Welcoming Adulthood: Navigating Quarter Life Crisis and Feeling Lost
Featuring Pinkan Fadhilah
Back then, we used to be excited to become an adult. They all look cool, can make their own choice, and they look like they have their lives put together. Then we hit our 20s, and it doesn’t feel like that at all. We begin to re-evaluate our past decisions and choices about career, relationship and personal finance. We tend to compare our situation with others. We feel lost about what’s truly our goals and what to pursue. We’re doubting our capability, reviewing our values, and questioning what’s important for us.
At some point during college, many of us start wondering “is the major that we are taking now is really the right one for us?”. This feeling of uncertainty can happen to people who already made the right choice in their college. As a fresh graduate, we start to go through the phase where we have to look for a job. Pursuing our dream job isn’t as easy as we expect it to be.
Many people told us that it will be much easier when we already know the career path we want to take. But in reality, the job vacancies that we want are maybe not necessarily available. At first we focused to try to find our dream job, but as time goes by we start to feel like we were running out of time and started to consider whether we have to focus on certain areas. And it doesn’t stop there, we can also feel uncertain even when we already got a job (even to our dream job). Because maybe at some point in our life, our current job doesn’t align with our present value, our ideal self, or need.
We jump to ‘real word’ and are exposed to myriad of choices, which some of them we hadn’t known they barely exist before. From choosing career and job, political view, or adopting lifestyle. At some point, the abundance of choice makes us feel lost. We tend to assess our capability and sometimes doubt whether we can make it to achieve our goals. Or even questioning or re-evaluate our goals. We reconsider whether our goals are still relevant with the past. And by asking this question, then we are also questioning our values and principles.
We look into ourselves and engage in many sessions of self-reflection and chugging from one question to the others. “Are these values still relevant to me?” ,“what’s the most important for me now?”, “Am I wrong if I change my opinion towards this thing?”, “Do I still have to hold this belief?”. We expect for the better by doing change, but it will always be accompanied by discomfort. It requires adaptation to new norms and habits. We might be scared that we’ll be judged as inconsistent because of changing our attitude or opinion towards something. This change also threatens our self-view and identity, because we feel like not the same person by changing some attributes.
As a human, we will always tend to compare ourselves with others. The subject could be about academic/career achievement, attractiveness, intelligence, or love life. Social comparison is double-edged sword. Comparing ourself to others can be beneficial to make us aware and get to know more about ourself and feel motivated. But it can also make us feel disappointed and left out by others’ success. We can’t deny the fact that comparison is fundamental and we can do it automatically and unconsciously, so it makes it harder to totally get rid of it completely.
If you experience some situation above, don’t worry! You’re not alone. You are experiencing quarter life crisis. This crisis is quite common and happens to many emerging adults, that’s why people call it 20-something phenomenon. Reasoning behind this crisis is because we don’t have any goals, or our goals are unrealistic to achieve. Caroline Beaton, contributor author in Psychology Today said that quarter life crisis is about perceived lack of life, and it is because we don’t want regret.
First step we can do to deal with this crisis is to try to improve our self-awareness, which is something that can give impactful effect with such a simple thing. As simple as trying to understand how we feel, what we think, and also how we behave towards anything. You can try to reflect on things that feel suitable with your preferences or values, like ‘what type of work environment I like?’, ‘what type of job I enjoy the most?’, ‘what is my priority on finding a job? Salary? Power? Creativity? A new challenge?’. Try to be mindful when working on your self-awareness.
If you’re regretting decisions you made in the past and think it cost you some disadvantage for current situation, it doesn’t make any change or benefit for you. Your decision in the past is the result of consideration adjusted to the past conditions. Even if it was not the best decision, but we believe it has gone through various considerations. So, no need to regret and don’t bother yourself with what happened. The important thing is, focus with the present moment and give the best of us.
You may heard it thousand times, but being mindful of the present moment really helps you to focus on what matters. If anxiety haunts you, it is a sign that you have to plan and make a strategy for the future. Think about what you want to achieve next, what habits you want to build, or what you want to learn.
Social comparison is inevitable sometimes, because social media bombard us with others’ successes and glory instead of their struggle. But hey, it’s unfair to compare your chapter 1 with others’ chapter 10. Comparing yourself to others is not comparing apple to apple.
At the end of the day, we only got ourselves, so let’s be kind and compassionate! Just focus to things that we can control and manage. If it is something we can work on, work it. If it is something that we can’t control, we can’t change, we can’t fix, don’t feel disappointed. We will waste our time frustrated by something we can control, but we change nothing. As we discussed earlier, be mindful of every step you take. You can take baby steps and don’t forget to celebrate your small accomplishments. Cheers to our journey of adulting!
