Meg Jay Quotes

By 2019, 85 percent of Instagram influencers were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, which means that what most twentysomethings see on their phones all day are other twentysomethings living their best lives — in bathing suits — with some making a lot of money along the way. Meanwhile, child celebrities and everyday kids spend their youth acting twenty, while mature adults and the Real Housewives dress, and are sculpted, to look twenty-nine. The young look older and the old look younger, collapsing the adult life span into one long twentysomething ride.

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.

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.

Education is an intervention,

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are. — Charles de Montesquieu, writer/philosopher

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. — Maya Angelou

Older spouses may be more mature, but later marriage has its own challenges. Rather than growing together while their twentysomething selves are still forming, partners who marry older may be more set in their ways. And a series of low-commitment, possibly destructive relationships can create bad habits and erode faith in love. And even though searching may help you find a better partner, the pool of available singles shallows over time, perhaps in more ways than one.

I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean. Like I could swim in any direction but I can’t see land on any side so I don’t know which way to go. I feel like I just have to keep hooking up and see what sticks. I didn’t know I’d be crying in the bathroom at work every day. The twentysomething years are a whole new way of thinking about time. There’s this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff needs to happen somehow. My sister is thirty-five and single. I’m terrified that’s going to happen to me. I can’t wait to be liberated from my twenties. I’d better not still be doing this at thirty. Last night I prayed for just one thing in my life to be certain.

people who have some control over their emotions report greater life satisfaction, optimism, purpose, and better relationships with others.

did not want to “just have some office job and work nine to five like everyone else.” Ian was on a sneaky search for glory. He suffered less from the tyranny of the should than he did from the tyranny of the should-not.

The Big Five refers to five factors that describe how people interact with the world: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

I think part of making any decision in your twenties is realizing there is no twenty-four flavor table. It's a myth.

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.

Sometimes the best way to help people is to slow them down long enough to examine their own thinking.

The twentysomething years have never been more in the zeitgeist. Popular culture has an almost obsessive focus on the twenties such that these freebie years appear to be all that exist. Child celebrities and everyday kids spend their youth acting twenty, while mature adults and the Real Housewives dress, and are sculpted, to look twenty-nine. The young look older and the old look younger, collapsing the adult lifespan into one long twentysomething ride.