1、Why30isnotthenew20Why 30 is not the new 20 Meg JayAbout the TalkClinical psychologist Meg Jay has a bold message for twentysomethings: Contrary to popular belief, your 20s are not a throwaway decade. In this provocative talk, Jay says that just because marriage, work and kids are happening later in
2、life, doesnt mean you cant start planning now. She gives 3 pieces of advice for how twentysomethings can re-claim adulthood in the defining decade of their lives.About the SpeakerIn her book The Defining Decade, Meg Jay suggests that many twentysomethings feel trivialized during what is actually the
3、 most transformative and defining period of our adult lives.About the TranscriptWhen I was in my 20s, I saw my very first psychotherapy client. I was a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Berkeley. She was a 26-year-old woman named Alex. Now Alex walked into her first session wearing jeans and a
4、 big slouchy top, and she dropped onto the couch in my office and kicked off her flats and told me she was there to talk about guy problems. Now when I heard this, I was so relieved. My classmate got an arsonist for her first client. (Laughter) And I got a twentysomething who wanted to talk about bo
5、ys. This I thought I could handle.But I didnt handle it. With the funny stories that Alex would bring to session, it was easy for me just to nod my head while we kicked the can down the road. Thirtys the new 20, Alex would say, and as far as I could tell, she was right. Work happened later, marriage
6、 happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later. Twentysomethings like Alex and I had nothing but time.But before long, my supervisor pushed me to push Alex about her love life. I pushed back.I said, Sure, shes dating down, shes sleeping with a knucklehead, but its not like shes goin
7、g to marry the guy.And then my supervisor said, Not yet, but she might marry the next one. Besides, the best time to work on Alexs marriage is before she has one.Thats what psychologists call an Aha! moment. That was the moment I realized, 30 is not the new 20. Yes, people settle down later than the
8、y used to, but that didnt make Alexs 20s a developmental downtime. That made Alexs 20s a developmental sweet spot, and we were sitting there blowing it. That was when I realized that this sort of benign neglect was a real problem, and it had real consequences, not just for Alex and her love life but
9、 for the careers and the families and the futures of twentysomethings everywhere.There are 50 million twentysomethings in the United States right now. Were talking about 15 percent of the population, or 100 percent if you consider that no ones getting through adulthood without going through their 20
10、s first.Raise your hand if youre in your 20s. I really want to see some twentysomethings here. Oh, yay! Yalls awesome. If you work with twentysomethings, you love a twentysomething, youre losing sleep over twentysomethings, I want to see Okay. Awesome, twentysomethings really matter.So I specialize
11、in twentysomethings because I believe that every single one of those 50 million twentysomethings deserves to know what psychologists, sociologists, neurologists and fertility specialists already know: that claiming your 20s is one of the simplest, yet most transformative, things you can do for work,
12、 for love, for your happiness, maybe even for the world.This is not my opinion. These are the facts. We know that 80 percent of lifes most defining moments take place by age 35. That means that eight out of 10 of the decisions and experiences and Aha! moments that make your life what it is will have
13、 happened by your mid-30s. People who are over 40, dont panic. This crowd is going to be fine, I think. We know that the first 10 years of a career has an exponential impact on how much money youre going to earn. We know that more than half of Americans are married or are living with or dating their
14、 future partner by 30. We know that the brain caps off its second and last growth spurt in your 20s as it rewires itself for adulthood, which means that whatever it is you want to change about yourself, now is the time to change it. We know that personality changes more during your 20s than at any o
15、ther time in life, and we know that female fertility peaks at age 28, and things get tricky after age 35. So your 20s are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options.So when we think about child development, we all know that the first five years are a critical period for language a
16、nd attachment in the brain. Its a time when your ordinary, day-to-day life has an inordinate impact on whoyou will become. But what we hear less about is that theres such a thing as adult development, and our 20s are that critical period of adult development.But this isnt what twentysomethings are h
17、earing. Newspapers talk about the changing timetable of adulthood. Researchers call the 20s an extended adolescence. Journalists coin silly nicknames for twentysomethings like twixters and kidults. Its true. As a culture, we have trivialized what is actually the defining decade of adulthood.Leonard
18、Bernstein said that to achieve great things, you need a plan and not quite enough time. Isnt that true? So what do you think happens when you pat a twentysomething on the head and you say, You have 10 extra years to start your life? Nothing happens. You have robbed that person of his urgency and amb
19、ition, and absolutely nothing happens.And then every day, smart, interesting twentysomethings like you or like your sons and daughters come into my office and say things like this: I know my boyfriends no good for me, but this relationship doesnt count. Im just killing time. Or they say, Everybody s
20、ays as long as I get started on a career by the time Im 30, Ill be fine.But then it starts to sound like this: My 20s are almost over, and I have nothing to show for myself. I had a better rsum the day after I graduated from college.And then it starts to sound like this: Dating in my 20s was like mu
21、sical chairs. Everybody was running around and having fun, but then sometime around 30 it was like the music turned off and everybody started sitting down. I didnt want to be the only one left standing up, so sometimes I think I married my husband because he was the closest chair to me at 30.Where a
22、re the twentysomethings here? Do not do that.Okay, now that sounds a little flip, but make no mistake, the stakes are very high. When a lot has been pushed to your 30s, there is enormous thirtysomething pressure to jump-start a career, pick a city, partner up, and have two or three kids in a much sh
23、orter period of time. Many of these things are incompatible, and as research is just starting to show, simply harder and more stressful to do all at once in our 30s.The post-millennial midlife crisis isnt buying a red sports car. Its realizing you cant have that career you now want. Its realizing yo
24、u cant have that child you now want, or you cant give your child a sibling. Too many thirtysomethings and fortysomethings look at themselves, and at me, sitting across the room, and say about their 20s, What was I doing? What was I thinking?I want to change what twentysomethings are doing and thinki
25、ng.Heres a story about how that can go. Its a story about a woman named Emma. At 25, Emma came to my office because she was, in her words, having an identity crisis. She said she thought she might like to work in art or entertainment, but she hadnt decided yet, so shed spent the last few years waiti
26、ng tables instead. Because it was cheaper, she lived with a boyfriend who displayed his temper more than his ambition. And as hard as her 20s were, her early life had been even harder. She often cried in our sessions, but then would collect herself by saying, You cant pick your family, but you can p
27、ick your friends.Well one day, Emma comes in and she hangs her head in her lap, and she sobbed for most of the hour. Shed just bought a new address book, and shed spent the morning filling in her many contacts, but then shed been left staring at that empty blank that comes after the words In case of
28、 emergency, please call . . She was nearly hysterical when she looked at me and said, Whos going to be there for me if I get in a car wreck? Whos going to take care of me if I have cancer?Now in that moment, it took everything I had not to say, I will. But what Emma needed wasnt some therapist who r
29、eally, really cared. Emma needed a better life, and I knew this was her chance. I had learned too much since I first worked with Alex to just sit there while Emmas defining decade went parading by.So over the next weeks and months, I told Emma three things that every twentysomething, male or female,
30、 deserves to hear.First, I told Emma to forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital. By get identity capital, I mean do something that adds value to who you are. Do something thats an investment in who you might want to be next. I didnt know the future of Emmas career, and n
31、o one knows the future of work, but I do know this: Identity capital begets identity capital. So now is the time for that cross-country job, that internship, that startup you want to try. Im not discounting twentysomething exploration here, but I am discounting exploration thats not supposed to coun
32、t, which, by the way, is not exploration. Thats procrastination. I told Emma to explore work and make it count.Second, I told Emma that the urban tribe is overrated. Best friends are great for giving rides to the airport, but twentysomethings who huddle together with like-minded peers limit who they know, what they know, how they think, how they speak, and where they work. That new piece of capital, that new person to date almost always comes fro
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