Quarter-life crisis…

With technology advancing so quickly, its easy to feel like your life is becoming stagnant in comparison.

The world is constantly changing and I want my life to reflect those changes: fast, fun, new. However, that is not the case and I find that I secretly beat myself up over it.

I mean, I know I shouldn’t. I have a wonderful job, enough money, love my car and live in a beautiful place of the country so I always remind myself that there is still a life pondering and waiting ahead of me. But sometimes… it doesn’t feel enough.

I’m a person of ration – I need to make sense of what is going on around me; there has to be a logical explanation. In the latest edition of Cosmopolitan, one of their pieces titled “The Great Millennial Meltdown” caught my attention and in the excerpt a phrase: Quarter-life Crisis. Hmmm. Could this be the ‘tagline’ my life sometimes feels like?

So I began googling “Quarter-life crisis.” I really thought that I wasn’t going to find much but Google shot me back 4,770,000 results. And so I began scrolling, and reading. What surprised me initially was that a “Quarter-life crisis” was considered in your mid-20’s to early-30’s (which yes, makes sense as a quarter of 100 is 25 but, it made me feel a bit weary as I haven’t reached that milestone just yet and I’m here questioning my existence).

What I did like was that the people that were interviewed in many of these articles explored how they were on the “quarter-life crisis” path and had to embrace it to become successful. They dug deep by acknowledging what they were going through and changed the path that they were following.

Jules Schroeder writes in her article “Millennials, This Is What Your Quarter-Life Crisis Is Telling You” “Fortunately, the quarter-life crisis doesn’t have to be something to feared.” Jules interviews Robert MacNaughton, the cofounder and CEO of the Integral Center and one thing he states in this article really stands out for me:

Like all millennials in a quarter-life crisis, he had a choice to make: to succumb deeper to the depression, or to leverage the pressure as a force for change

There are 5 things that MacNaughton shares on how to reroute your “quarter-life crisis”:

1. Step up and create the things you want to see in the world.
2. Stop trying to please others.
3. Listen to your inner voice.
4. Uncover your identity by trying new things.
5. Tap into your resistance.

What else has cushioned me like one of those boyfriend pillows is written within Varci Vartanian’s article “Powering Through Your Quarter-Life Crisis”: Tell yourself it’s normal.

We tend to forget that sometimes these stages are what we need to experience and power through in order to find the right direction or spark that inner flame. I need to tell myself this on the daily! I need to force myself to remember that it is okay to sometimes feel like I’ve plateaued. I just need to take a deep breath and re-direct my focus to something more positive; a new blog post, another quirky Instagram photo, walk along the beach front.

I will end on this note, graciously spoken by MacNaughton:

“Your angst is your liberation. Where your resistance and angst is highest is your greatest dividend for your own development and where you find why you’re here and what’s gonna be your greatest service for the world’s needs”