The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

by Meg Jay

Twentysomethings who don’t feel anxious and incompetent at work are usually overconfident or underemployed.

lmaoooo T__T

Younger adults, however, are more likely to find negative information—or the bad news—more upsetting and more memorable than positive information—or the good news. MRI studies show that twentysomething brains react more strongly to negative information than do the brains of older adults. I told Danielle how the twentysomething brain reacts to surprise and criticism—usually emotionally and strongly and negatively—and how this makes many twentysomethings feel like, as one colleague says, leaves in the wind. A good day at work lifts us high in the air while a reprimand from a boss whips us down to the ground. As criticism blows us every which way, we feel—at work and in love—only as good as the last thing that happened.

Danielle’s worries kept her from feeling surprised, but they did so by keeping her body in a chronically negatively aroused state. Sustained worrying drives the heart rate up. It raises our levels of stress hormones, making us anxious in the short run and depressed in the long run.

If Frankl could find solace by changing the meaning of what went on around him, then she could too. Danielle may not have had control over every situation at work, but she could control how she interpreted those situations and how she responded to them. She could get out of her emotional brain and put her frontal lobe to work.

First, Danielle needed to change how she thought about her difficult moments.

Then, if Danielle could change how she thought about work, that would change how she felt about it and how she dealt with it too.

When Danielle called her mother, she was doing what therapists call “borrowing an ego.” She was reaching out in a moment of need and letting someone else’s frontal lobe do the work. We all need to do that sometimes, but if we toss our distress like a hot potato too much, we don’t learn to handle bad days on our own. We don’t practice soothing ourselves just when our brains are in the best position to pick up new skills. We don’t learn how to calm ourselves down, and this in and of itself undermines confidence.

Rather than missteps, her mistakes became statements about who she was.

Confidence doesn’t come from the inside out. It comes from the outside in.

Literally, confidence means “with trust.” Confidence is trusting yourself to get the job done—whether that job is public speaking or sales or teaching or being an assistant—and that trust only comes from having gotten the job done many times before.

But twentysomethings who hide out in underemployment, especially those who are hiding out because of a lack of confidence, are not serving themselves. For work success to lead to confidence, the job has to be challenging, and it must require effort. It has to be done without too much help. And it cannot go well every single day. 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.

Positive feedback would give her the opportunity to feel better, and negative feedback would give her the chance to do better.

“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.”

The twenties are the time when people and personalities are just poised for transformation. Again and again, I have seen twentysomethings move from socially anxious to socially confident-enough—or get beyond years of childhood unhappiness—in a relatively short period of time. Maybe it happens because of a class they take or a few months in therapy or a job they have or a book they read or a relationship they try. Regardless, because these changes are taking place just as long-term careers and relationships are being decided, these same shifts can lead to very different lives.

The twentysomething years are no time for a postmortem. Life isn’t over. It is not too late.

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. Our twenties are the years when we move from school to work, from hookups to relationships or, in Sam’s case, from couches to apartments.

There are all sorts of ways to make commitments to the world around us and, sometimes, 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.

Much research suggests that work is the single biggest driver of personality change in young adulthood. Maybe it’s because we spend about half of our waking hours doing some sort of work (or not), so what we do with that time is likely to have a big effect on who we are and on who we become.

Regardless, in my experience, getting a job is usually where “getting along and getting ahead” begins. It isn’t simply the case that responsible people are the ones who go out and get jobs; it is also true that our biggest increase in personal responsibility comes after we start work.

Steady relationships reduce social anxiety and depression as they help us feel less lonely and give us the opportunity to practice our interpersonal skills. We learn about managing our emotions and about conflict resolution. As we take part in partnering, we find new ways to feel competent in the adult world. And on the days we do feel bad about our twenties, these relationships can be a source of security and support.

Being single while you’re young may be glorified in the press, but staying single across the twenties does not typically feel good.

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.

She taught me not to confuse feminism with not being allowed to want a family. She taught me that feminists want families too. That’s how you make more feminists.

They deserve to learn about fertility statistics before they themselves are the statistics. Let me be clear: Your twenties are not the time to rush out and have a baby you’re not ready for. But they are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options.

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut whereby we decide how likely something is based on how easy it is to bring an example to mind.

What seemed plain to me was that I wasn’t scared of losing my past. I was scared of losing my future.

As one twentysomething astutely put it, “The twentysomething years are a whole new way of thinking about time. There’s this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff needs to happen somehow.”

Present bias is prioritizing the rewards and consequences of the here-and-now over the rewards and consequences of the there-and-then.

“I know you’re just doing your job. But people do things later than they used to. People’s lives really happen in their thirties now.” I thought about my thirtysomething clients and said, “There is a big difference between having a life in your thirties and starting a life in your thirties.”

Present bias is especially strong for twentysomethings who put a lot of psychological distance between now and later.

Later can even feel spatially far away if we imagine ultimately settling down in some other place.

The problem with feeling distant from the future is that distance leads to abstraction, and abstraction leads to distance, and round and round it goes.

A timeline may not be a virtual mirror, but it can help our brains see time for what it is: limited.

“I always begin with the last sentence; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.”

The best part about being my age is knowing how my life worked out. —Scott Adams, cartoonist

As I gathered up my maps and turned to go, I hesitated and asked the ranger, “Am I going to make it?” He looked at me and said, “You haven’t decided yet.” At the time, I thought this man was not a particularly good backcountry ranger. Now I have to laugh. He was telling me what I say to my twentysomething clients every day, what this book has been all about. The future isn’t written in the stars. There are no guarantees. So claim your adulthood. Be intentional. Get to work. Pick your family. Do the math. Make your own certainty. Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do. You are deciding your life right now.