The Defining Decade Quotes

“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.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are. —Charles de Montesquieu, writer/philosopher”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean. Like I could swim in any direction but I can’t see land on any side so I don’t know which way to go. I feel like I just have to keep hooking up and see what sticks. I didn’t know I’d be crying in the bathroom at work every day. 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. My sister is thirty-five and single. I’m terrified that’s going to happen to me. I can’t wait to be liberated from my twenties. I’d better not still be doing this at thirty. Last night I prayed for just one thing in my life to be certain.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Choosing well comes not just from knowing who your loved one is but also from knowing who you are too.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Don’t compare yourself to other people; compare yourself to who you were yesterday. —Jordan Peterson, psychologist”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“We think that by avoiding decisions now, we keep all of our options open for later. But not making choices is a choice all the same.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Every problem was at one point a solution”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Тридцать – это новые двадцать.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“в наше время возраст от двадцати до тридцати лет стал тем периодом, когда юноши и девушки могут распоряжаться своей жизнью по собственному усмотрению и располагают необходимыми для этого средствами.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“слишком часто перекладывая на других свою боль, мы не научимся самостоятельно преодолевать трудности, брать себя в руки тогда, когда наш мозг больше всего готов к освоению новых навыков”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“There is a big difference between having a life in your thirties and starting a life in your thirties.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. —Dale Carnegie, writer and lecturer”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Whatever it is you want to change about yourself, now is the easiest time to change it.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Betsy didn’t want to be at the party any more than Cole did. She’d met the birthday girl in a spin class a couple of years earlier and had been declining her Evites ever since. In an effort to meet new people, however, this time Betsy replied “Yes.” She took a cab to the party, wondering why she was going at all. When Betsy met Cole there was a spark, but she was ambivalent. Cole was clearly smart and well educated, but he didn’t seem to be doing much about it. They had some nice dates, which seemed promising. Then, after sleeping over one night and watching Cole wake up at eleven a.m. and grab his skateboard, Betsy felt less bullish. She didn’t want to help another boyfriend grow up. What Betsy didn’t know was that, ever since he’d started spending time with her, Cole had regained some of his old drive. He saw the way she wanted to work on her sculptures even on the weekend, how she and her friends loved to get together to talk about their projects and their plans. As a result, Cole started to think more aspirationally. He eyed a posting for a good tech job at a high-profile start-up, but he felt his résumé was now too shabby to apply. As luck would have it—and it is often luck—Cole remembered that an old friend from high school, someone he bumped into about once every year or two, worked at the start-up. He got in touch, and this friend put in a good word to HR. After a handful of interviews with different people in the company, Cole was offered the position. The hiring manager told Cole he had been chosen for three reasons: His engineering degree suggested he knew how to work hard on technical projects, his personality seemed like a good fit for the team, and the twentysomething who vouched for him was well liked in the company. The rest, the manager said, Cole could learn on the job. This one break radically altered Cole’s career path. He learned software development at a dot-com on the leading edge. A few years later, he moved over and up as a director of development at another start-up because, by then, the identity capital he’d gained could speak for itself. Nearly ten years later, Cole and Betsy are married. She runs a gallery co-op. He’s a CIO. They have a happy life and gladly give much of the credit to Cole’s friend from high school and to the woman with the Evites.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean. Like I could swim in any direction but I can’t see land so I don’t know which way to go.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“The frontal lobe is where we move beyond the futile search for black-and-white solutions as we learn to tolerate—and act on—shades of gray.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“From countless studies of MRI scans of healthy adolescents and twentysomethings, we now know that the frontal lobe does not finish wiring up until sometime between the ages of twenty and thirty. What this means is that, in our twenties, the quick, hot, impulsive, pleasure-seeking, emotional brain is ready to go, while the slow, cool, rational, forward-thinking frontal lobe is still a work in progress.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“For some, life may be about neatly building on Phi Beta Kappa or an Ivy League degree. More often, identities and careers are made not out of college majors and GPAs but out of a couple of door-opening pieces of identity capital”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Once she could envision what she wanted her thirtysomething life to look like, what to do with the twentysomething years became more urgent and more defined.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Present bias is prioritizing the rewards and consequences of the here-and-now over the rewards and consequences of the there-and-then.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Confidence doesn’t come from the inside out. It comes from the outside in. People feel less anxious—and more confident—on the inside when they can point to things they have done well on the outside.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“According to evolutionary theory, the brain is designed to pay special attention to what catches us off-guard, so we can be better prepared to meet the world next time. It even has a built-in novelty detector, a part that sends chemical signals to stimulate memory when new and different things happen.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Twentysomethings who don’t feel anxious and incompetent at work are usually overconfident or underemployed.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Perhaps this is the true travesty of “social” media: the damage it has done to the social lives of young people just when they need others the most.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“The post-twentysomething brain is still plastic, of course, but the opportunity is that never again in our lifetime will the brain offer up countless new connections and see what we make of them. Never again will we be so quick to learn new things. Never again will it be so easy to become the people we hope to be. So whatever it is we want to change about ourselves, our twenties are the easiest time to change it.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“Because our twenties are the capstone of this last critical period, they are, as one neurologist said, a time of “great risk and great opportunity.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one, so maybe the best time to talk about some of these issues is when they do not yet loom so large.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“What I tell my clients about “the cohabitation effect” is this: The effect that living together has on your partnership will likely depend not on whether you live together but how.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“marrying later than the teen years does indeed protect against divorce, but this only holds true until about age twenty-five. After twenty-five, one’s age at marriage does not predict divorce.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now