Meg Jay Quotes

became more urgent and more defined. A timeline may not be a virtual reality chamber, but it can help our brains see time for what it really is: limited.

Among the most supported theories is that what is actually most useful about telling our secrets goes further than simple stress release; putting our experiences into words helps us begin to make sense of our thoughts and feelings. Remember, especially for children, secrets are often the product of moments when we say to ourselves, if we say anything at all, “There are no words. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know where to put that.” What does it mean, then, to take a feeling or an experience and, literally, “put it into words”? Words are labels and categories. They are boxes that organize the scattered contents of our minds. So when we talk about our experiences we are sorting them out, whether we intend to be or not, just by putting them into places where they might fit. We are able to say, “There are words. I do know what to do with that. I do know where to put that.” The very act of doing so makes our most confusing or disturbing experiences more organized and understandable, and it makes them less scary and upsetting as well. Like P. D. James said about the detective story, putting feelings into words can be a restoration of order.

One thing I have learned is that many, many people feel isolated with similar problems, unaware that they are not as alone or as different as they think.

The Great Recession and its continuing aftermath have left many twenty-somethings feeling naïve, even devastated.Twenty-somethings are more educated than ever before, but a smaller percentage find work after college. Many entry-level jobs have gone overseas, making it more difficult for twenty-somethings to gain a foothold at home. With a contracting economy and a growing population, unemployment is at its highest in decades. An unpaid internship is the new starter job. About a quarter of twenty-somethings are out of work and another quarter work only part-time. Twenty-somethings who do have paying jobs earn less than their 1970s counterparts when adjusted for inflation.

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.

I wish I'd been more.. I don't know... intentional.

Sometimes dating or married couples decide to split because things change — someone cheated or had to move — but, more often, people split up because things don’t change. It is far more common to hear couples say that, in retrospect, the differences were there all along.

Shoulds can masquerade as high standards or lofty goals, but they are not the same. Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best interests.

By thinking through his actual options, Ian stumbled onto a twentysomething version of what psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas calls the unthought known. Unthought knowns are those things we know about ourselves but forget somehow. These are the dreams we have lost sight of or the truths we sense but don’t say out loud. We may be afraid of acknowledging the unthought known to other people because we are afraid of what they might think. Even more often, we fear what the unthought known will then mean for ourselves and our lives. Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part when, somewhere inside, I think he knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying uncertainty is wanting something but not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do. But it isn’t.

Despite its revolutionary promises, Facebook can turn our everyday lives into that wedding we have all heard about: the one where the bride chooses her prettiest friends, not her best friends, to be bridesmaids. It can feel like a popularity contest where being Liked is what matters, being the best is the only respectable option, how our partners look is more important than how they act, the race to get married is on, and we have to be clever all the time. It can be just another place, not to be, but to seem.

Twenty somethings who aren't at least a little scared about their relationships are often the ones who are being the least thoughtful.

Your iPod is whispering in your ear. It was keeping you company, but now it's like a good friend turned bad [...] It is turning your life into a dark, looping rock opera.

What no one tells twentysomethings like Emma is that finally, and suddenly, they can pick their own families - they can create their own families - and these are the families that life will be about. These are the families that will define the decades ahead.

Knowing you want to do something isn’t the same as knowing how to do it, and even knowing how to do something isn’t the same as actually doing it well.

Real confidence comes from mastery experiences, which are actual, lived moments of success, especially when things seem difficult.