capital.
Identity capital is our collection of personal assets. It is the repertoire of individual resources that we assemble over time. These are the investments we make in ourselves, the things we do well enough, or long enough, that they become a part of who we are. Some identity capital goes on a résumé, such as degrees, jobs, test scores, and clubs. Other identity capital is more personal, such as how we speak, where we are from, how we solve problems, how we look. Identity capital is how we build ourselves—bit by bit, over time. Most important, identity capital is what we bring to the adult
...more
Twentysomethings who take the time to explore and also have the nerve to make commitments along the way construct stronger identities.
“But something better doesn’t just come along. One good piece of capital is how you get to better,”
The one thing I have learned is that you can’t think your way through life. The only way to figure out what to do is to do—something.
[Those] deeply enmeshed in [a close-knit group] may never become aware of the fact that their lives do not actually depend on what happens within the group but on forces far beyond their perception.
But while the urban tribe helps us survive, it does not help us thrive.
They know things and people that we don’t know. Information and opportunity spread farther and faster through weak ties than through close friends because weak ties have fewer overlapping contacts. Weak ties are like bridges you cannot see all the way across, so there is no telling where they might lead.
We need to be more thorough when we talk to weak ties, and this requires more organization and reflection. There are fewer tags, such as “ya know,” and sentences are less likely to trail off at the end. Whether we are talking about career ideas or our thoughts on love, we have to make our case more fully. In this way, weak ties promote, and sometimes even force, thoughtful growth and change.
New things almost always come from outside your inner circle. And twentysomethings who won’t use their weak ties fall behind twentysomethings
“He that hath once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
If weak ties do favors for us, they start to like us. Then they become even more likely to grant us additional favors in the future.
The Ben Franklin effect shows that, while attitudes influence behavior, behavior can also shape attitudes. If we do a favor for someone, we come to believe we like that person. This liking leads back to another favor, and so on. A close variant of what is called the foot-in-the-door technique, or the strategy of making small requests before larger ones, the Ben Franklin effect tells us that one favor begets more favors and, over time, small favors beget larger ones.
How did Franklin get his foot in the door with that first favor? It’s simple. It’s good to be good. There is a “helper’s high” that comes from being generous. In numerous studies, altruism has been linked to happiness, health, and longevity— as long as the help we give is not a burden.
Make yourself interesting. Make yourself relevant. Do your homework so you know precisely what you want or need. Then, respectfully, ask for it. Some weak ties will say no. More than you think will say yes. The fastest route to something new is one phone call, one e-mail, one box of books, one favor, one thirtieth birthday party.
Uncertainty will always be part of the taking-charge process.
Being confused about choices is nothing more than hoping that maybe there is a way to get through life without taking charge.
The question twentysomethings need to ask themselves is what they would do with their lives if they didn’t win the lottery. What might you be able to do well enough to support the life you want? And what might you enjoy enough that you won’t mind working at it in some form or another for years to come?”
Unthought knowns are those things we know about ourselves but forget somehow. These are the dreams we have lost sight of or the truths we sense but don’t say out loud. We may be afraid of acknowledging the unthought known to other people because we are afraid of what they might think. Even more often, we fear what the unthought known will then mean for ourselves and our lives.
“Not making choices isn’t safe. The consequences are just further away in time, like in your thirties or forties.”
Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best interests.
an adult life is built not out of eating, praying, and loving but out of person, place, and thing: who we are with, where we live, and what we do for a living. We start our lives with whichever of these we know something about.
Ian’s life could be personalized and changeable, but it was going to take some time and effort—and he would probably need to start with some common parts. Having an uncommon life wasn’t going to come from resisting these choices, it was going to come from making these choices. Same as the bike.
One thing this has taught me is that a good story goes further in the twentysomething years than perhaps at any other time in life. College is done and résumés are fledgling, so the personal narrative is one of the few things currently under our control. As a twentysomething, life is still more about potential than proof. Those who can tell a good story about who they are and what they want leap over those who can’t.
If the first step in establishing a professional identity is claiming our interests and talents, then the next step is claiming a story about our interests and talents, a narrative we can take with us to interviews and coffee dates. Whether you are a therapist or an interviewer, a story that balances complexity and cohesion is, frankly, diagnostic. Stories that sound too simple seem inexperienced and lacking. But stories that sound too complicated imply a sort of internal disorganization that employers simply don’t want.
Interviewers want to hear a reasonable story about the past, present, and future. How does what you did before relate to what you want to do now, and how might that get you to what you want to do next? Everyone realizes most applicants don’t actually know what their careers will look like. Even the ones who think they do often change their minds.
Reluctantly, Ian created a sharper narrative, one that started with his early interest in drawing. He pulled together his relevant experiences in architecture and cognitive science classes, and a bit about his work. In the opening sentence of the new essay, Ian recalled a time from childhood when he carried around a little spiral flip notebook because he liked to make small abstract pictures for his parents and siblings. His family called him Mr. Logo.
Older spouses may be more mature, but later marriage has its own challenges. Rather than growing together while their twentysomething selves are still forming, partners who marry older may be more set in their ways. And a series of low-commitment, possibly destructive relationships can create bad habits and erode faith in love. And even though searching may help you find a better partner, the pool of available singles shallows over time, perhaps in more ways than one.
These chapters are about not waiting to get picky until you are in your thirties and the save-the-dates start pouring in. They are about being choosy about the right things when you can still think clearly about claiming your life. Besides, like with work, good relationships don’t just appear when we’re ready. It may take a few thoughtful tries before we know what love and commitment really are.
Often the clients with the toughest family backgrounds know the least about how to get what they want in love. But these are the clients who need to be the most careful. They are the very clients who need to partner well.
“the slower you go, the faster you get there.”
Sometimes the best way to help people is to slow them down long enough to examine their own thinking. Everyone has gaps in their reasoning. If you stop and shine a light on these mental ellipses, you find assumptions that drive behavior without our being aware of them.
Eli and his girlfriend needed to be “in like.” By this I mean two things: being alike in ways that matter and genuinely liking who the other person is. Often these go hand in hand.
The problem is, while people are good at matching themselves and others on relatively obvious criteria, such as age and education, it turns out that these qualities are what researchers call “deal breakers, not match makers.” Deal breakers are your own personal sine qua non in relationships. They are qualities—almost always similarities—you feel are nonnegotiable. The absence of these similarities allows you to weed out people with whom you have fundamental differences. Maybe it is a deal breaker if someone is not Christian because you want to share spirituality and community. Perhaps you
...more
One match maker to consider is personality.
personality is less obvious and not as easy to categorize. Personality is not about what we have done or even about what we like. It is about how we are in the world, and this infuses everything we do. Personality is the part of ourselves that we take everywhere, even to Nicaragua, so it is worth knowing something about.
One of the simplest and most widely researched models of personality is what is called the Big Five. The Big Five refers to five factors that describe how people interact with the world: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. Just by reading about the Big Five and considering your own behavior, it is pretty easy to tell whether you fall on the high end or the low end, or somewhere in the middle, of the five dimensions.
The Big Five LOW HIGH OPENNESS practical, conventional, prefers routine, skeptical, rational, shies away from new things open to new experiences, intellectually curious, creative, imaginative, adventurous, insightful CONSCIENTIOUSNESS relaxed about standards, easygoing, can be careless, spontaneous, prone to addiction disciplined, efficient, organized, responsible, dutiful, self-directed, thorough, can be controlling EXTRAVERSION likes solitary time, shy, reserved, energized by being alone, quiet, independent, cautious, aloof outgoing, enthusiastic, active, novelty-seeking, gets energy from
...more
Your Big Five won’t match exactly, of course, but the more similar your personalities, the smoother things may be. And for all of the ways you may not be like someone you love, by knowing something about his or her personality you have the opportunity to be more understanding about why he or she does the very different (or annoying) things that he or she does. That goes a long way toward bridging differences, and that’s important too.
that being on the high end of the Neuroticism dimension is toxic for relationships.
While personality similarity can help the years run smoothly, any two people will be different in some way or another. How a person responds to these differences can be more important than the differences themselves. To a person who runs high in Neuroticism, differences are seen in a negative light. Anxiety and judgments about these differences then lead to criticism and contempt, two leading relationship killers.
“I think it’s easy to surround yourself with friends who are just like you. As a group, you may decide everyone else is doing it wrong. Friends can form a culture of criticism where differences are seen as deficiencies.”
“I’m challenging you to be picky about things that might matter in twenty years, such as extreme differences in values or goals or personality—or whether you love each other. But the differences you’re sounding off about seem like everyday discrepancies that are part of any real relationship.”
“But that’s the thing. How do I know if a relationship is hard because it’s wrong or because it’s real?” “You’ll never know with complete certainty. That’s why marriage is a commitment, not a guarantee.” “Then how can I ever choose someone?” “The same way you make any decision. You weigh the evidence and you listen to yourself. The trick for you is going to be to listen to what matters, not to every single thing that makes you dissatisfied or anxious.” “OK.” “There will always be differences of some kind but, statistically speaking, that’s not what will kill a relationship. It’s what you do
...more
“It’s not too late,” I said. “But, whatever it is you want to change about yourself, now is the time to change it.”
Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
Being smart in school is about how well you solve problems that have correct answers and clear time limits. But being a forward-thinking adult is about how you think and act even (and especially) in uncertain situations. The frontal lobe doesn’t just allow us to coolly solve the problem of what exactly we should do with our lives.
We become what we hear and see and do every day. We don’t become what we don’t hear and see and do every day. In neuroscience, this is known as “survival of the busiest.”
“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
Real confidence comes from mastery experiences, which are actual, lived moments of success, especially when things seem difficult. Whether we are talking about love or work, the confidence that overrides insecurity comes from experience. There is no other way.
