Defining Decade

Meg Jay

Description

Contemporary culture tells us the twentysomething years don't matter. Clinical psychologist Dr Meg Jay argues that this could not be further from the truth. In fact, your twenties are the most defining decade of adulthood. The Defining Decade weaves the latest science of the twentysomething years with real-life stories to show us how work, relationships, personality, social networks, identity and even the brain can change more during this decade than at any other time in adulthood. Smart, compassionate and constructive, The Defining Decade is a practical guide to making the most of the years we cannot afford to miss.

Sujets

• Popular psychology
• Self-help

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 07 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 7
• EAN13: 9781782114932
• Langue: English

Extrait

The advice herein is not intended to replace the services of trained mental health professionals. You are advised to consult with your health care professional with regard to matters relating to your mental health, and in particular regarding matters that may require diagnosis or medical attention. The author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability that is incurred from the use or application of the contents of this book.
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
www.canongate.tv
This digital edition first published in 2016 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 2012 by Meg Jay “The Cohabitation Effect” revised copyright © 2013 by Meg Jay
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the United States in 2012 by Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group Inc., 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York NY 10104
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 492 5 eISBN 978 1 78211 493 2
For Jay and Hazel
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is about my work with twentysomethings, as a clinical psychologist in private practice in Charlottesville, Virginia, and as a clinical professor at the University of Virginia, and previously as a clinician in Berkeley, California, and a lecturer at University of California, Berkeley. Throughout these pages, I do my best to tell the personal, and sometimes poignant, stories of the clients and students who taught me about the twentysomething years. To protect their privacy, I have changed their names and the details of their lives. In many cases, I have created composites from those with similar experiences and with whom I had similar sessions and conversations. I hope every twentysomething who reads this book sees him-or herself in the stories I include, but a resemblance to any particular twentysomething is coincidental.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface: The Defining Decade
Introduction: Real Time
WORK
Identity Capital
Weak Ties
The Unthought Known
My Life Should Look Better on Facebook
The Customized Life
LOVE
An Upmarket Conversation
Picking Your Family
The Cohabitation Effect
On Dating Down
Being in Like
THE BRAIN AND THE BODY
Forward Thinking
Calm Yourself
Outside In
Getting Along and Getting Ahead
Every Body
Do the Math
Epilogue: Will Things Work Out for Me?
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
FOREWORD
Calling Twentysomethings Everywhere
T he Defining Decade is for twentysomethings. Even with a subtitle like, “Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now,” this fact is worth stating. Parents assume the book is for parents. Colleagues presume I’ve written it for other therapists and academics. When twentysomethings ask me about my book, “Who is your audience?,” they seem genuinely, but pleasantly, surprised when I say: “YOU ARE!”
It seems astonishing to many that, rather than talk about twentysomethings, I prefer to talk to twentysomethings. Enough of the grownups sitting around discussing the under-thirty set! Twentysomethings are adults too and they deserve to be taken seriously. They deserve a seat at the table in a conversation about their own lives.
Popular culture may lead us to believe that twentysomethings are too cool or too clueless or too lazy or too jaded to engage in such a conversation, but this simply is not true. My private practice and university courses are filled with twentysomethings who desperately want someone to discuss their lives with them in an informed and authentic way. In The Defining Decade , I use research and clinical experience to dispel myths about the twentysomething years: that thirty is the new twenty, that we can’t pick our families, that doing something later is necessarily the same thing as doing something better. But the idea that twentysomethings are not savvy enough to be interested in such information—and the power it has to change their lives—is perhaps the biggest myth of all.
As evidence of this, since The Defining Decade was first published in the United States in April 2012, the book’s biggest and best audience has been twentysomethings themselves. I have received many moving messages from parents who say things like, “All I have asked for Mother’s Day this year is for my twentysomething to read your book.” Or from thirtysomethings who say, “I wish your book had been available when I was in my twenties.” But the most numerous and powerful outpouring has come from twentysomething women and men—from all around the world—who tell me via email or Facebook or Twitter what it has meant to them to be addressed directly.
Here are a few:
I expected The Defining Decade to be cliché and full of ‘carpe diem’ sentiments. I’m so glad to say that I was wrong. To simply say it was life-changing would not suffice. My copy is saturated in highlighter and ink. Everything was relevant. Everything was helpful. Everything in that book spoke to me in a way that no book, parent, friend, or advisor ever has. Though I’d been trying to get my life together, I started trying harder. I gained a new perspective. I made myself a timeline. I recommended your book to all my twentysomething friends and even lent out my copy, scribbles and highlights included. I just finished the book last week and I finished it feeling relieved almost. You are speaking directly to a generation that is often spoken down to or dismissed.
—Tessa V., Istanbul, Turkey
I’m sure you’ve heard it so many times, but I feel that this book was written about me.
—Oded W., Tel Aviv, Israel
This book absolutely nails what it’s like to be a frightened, confused, despairing twentysomething fed useless platitudes about how the world works from movies, newspapers, friends and even parents.
—Michael S., Calgary, Canada
Reading your book was like having someone read a transcript of the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, etc. bouncing through the chamber inside my head.
—Laura S., Los Angeles, USA
Your book speaks to me and about me beat for beat. This is exactly the book I need at this point in my life.
—Krishna D., Sydney, Australia and Jakarta, Indonesia
So the question is—why haven’t these twentysomethings felt spoken to before?
Maybe we can point to current cultural conditions where twentysomethings are mostly patronized and dismissed, and where their identities are often more about being other people’s children than they are about being their own people. But it probably also has something to do with the fact that, as a therapist who specializes in young adults, I get to see a side of twentysomethings that most people do not.
I worked with my first twentysomething psychotherapy client in 1999, and for more than fifteen years I have listened to twentysomethings all day, every day, behind closed doors. Today’s twentysomethings may be pegged as oversharers but what they post on blogs and on social media is far more curated than what they say in my office. So I know some things that most people don’t about twentysomethings—and I even know a few things that twentysomethings don’t know about themselves.
It may sound counterintuitive but, like most people, twentysomethings feel relieved, and even empowered, when someone has the courage to strike up a conversation with the parts of themselves, and the parts of reality, that they are afraid to talk about. I firmly believe that clients—and readers—don’t fear being asked the tough questions; what they really fear is that they won’t be asked the tough questions . When twentysomethings hear what I have to say, the most common reaction is not, “I can’t believe you said that.” It’s, “Why didn’t someone tell me all this sooner?”
Well, new reader, here goes.
Your twenties matter. Two-thirds of lifetime wage growth happens in the first ten years of a career. More than half of us are married, or dating, or living with our future partner, by age thirty; seventy-five percent of us by age thirty-five. Personality changes more during our twenties than at any time before or after. The brain caps off its last growth spurt in the twenties. Fertility peaks in our late twenties and early thirties. Our social networks—and the opportunities they bring—are widest and most diverse in our twenties and narrow as we age.
Altogether, eighty percent of life’s most defining moments take place by age thirty-five so, whether you are twenty or twenty-nine, or somewhere in between, consider the next ten years of your life your defining decade. No, life is not over at thirty or even forty, nor is it ever too late to claim your life. But if, as William James said, intention is the result of attention and choice, it is never too early to start paying attention either.
So, twentysomethings everywhere who want to be more intentional—and parents or bosses or teachers or anyone else who wants to listen in—this conversation and this book are for you.
PREFACE
The Defining Decade
I n a rare study of life-span development, researchers at Boston University and University of Michigan examined dozens of life stories, written by prominent, successful people toward the end of their lives. They were interested in “autobiographically consequential experiences,” or the circumstances and people that had the strongest influence on how life unfolded thereafter. While important events took place from birth until death, those that determined the years ahead were most heavily concentrated during the twentysomething years.
It would make sense that as we leave home or college and become more independent there is a burst of self-creation, a time when what we do determines who we will become. It might even seem like adulthood is one long stretch of autobiographically consequential experiences—that the older we get, the more we direct our own lives. This is not true.
In our thirties, consequential experiences start to slo