Meg Jay Quotes

[Society] is structured to distract people from the decisions that have a huge impact on happiness in order to focus attention on the decisions that have a marginal impact on happiness. The most important decision any of us make is who we marry. Yet there are no courses on how to choose a spouse. — David Brooks, political and cultural commentator

Forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital. … Do something that adds value to who you are. Do something that's an investment in who you might want to be next.

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.

When I made the decision to come to D.C., I worried that by making that choice, I was closing all the other doors open to me at that moment. But it was sort of liberating to make a choice about something. Finally. And, if anything, this job has just opened more doors for me. Now I feel really confident that I will have several iterations of my career — or at least time for several iterations — and that I will be able to do other things in life. For a long time, it was such a relief to have this job — I felt like I could just live my life and not worry about direction — worries that immobilized me in the years after I graduated. Now I am at a point where I don’t want to continue in my current position — and I’m pissed! It’s hard to think all over again about what the next step is. But it’s easier now because I know from experience that I have to take action, that debating isn’t going to get me anywhere. Sometimes making choices feels like planning for my life in a way that seems boring. Sometimes making choices to pursue things that seem like good fits, or that match my interests, seems boring simply because it makes sense. I find myself wanting to go off in an unexpected direction — Arabic! Cambodia! I know this is a sort of crazy impulse. I know that the way to live a good life is to pursue things that are not only interesting to you but that make sense. Above all else in my life, I feared being ordinary. Now I guess you could say I had a revelation of the day-to-day. I finally got it there’s a reason everybody in the world lives this way — or at least starts out this way — because this is how it’s done.

"While most would agree with Socrates that, "the unexamined life is not worth living," a lesser-known quote by Sheldon Kopp might be more important here: "The unlived life is not worth examining.

[Society] is structured to distract people from the decisions that have a huge impact on happiness in order to focus attention on the decisions that have a marginal impact on happiness.

There is a certain terror that goes along with saying “My life is up to me.” It is scary to realize there’s no magic, you can’t just wait around, no one can really rescue you, and you have to do something. Not knowing what you want to do with your life — or not at least having some ideas about what to do next — is a defense against that terror. It is a resistance to admitting that the possibilities are not endless. It is a way of pretending that now doesn’t matter. Being confused about choices is nothing more than hoping that maybe there is a way to get through life without taking charge. Rather than take charge,

In the twentieth century, it was tempting to minimize the effects of divorce. Some adults in unhappy marriages imagined trickle-down happiness: They would be happier after divorce; therefore, so would their kids. But as these kids matured, “the unexpected legacy of divorce” was undeniable. Many children of divorce said they had not much noticed — or cared — whether their parents were happily married. What they did know was that their lives fell apart after their parents split, as resources and parents became stretched too thin.

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.

the years that were ahead. As he said, this made action impossible. Because Ian didn’t know that twentysomethings who make choices are happier than those who tread water, he kept himself confused. This was easy to do. Ian hung out with an indecisive crowd. At the bike shop where he worked, his friends assured him he didn’t need to make decisions

Real confidence comes from mastery experiences, which are actual, lived moments of success, especially when things seem difficult. Whether we are talking about love or work, the confidence that overrides insecurity comes from experience. There is no other way.

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 resilient confidence comes from succeeding — and from surviving some failures.

I wasn't scared of losing my past. i was scared of losing my future.

It’s the people we hardly know, and not our closest friends, who will improve our lives most dramatically

Researchers who have looked at how people resolve identity crises have found that lives that are all capital and no crisis — all work and no exploration — feel rigid and conventional.