The Psychology of your 20s - 62. Navigating a quarter life crisis and feeling lost

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

This week we discuss our quarter life crisis! Whilst it may be a normal experience for those of us in our 20’s, the experience can be incredibly scary and stressful. We dive into how to navigate a quarter life crisis, the characteristics of this period, why it’s important for our growth and how to move through this experience and come out the other side as successful and healed individuals. Thank you to todays sponsor Athletic Greens. Please use the following link for a FREE one year supply for immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs at www.athleticgreens.com/JemmaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Thanks for tuning in. It's so great to have you back for another episode of the psychology of your 20s. Today, by popular demand, we're going to be discussing the psychology of a quarter life crisis. I'm sure we've all heard.

of a midlife crisis that typically happens in our late 40s, early 50s, you know, the archetype of men buying convertibles and leaving their wives or their partners, women dying their hair pink or purple, getting a poodle, I don't know, marrying younger people, quitting their jobs, all of those well-known tropes and stereotypes. I feel like this is a pretty highly recognized and satirized concept, but what about the quarter life crisis that usually happens in our 20s? It doesn't seem like many people are talking about that as much. Maybe you're hearing it for the first time today, but I assure you, it is very much a real thing. It's an important thing to discuss. So the term quarter life crisis, it's relatively new across the field of

psychology and self-help and wellness, but essentially what it explains is a period of panic, of uncertainty, a meltdown of sorts, where we start asking ourselves these really big existential questions we may not have thought about before. The outcome of that is somewhat of a crisis moment where we feel completely shocked and lost and looking to make some big changes. More of than than not, it's centered on those three big things. Career, love, context, or location. I know that sounds like four, but career love context or location is three. We begin to feel worried about what we're doing in our lives, whether our relationships fulfill us, whether our lives fulfill us, and if we're in the right place. So how can psychology explain this

occurrence, this period of intense instability and uncertainty and questioning, this period of intense fear. How can it explain the subsequent kind of inexplicable urge to change up our lives, to quit our jobs, move to a new city, break up with our long-term partner, shave our heads, completely transform ourselves? This is something I am so interested in, especially as I can feel my own quarter-life crisis kind of looming. In fact, I feel like I'm already very much in it in some ways. And I'm sure many of you are in the same boat as I am and as many of us are, especially as our late 20s and 30s approach. And we're surveying our surroundings and freaking out a little bit. So I think it's really important to kind of tackle some of those

unanswerable questions in a way. You know, where is my place in the world? What is my purpose? what the actual heck am I doing with my life? Well, whilst I might not be able to answer those questions for you today, what we will be doing is starting from the beginning. What is a quarter life crisis? What does the experience indicate about our growth and our journey? Why do we tend to panic as we enter the tail end of our 20s? And finally, perhaps the most important element of this episode is

How do we use this experience as a springboard for our growth and self-actualization and greater happiness? So so much amazing content to cover, so much learning to come, I hope. So buckle in for this week's deep dive into the quarter life crisis. Okay, so we need to start from square one and get our basics down pat. What is a quarter life crisis? When we talk about a quarter life crisis, we're thinking primarily about that period in our lives when we hit our 20s. For most of us, it's at this stage that we really start looking at our lives and probably

thinking we have a good 80 or so years on this planet. We are a quarter of the way through that, hence the word quarter. and the reality of the finality of life can really just hit us square on, that here we are at 23, 24, 25 years of age, whatever age we're at. And we are a quarter of a way through our lives. And what? What do we have to show for that? What are we even doing?

Firstly, something to get straight, this experience is absolutely normal. And I think I would be more concerned if someone didn't have this experience because it's a pivotal moment of redirection, of clarity and growth that is essential for our development. A quarter life crisis, it's not a clinical term. You're not going to find it in the DSM or get a diagnosis. it's actually a very subjective, highly individual, kind of existential crisis of sorts that is often seen in people in a certain phase of life who've started asking themselves some pretty big questions that they've never asked themselves before

and this results in some really deep and scary soul searching around some of those critical components of our life, our careers, our relationships, our financial, situation, our ambitions. Massive, massive things to tackle all at one time. And if you're finding yourself in this period of stress, of doubt, of anxiety, kind of wanting to borrow down or run away, you're certainly not alone. I found this LinkedIn study. I think it was done last year or maybe the year before, but it found that 72% of the young people they surveyed had experienced some form of a quarter-life crisis with 33% of them currently kind of in the throes of said

quarter-life crisis. It's such a common experience, 72%. And the average age of this crisis is about 26 to 27, and it lasts about 11 months. But it can happen at any age. at any time around this period. This estimation or figure of, you know, 26 to 27, though it makes sense, doesn't it? It's at this age that our 30s are looming the next major chapter of adulthood. We feel like we have enough life experience to be an adult, but don't exactly feel that way. Sometimes we find ourselves starting completely from scratch, completely from scratch, you know, ending long-term relationships with people we thought we would marry, suddenly finding ourselves really dissatisfied with our professional lives, wishing we'd made a different choice, and just feeling

all around super lost. And whilst that internal struggle is happening, what's going on around us? You know, we're seeing people that we know slowly get married, have children, live their passion, get promoted, and, you know, seem like they have everything together, whilst we, at least from personal experience, are still making mistakes, and that can really exacerbate already those internal feelings of dissatisfaction. I had this experience the other day, actually, whereby most of my friends have these lovely partners, the people they've essentially decided to spend their life.

lives with and I'm still here with my bad date stories, you know, another failed talking stage or terrible but funny hookup story, making the same mistakes, doing the same thing that I've done since I was 18 or 19 whilst everyone around me seems to have grown up, you know, seems to have gotten everything together. I think another thing to consider is that our 20s are this weird vacuum between our teenage years and what we see as proper adulthood, you know, our 30s and our 40s. And there are all of these opposing kind of decisions and opposites to consider. We have these societal expectations that we should be getting settled. We should settle down.

But our brains are still developing and we're still exploring what we would like to be. We feel like we need to have a grasp over things like our finance. and our careers. But at the same time, we're seeing all of these other things around us change. We're having all of these deep conversations and questions of ourselves. And externally, in the real world, you know, there's massive inflation, there's unemployment, climate change, unaffordable housing, lower incomes compared to the expectations that were set by the generation before us by our parents, those expectations of having it together, of having a house, of knowing what you want to do with your life, they're no longer realistic.

I've been having this conversation and this discussion with my friends more and more where our childhood visions of our lives are just no longer realistic. Like, it's just not happening. We're not going to be millionaires anytime soon at least. We start to abandon some of our big aspirations. Normally that's creative endeavours, like our musical or artistic ambitions. We forget about, you know, the white picket fence or a home on the beach or being a world traveler. Because that now costs like millions of dollars.

It costs a lot of money and that realization that what we wanted as children isn't exactly as achievable. as it seemed is such a bitter, hard pill to swallow. And it can be a massive trigger for what will become a quarter-life crisis. You know, sometimes where we are right now isn't where we want to be. It's not where we imagined we would be at this age. You thought things would turn out differently, and they're not. You know, when I was 15, 16, I had to be. I. thought I was going to be really successful by now, like really successful, you know, maybe even married or at least with someone I love. I thought I'd be a homeowner. I definitely thought I'd be making more money, maybe traveling, and I thought that I would know what I wanted to do with my life.

And in some ways, that's true, right? Like, I get to make this podcast. That's what I want to do in my life, right? Like, I really enjoy doing this, but everything is still quite confusing. And there are all these different thoughts and feelings floating around in my head. You know, I wanted this incredible life for myself of jet-setting and maybe writing a novel or going to Europe with my soulmate. That's a bit, like, ridiculous to me now that I'm in my, like, mid-20s. But that's just how life turns out. You know, don't get me wrong here.

Like, please, don't misconstru. my words, like, I absolutely love my life, and I wouldn't have it, like, any other way. Like, I love my life. I've had these incredible experiences and growth these past years, and those periods were, you know, so much more than I could have imagined as a child. But as the years go by, and I kind of find myself lapsing into stagnation and feeling comfortable in what I have, I realize I haven't. achieved some of those dreams and I panic. I panic a little bit more. I worry if I'm doing

this right. It's such a quintessential experience of our 20s to be questioning our path forward and our path to this point, right? Like, and then that's, you know, there's that existential knowledge that lingers that we're so aware of in our 20s as we gain more self-awareness. and more appreciation of the world, that this is, you know, our only shot. You don't get another shot at life. And here we are, a quarter of the way through, and, you know, I really better make that count. And I'd better be sure of my decisions. It's so much pressure.

It can be quite stifling to come across that realization. And that's a really common train or pattern of thought for those of us who are going through a quarter-life crisis right now. it's a pattern of thought that many psychologists or therapists tend to hear. They tend to get these visits from people in their 20s who all of a sudden wake up one day with that realization, that the decisions they make count and they start questioning the ones that they've made. You know, am I in the right place for me?

Am I doing what I want? You know, life is moving so fast and I feel like I have to really. change something about my life. Otherwise, I'm not going to be happy. In this way, a quarter-life crisis is very much like an existential crisis, which is, I guess, a whole other episode. It's really similar to this. You know, a quarter-life crisis is the existential crisis of our 20s. In psychology, this kind of crisis, it occurs when we begin to question things like meaning and purpose. And the purpose of our life, of our existence, the realities of death, you know, just some fun casual topics. And obviously, the answer to these questions is not easy to come by. If we don't really have

the answer to them, and they require a lot of deep contemplative thinking about our values, what brings us joy, the impact we want to have on the world, many of which are questions that are shared between a quarter-life crisis and an existential crisis. And it's almost a rite of passage, right, that we all go through this in our 20s in order to exit out onto the other side of real adulthood. I don't know. Maybe not real adulthood, but some more mature kind of adulthood, where we feel like we have our lives together. at the center of a quarter life crisis is really a struggle for meaning.

Meaning in life, the meaning of life, is impossible to define. It's really difficult because it's a highly personal decision. It's a highly personal experience. But researchers, they've kind of defined it as the feeling that our lives are significant, that they're purposeful, that they're career. In other words, that we have a direction that makes sense to us and gives us a feeling of worth. And when we're in our 20s, we're so young to have figured that out, because we've really only just come into our mature selves and the struggle for a purpose, for a meaningful job, the need

to make that contribution, it can be paralyzing. And when we can't make sense of that, We can't make sense of the understanding that this is a normal experience, the typical symptoms and experiences and reactions of dread and stress and anxiety and a meltdown, feeling unfulfilled, they follow along pretty quickly after that. The need for purpose, I think, is one of the defining characteristics of human beings. We crave purpose. We really do. and we suffer some pretty serious psychological difficulties when we don't have it.

Purpose is like a fundamental component of a living and of living a fulfilling life. And it's so important that it's even measured on most tests of well-being and most ways of assessing our mental health. They'll ask you, like, do you feel like you have purpose? There are a number of psychological explanations for what? why it's so important. But the one that I find, perhaps the most fascinating, was featured in psychology today, which is this online site. And I found, I stumbled across it when I was researching this episode. And it made so much sense to me. It made so much sense. When we feel like we have direction or something to work towards, this makes us less vulnerable to something

called psychological discord. And that is this recognizable sense of unease. We get when our attention isn't occupied by external things. And when we don't have something that drives us, it results in boredom, but following on from that, also anxiety and depression and a crisis. By having a purpose and an intentional purpose, you know, something we actually really care about and something to focus on. We in some ways protect ourselves from these feelings, these feelings of anxiety and distress, and it gives us a channel for our energy and the energy that is contained in every one of us, and it gives us a channel for our ambition. It's also essential for personal development and societal development as well. So when we begin to question whether we're

contributing and whether our lives have meaning, that's why it can be so abrasive. because it goes against that core fundamental need, that psychological need, to have something to do that feels important to you. And that's essentially the core of a quarter life crisis, right? If you're at this point, this crossroads in your life right now, where you're looking at the things you've been doing, what you've been working towards, your career maybe, and are just thinking, like, this is not what I want. I'm not happy. This is not who I want to be. It's probably because that doesn't align to your purpose. And it's probably because, you know, when you decided what you wanted to do, you were 17, 16 years of age. And you're not that person anymore. You're not that person. And things

get so confusing as we get more responsibilities and feel like we need to be an adult as we enter into our mid and late 20s. So I want to talk about how this crisis can manifest, but also ultimately why it's firstly really normal and secondly, incredibly, incredibly important. Our next partner has a product I use literally every day. I started taking AG1 because I've been on a bit of a health journey. I wanted to take better care of my immune system and my gut health. And with one delicious scoop of AG1, you're essentially absorbing 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, probiotics, all that good stuff. And it's really great for your nervous system and your immune system.

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and as important as I like to say it is, it can be really uncomfortable. So noticing why it is that this may have occurred or why it is that you're feeling this way is really crucial. The first one is so common. You know, you're planning your career, job searching. You've got your first job out of uni or trying to choose your major. You're graduating. You know, maybe you've even been through a few jobs.

And you're trying to figure out what it is about, your life that you want to focus on. I think one of the scary realisations of our 20s, if we choose to take the full-time work route, is that we're going to spend most of our lives inside an office. That's really terrifying. And for some, that's a dream, right? But for others, it's really not what they want.

This is a massive one, planning our careers. In this day and age, our identity is so, closely tied to our career and our professional lives. This begins even in our childhood and our adolescence with an emphasis on questions about, you know, what do you want to be? What do you want to do? Rather than asking young people, what makes you happy? Why do you want to do that with your life? So when we go through a quarter life crisis and we begin contemplating our meaning and our purpose, we don't actually know how to answer those questions because we've been taught to be goal-orientated rather than value-orientated.

Instead of thinking about what makes us happy and instead of contemplating the life we imagine, we're kind of forced into this limited thinking about what do I want to achieve, what do I want my job title to be? And that's not really a way to create a meaningful life because it's quite transparent, it's quite shallow. So when we get to the point where we do get to have some agency and really think about what it is that's going to make us happy, if we've never asked ourselves those questions before,

particularly when we think about how we're going to make money and our careers, it can be really overwhelming. We might also find ourselves living away from our family for the first time. maybe you're living alone or in a new city, away from your family unit. And that really challenges how we see ourselves. And that kind of move into independence is one of the first early hallmarks of being an adult. And it's really hard to find where we stand and to figure out our identity beyond what we were offered as a child. The other thing is navigating relationships.

You know, our relationships, particularly the romantic relationships that we have, but equally our friendships are one of the most important determinants in our life. They're so crucial. It cannot be overlooked. So making those choices about what's going to make us happy, but more importantly, who's going to make us happy is actually a really big question and a really big stressor. Maybe you're finding yourself in a relationship right now that you've been in for sometime. It could be a high school sweetheart.

Could be someone you started dating in uni. And you're thinking, is this what I want my life to be? Do I want to be with that person? On a grander scale, you know, do I want to be friends with these people? Is this the person I want to be? It can be such a challenging question, right? And sadly, I can't give you the answer to that. I wish I could. I wish I could ease your struggle.

but part of the quarter-life crisis is that something that you have to figure out for yourself. You're also making, like I said, long-term personal and professional decisions. You know, they might not always have anything to do with your job or your romantic partner or where you live or, you know, your connection with your family. It doesn't always have to do with that. But kind of these broader decisions about the life you want, you know, including things like financial investment. and financial decisions and questions about your life values. Like, do I really want to work in an office?

Is that really the life I want for myself or do I maybe want to travel? You know, there's pros and cons to both. And it's an equation and a decision that we have to make. But it can also be a real catalyst for going through this crisis period. So the Harvard Business Review, I know, very fancy. But they did this report and they found that a quarter life crisis, the one that, you know, typically occurs in our 20s, it normally presents in four phases. So first of all, if you're going through this and you feel like you're going through this,

you really can relate to some of these experiences. I think this is an important thing to break down, right? Like what's the trajectory? What's the path through this crisis period? That can sometimes bring us a lot of comfort. So firstly, often if you're going through this, people are going to feel a sense of being trapped in some form of commitment, either in your personal or your professional life. This is synonymous with the feeling of almost claustrophobia and the sense that you cannot,

you know, kind of escape the constraints of life. Like you're stuck, you're trapped, you're stuck in your full-time job, you're stuck in your relationship. And this sense of being trapped is often accompanied by depression and panic, feeling lost and stuck the anxiety we were speaking of before. This is the beginning of the crisis. You're looking around and you're feeling like, I don't like where I am.

This is not where I wanted to be. I feel like I'm trapped in this situation. Following this, there's often some kind of action and a desire to break away and change things. I don't know if you've experienced this, but when I went through kind of a bit of a quarter-life crisis, this a year or so ago, right when I started this podcast, actually, the first thing I wanted to do was, like, chop off all of my hair, chop it all off, quit my job, get in my car, travel around with no

direction, no plan, just freedom, and hopefully find my purpose in life and the way forward. It's kind of, now that I know, now that I know that this is actually really indicative of some kind of crisis or meltdown that's occurring, I can see that really clearly. I felt stuck and I wanted to escape. It's our breaking point where we eventually get tired of feeling so shit about our lives and confused and desired to make some kind of a change. And if we don't do this, we kind of risk living with this sense of unease and unhappiness for the rest of our lives.

So it's an important step, that action, that break away. It's crucial. And this leap of faith, or this break away from, our current reality, it's not always a pretty feeling. It's not always a pretty picture. It's defined in many ways by a really deep separation and loneliness as we leave places and relationships of really deep comfort and really deep convenience. For example, you know, leaving a job that you've had for years or a long-term relationship or a place that you've lived since childhood, it's going to be really hard and it's going to be really uncomfortable and sometimes

painful because it's all new and unknown. And with that comes, you know, essentially isolation. But sometimes feeling alone and unsure of ourselves is actually a really important part of the growth. During this period of isolation, during this period of confusion, we get the opportunity to really reflect on our life and what our purpose actually is and begin to try, maybe it's, you know, a new activity or a new place, new friends, new social groups, new career opportunities and come out on the other side of the crisis, feeling more sure of who we are, having had the time to sit with ourselves and sit with a really uncomfortable feeling and question our values and hopefully come to an answer. Although it's an uncomfortable

experience, it's also really important. And it can be a springboard for some really essential growth and to flourish in your next chapter of life and this amazing new chapter. And this is kind of linked to the last thing I really want to talk about today. I think a quarter life crisis gets a bad rap. Yes, it's sometimes awful. Yes, it is characterized by incredible mental discomfort. And if you're experiencing it right now, I really do feel for you. Like, I don't envy you at all. I know how it feels. And I can promise you'll get through it, but I can't promise it will be easy,

but it will be like essential, essential for your growth. Questioning your purpose in life and the overall meaning in life, it's obviously never going to be a walk in the park. But sometimes we go through hard things for good reasons. And this is one of those examples. It's the perfect time to do some of that deep thinking and contemplation that I think in my opinion is something that we all have to do at some stage. What would happen if we really never questioned our path in life?

What if we never questioned our dreams or our place in the world? If you never pushed yourself to be uncomfortable, like you would remain stagnant. And sometimes when we fight back against these feelings, is our brain has a way of breaking through for us. Like our brain works in some crazy, unconscious, subliminal ways. And when you start to notice that tension, you're trying to suppress it, you're trying to be like, no, like, I'm happy, I'm happy,

I'll just keep pushing forward. Something is going to change. The thing that will often change is our mindset and our attitude and our brain will break forward and create this crisis for us. And it really forces us to rethink our desires and our intentions in life. it forces us to question what we actually want and importantly to change our pathway or our direction in a decade in life in which that's actually an expected part of our journey. Right.

Like that's why it happens at this age because this is the time to do it. Like we, you know, most of us don't have kids or a mortgage or financial responsibilities. We can actually make these decisions. So if you are unhappy right now, if you don't want to do your job, if you don't want to work 9 to 5 if you don't want to live where you're living and your brain has pushed you to a point of crisis, it's actually a great opportunity to change things. Like in many ways, you can say yes to a lot of the opportunities that will come your way, especially if your quarter life crisis has been, I think, triggered by some kind of dissatisfaction with your career and feeling like the path you're on

isn't going to satisfy your purpose. It's an important catalyst to reconsider the those dreams we had as a child, the ones I was talking about before, and be like, would I be happier if I was doing that? Am I happy not doing that? Is this the life that I want for myself? But if you suppress those feelings, let this be a warning, if you ignore the dissatisfaction, not only are you never going to change, but those feelings aren't really going to go away. And you're going to find yourself at a point where you're probably quite unhappy and you're quite stagnant. So embrace it. I think this links to one of the second benefits of a quarter life crisis is that it opens a lot of new opportunities for you. So many new opportunities. When we are forced to

re-evaluate our life, we see things in a way we've never imagined them before. Suddenly, that path or the ambitions that were always really clear to us are not clear anymore. And this might seem scary, but often when we're so sure of our dreams, when we're so stubborn about them, it can make us pretty blind to the other options and opportunities that are out there. You know, when I was 16, all I wanted to be was a politician. And I was so sure of this, so passionate about achieving it for so many years, that's all I saw was this path forward to do the right degree, go to the right uni, you know, get a few internships, network with people, get a government job, move up. I really saw like nothing else. And because of that, I was really blind to other opportunities.

So when that fell apart, when I was forced to question it, when after years, I realized that that's not what I wanted. It was incredibly difficult to wake up to other opportunities because I was just so focused on this one opportunity. And that meant that when I finally did realize this wasn't for me. Yeah, it was really scary, but I was reintroduced into this world of opportunities that I'd neglected for years. And there were so many other doors that opened for me when I didn't keep closing them myself. And, you know, like now, I do something that I love. Like, I get to make this show and talk about the things that really are really important to me. And I get to talk about psychology all the time. If I hadn't had that crisis a few years ago, I probably,

I definitely wouldn't be doing this, and I'd probably be miserable. Like, I'd, like, think about that person, that poor girl, and that's all she wanted. And I'm like, gosh, if I had stuck to that, I don't think I would be as happy as I am now. So, like I said before, sometimes hard things happen for good reasons. It also reveals what's important to us and what's important to you. after that kind of storm passed and the skies become a lot clearer, I guess. So do our intentions and our purpose, because the clutter disappears. The only way through this crisis is to really examine your life and clear out what doesn't matter and what does.

Sometimes that means ending our relationships, moving away from your hometown, quitting your job, beginning your hobbies, pursuing your opportunities, because we tend to stop prioritizing the things that don't align with our meaning when we go through this period of deep contemplation. There's this cliche that I think is often repeated a lot when we talk about this, and I hate to be cliche, but I am going to repeat it again here. Hitting rock bottom is such a great springboard up. I know, I know, it's so cliche, but like the saying always goes, right? You know, the only way is up.

if we never hit rock bottom right we never get pushed to the point of questioning our lives because we remain where it's you know just comfortable enough to feel safe and secure but not happy and when we hit a crisis point where we have to re-evaluate everything because it's falling apart you're kind of forced into a place of reflection and you gain a new perspective and you're given this like magical magical opportunity of a fresh start. You gain humility, you see that life is not black and white, and you begin to let go of the things that you can't control. Because when you're in like a crisis, when you're in like fight or flight mode, like those unimportant things like how people perceive you or what you're wearing or whether people think I'm smart enough or whether I'm doing the right internships

or getting the right jobs and all these things, like they really don't matter because you're in crisis mode. You're in a meltdown. The only things that matter to you are the things that are really important. And in that way, you get to identify them clearer. Finally, I think a quarter-life crisis strengthens your core values. I know I talk a lot about values on the show because I think they are really important to establish in our 20s

and to take some time to think about, like, what are the five things that are most important to you? Is it honesty? Is it humility? Is it creativity? Independence? And often we go through life, especially early adulthood, really following the values that were instilled to us by our parents and by our families and our communities. These values are really easy to partake in because they don't require any effort, and they've all we've ever known. But often, a trigger for a quarter-life crisis is that these values no longer fit.

and they no longer fit how we perceive the world. So we're forced to either abandon them and create new ones or strengthen elements of them that we do believe in. I think religion is a good example here. You know, a lot of us, I would say, grew up in some kind of religious society or with some kind of religious background or religious knowledge, and often that revolves around a god, or some kind of traditional belief of good and bad.

And those values are often instilled in us by our parents who are raising us the best they can, giving us the knowledge that their parents gave them. But you actually really need to consider whether you believe in those things, and whether you believe in the values that were instilled to you as a child. You know, using that religion example, you might no longer believe in God

if you test that feeling and you test that relationship. and you test that belief. But what you find you do believe in is something bigger or that, you know, love is at the core of everything. And that brings us comfort because we know we believe in that. It's not just something that our parents have told us. We know we can trust that belief because we created it for ourselves. And sometimes it means going through a crisis and a meltdown and a period of real deep confusion to figure that out. So if there is one takeaway, from this episode. It's that this experience, this crisis in our lives that a lot of us find ourselves going through in our 20s and our journey and all of those terrifying questions we

tend to ask ourselves about our values and our purpose. Yeah, it's really going to be quite scary, right? Like, I'm not going to deny that. And if you're someone who's experiencing that right now, like it's hard. It's really hard. But it's also freaking fantastic, because without this experience, we never get to grow or actually decide for ourselves in this moment what we actually want and what we're here to do. So I hope this episode was helpful. It was a bit of a pep talk for me as well. Like I said, I think I'm definitely going through something like this right now.

And really kind of questioning, like, is this what I want? Like, is this who I want to be? and it's really, really terrifying because I don't know the answer. Like, you probably don't know it either. I don't know why I'm asking you. I guess I'm asking myself, right? Like, I want to put myself through this and through these questions because I know that when I get to the other side,

I will be more sure of myself and I'll be more sure of what's going to make me happy. So I hope that is the case for you as well. And I want to thank you for listening. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. If you enjoyed it, if you feel. feel cool to do so. Please feel free to subscribe, follow, leave a five-star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you are listening. I really appreciate it. You really help the show grow. And it's just crazy to me that like I get to do this. Like that's just crazy. So I really want to

thank everyone who has been listening these past few months, this like past a year and a half. It's just like crazy. I don't know. This is kind of a tangent. But I'm feeling very grateful at the moment, so I really appreciate the support. And I appreciate that you enjoy this show. It's just such a magical feeling. And we will be back next week for a Christmas episode, a holiday season episode. I know. I had to do it.

I'm so excited. And so excited. And thank you again for listening. Have a lovely, lovely day. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%.

I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWA% on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the Look Back at a Podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 is big to me. I'm Sam Jay and I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it

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Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to learn the hard way with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with.

And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in selling, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.

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