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A fixed mindset is a form of black-and-white thinking in which we imagine that abilities and qualities—such as intelligence or athletic ability or social skills or confidence—are attributes we are born with or are gifts that just “are what they are.”
outside. Fake confidence comes from stuffing our self-doubt. Empty confidence comes from parental platitudes on our lunch hour. Real confidence comes from mastery experiences, which are actual, lived moments of success, especially when things seem difficult.
A long run of easy successes creates a sort of fragile confidence, the kind that is shattered when the first failure comes along. A more robust confidence comes from succeeding—and from surviving some failures so the successes seem real.
People who are especially good at something may have some innate inclination, or some particular talent, but they have also spent about ten thousand hours practicing or doing that thing.
Knowing you want to do something isn’t the same as knowing how to do
it. And even knowing how to do something isn’t the same as actually doing it well.
My ten thousand hours were seven years of graduate school. Danielle’s ten thousand hours were going to be five to ten years of working her way up and around in producing.
Danielle made a list of the relevant things she’d mastered in school and at work. She hung up her diploma in her apartment. She started taking herself seriously by dressing more professionally.
“I want a relationship in theory. But I still cannot imagine having the time to meet anybody, much less figuring out how to be in a relationship. Can I deal with that way, way later?”
A little bit later,” I said. “You can go to work and be in love at the same time, you know. In fact, it would be good for you.
After thirty, our thoughts and feelings and behaviors remain incredibly stable.
One side says, “Barring interventions or catastrophic events, personality traits appear to be essentially fixed after age thirty.” The other side is more optimistic, holding out
Our personalities change more during the twentysomething years than at any time before or after
In our twenties, positive personality change comes from, as researchers put it, “getting along and getting ahead.” This is what is called social investment theory, or the notion that becoming involved in the world around us is how we grow.
in our twenties we have to be forgiving about what being settled or successful means. A relationship to come home to or a job to be proud of may seem elusive, but just working toward these things makes us happier.
In addition, inside and outside of work, even just having goals can make us happier and more confident—both now and later.
Goals are how we declare who we are and who we want to be—in all areas of life. They are how we structure our years and organize our priorities.
Being chronically uncoupled may be especially detrimental to men, as those who remained single throughout their twenties experienced a significant dip in their self-esteem near thirty.
When we graduate from school, we leave behind the only lives we have ever known, ones that have been manageably organized into semester-sized chunks with microgoals nestled within.
We would rather have $100 now than $150 next year. We eat the chocolate cake today and say we’ll hit the gym tomorrow.
The future can also seem personally distant, or almost irrelevant, when
we hang out with people who are not talking about it either.
it goes. The further away love and work seem, the less we need to think about them, and the less we think about love and work, the further away they feel. I started to sketch out a timeline to bring the future closer and to make Rachel’s thinking more concrete.
“I always begin with the last sentence; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.
Irving lets us know that good stories, and happy endings, are more intentional than that.
Most twentysomethings can’t write the last sentence of their lives, but when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their thirties or forties or sixties—or things they don’t want—and work backward from there.
The best part about being my age is knowing how my life worked out.
In one way or another, almost every twentysomething client I have wonders, “Will things work out for me?”
but it is also what makes twentysomething action so possible and so necessary.
is no right or wrong life. But there are choices and consequences, so it seems only fair that twentysomethings know about the ones that lie ahead.
