Quarter Life Crisis
I have been getting quite a few emails from people who are in their twenties with this question:
“I am too young to be having a mid life crisis and yet, everything feels like I am having a crisis.
Is it possible I am having a mid life crisis now?”
Quarter-life Crisis Versus Mid-life crisis
Three major shifting points exist for people: Adolescence (The start of the first third of life), Midlife crisis (The start of the second third of life) and the Far Journey (The start of the third third). Quarterlife life crisis from a Taoist perspective starts with adolescence and then flows into the twenties, culminating into the Quarterlife crisis, as a person makes their choices on how to best fit into society. Midlife crisis can start as early as age 35 and can begin as late as age 55. The Far Journey is rarer and usually begins after a person truly feels their mortality. For myself I was trained to call the Far Journey “Releasing the Bones” but it has many other names also.
Quarterlife crisis in a nutshell is all about how a person shifts into society. Midlife crisis is the reflection of Quarterlife crisis. Midlife transformation is all about how a person shifts out of society to become their own person. The Far Journey is about a person coming to final terms of what they are spiritually in life.
As it takes longer and longer to achieve independence in modern culture, the age at which quarterlife crisis occurs is increasing in age for people. It isn’t unheard of now to see people in their late 20′s actually experiencing quarterlife crisis. While Adolescence / Quarterlife crisis were long ago the same thing, in modern society Quarterlife crisis has evolved into it’s own distinct process. As a result most people treat adolescence and Quarterlife crisis as totally separate events in a person’s life. From a Taoist perspective while these two events are interrelated to each other it is acceptable to treat them as separate events.
What Does a typical
Quarter life crisis look like?
My adolescent son Kendall took a shot at modeling crisis in this picture for fun. However, those in quarter-life crisis will often not show overt signs of crisis at first. Many people blame themselves for failing to find work or feel the crisis initially as some internal personal failure. This means that depression can be a common effect of Quarter-life crisis. This also means sometimes it can be a few months before a person realizes the problem is something larger than a single personal failure or a simple mistake they made. People can pull away inwardly to try to figure out what is wrong and this often creates a time of confusion for a person initially in quarter-life crisis.
Researchers in England surveyed 50 volunteers to distill the typical quarter life crisis process into 5 stages.
- A feeling of being trapped by your life choices. Feeling as if you are not in personal control of your life.
- The need to “I’ve got to get out of this”. Realizing something has to change.
- Quitting the job, relationship, responsibilities making you feel trapped. Taking time out and begin to discover who you are on your own terms.
- Rebuilding your life.
- Developing new commitments more attuned to your interests and aspirations
When a person is feeling Quarter life Crisis they are just beginning the first stage of the process. Once a person becomes aware of this feeling it takes two years, of actively working to find their place, to resolve out the crisis. The good news is that most young adults who actively work thru their quarter life crisis have positive experiences. Surveys have shown that up to 80% of those who go thru quarterlife crisis are very happy to have taken the time to work thru their quarterlife crisis. This illustrates, the real problem is when you ignore the process all together.
Transformation for those in their Twenties
Quarter life crisis is most heavily felt by those trying hardest to fit into society for the first time outside of school or family environments. A person feeling crisis in their twenties wouldn’t be experiencing mid life transformation, they are technically experiencing the effects of the Quarterlife crisis period of life.
However, these aren’t normal times, and a joker is in the mix. Modern society as a whole is actually experiencing Mid Life Crisis on a social level. This larger social crisis is forcing the youngest generation to be facing social problems square on, as a reflection of their own personal life. It’s also forcing many older individuals into mid life crisis earlier, putting strains on marriages, personal values and relationships. This reinforces and helps to create a larger cycle of social change that further pushes more people into feeling crisis in their life.
I have never received so many emails as I have had in the summer of 2011. Social conditions have forced people into change at a pace that is staggering. The younger generation is waking up and this is a generation ready for change.
My answer is this:
“You have inherited your parent’s crisis. The crisis you now are feeling is the very turmoil and mid life crisis the culture as a whole is experiencing. Because a person is a reflection of their culture, this cultural crisis has become yours to deal with full on.”
So if you are reading this, you are experiencing something that is bigger than the normal quarter-life crisis of the past. In addition to not knowing how best to fit into society, society itself is making it harder for you to find your place.
So you are experiencing a two for one crisis: your own personal quarterlife crisis and the direct effects of the currently raging social midlife crisis. As a result this complicates how you would handle your own quarterlife crisis.
Taking Control of Your Quarter Life Crisis
The key of handling quarterlife crisis is actually being proactive in taking control of your own personal direction in your lifestyle choices.
Transformation is transformation, once started it isn’t optional. If transformation is ignored, a person’s choices will slowly erode down to facing a crisis. Once a situation has evolved into experiencing a crisis, a person is confronted with a choice to change or face personal failure. As a result the answer to how best handle a crisis, is actually using education to teach options how to grow rather than let a person limit their options down to crisis. Usually those in quarter life crisis often contact me just before they face an actual point of crisis. This is very fortunate, as it means we have time to learn and shift their situations into better living conditions. (An interesting side note: those in mid life crisis often contact me afterthe crisis point has been reached in their life.)
The tools I teach here will apply equally across anyone who is facing crisis at any point of their life.
First
Take the time to understand that this feeling of crisis actually represents an opportunity to live better on so many levels. It is an opportunity to break out of older social patterns you previously thought you should follow as your life’s course. At twenty, you are standing at the true beginning of your independent life with different options than those who are often in midlife crisis. You have the energy, freedom and vitality to make choices on how to best explore life.
Secondly
How you live makes a difference, and if you start living to your heart, this is how you vote in society to make a difference. Yes some people will go out to actively start trying to change things to be better in society.
But remember this:
The first and most efficient place to start resolving the feelings of personal crisis is personal surety of self. Changing how you live to be what you truly want to be is the most efficient path to take in making things better.
Thirdly
Don’t try to be what you were told to expect or try to match to how your parents lived. This is about releasing bad expectations and shifting a personal lifestyle all together. Because many “established norms” are shifting due to the social changes we are facing, the answers are not in any book yet, and won’t be out for a few years yet. The answers are being crafted right now as we work them out in real time. You will be the ones to write the answers after we have figured it all out again…
Important Considerations in Quarter Life crisis
Be Open to Mistakes
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, rather use any mistakes made to help you hone life into something spectacular. People in their twenties are very afraid of making mistakes, but understand it are your mistakes that allow you to learn about life. It are our mistakes that help gives a person their true individuality. What separates a truly great person and the average hidden worker drone, is all about how a person learns from their mistakes to grow and improve themselves.
Part of this process I teach is exactly this: How to learn and grow from your own mistakes. To use your own life as an amazing schooling experience to teach yourself how to be successful.
Be Patient with Yourself
The second most critical aspect then becomes patience. Personal growth from the mistakes of crisis does take time. This won’t happen in 3 days or 3 months. Learning how to shift your life will initially be a 2 year journey, so be patient with yourself. Factor in larger social change and it might be a little longer than the standard 2 year cycles seen in the past for quarter-life transitions.
If you take the time to shift over 2-3 years, then your life will improve and others will follow the example you set. Patience is the key to the process. Since it requires patience to give yourself time to figure out your personal solutions.
Working thru Quarter Life crisis in 2011 and 2012
Ten years ago, you would have been following along the lines of a traditional quarter-life crisis. This would mean working extra hard at being persistent and finding the best employment option that would take you in and start the process of building a family and life. However, the large scale economic issues, the widespread problems in our culture and slow disintegration of various social systems are causing the largest backlash of young adults in quarterlife crisis I have seen since 1967. So this means today in 2011 and 2012 you do have to factor in your current social conditions as part of the consideration on how to handle a quarter-life crisis. Today this means shifting the focus of your quarter life transformation more to your best lifestyle choices over the best job options. In this respect today’s quarter-life transformation does resemble more of a mid life transformation than the traditional quarter-life transition.
In these times of social change, many jobs, ways of living and past views are simply going to shift or even go away. It’s time to be brave and make it your own way now, to make the future here in the now, not by repeating the past. The past is broken, past examples of living are what got everything in the mess that it’s in now. This requires forward thinking in the here and now. If you are brave enough to decide to not be defined by the norms of society, then you will find you will end up creating the new norms that society will become. For those feeling quarterlife crisis, it’s a sign that you have a deep spark of independence that is being kicked into gear and you should factor this in how you live life.
Kindness for your Quarterlife Crisis
Discover kindness and compassion, as, the changes ahead are impacting so many people not just yourself. Kindness and compassion will allow each person to shift the world rather than fighting to get a diminishing share of pie. Kindness and compassion won’t mean keeping alive the past. Kindness and compassion mean to let the past ideals fade away so we can work with what works best now to making our current lives ones worth living.
It is a time of new answers and this current generation will have to stand behind their own actions to make this their time.
The tools taught here will apply equally across anyone who is facing crisis. I help many younger people work thru this time and teach answers on how to change their lifestyle to prevent the anxiety that drives the crisis. It’s a time to shift and you are not alone. Living as if in crisis will isolate a person but that in part is also a result of the current social system minimizing how we are interacting with each other. True power is in clear communications and working with each other to improve your lives. Reach out and work with others while also staying true to yourself.
Help for a Quarterlife Crisis
I offer guidance and assistance to those in Quarterlife crisis. All sessions are at a reasonable time for time rate. Phone counseling and Retreat inquiries can be sent to:
Casey Kochmer
PersonalTao@gmail.com
— Or call now at —
(808) 935-6346 (Hilo, Hawaii)
All counseling sessions are by appointment only.
Additional Life Transformation Reading Materials
11 Responses to Quarter Life Crisis
Leave a Reply
A Personal Tao
Discover the Tao and Taoism. This is a guide to the heart and a handbook for discovering the Tao.
Volume 2:
Living Grace. Now in work!
And wonderfully, their are no replies so far as in contrast with 132 replies to Midlife crisis.
However, we can not keep talking about it. Action has to be taken. There is lot of work to do. I have to create a self-help group first. Let’s see what happens next. And change accordingly. (yeah! seems so philosophical). Let it seem so.
Ankur: This is understandable, since Quarter-life Crisis is not what a person would expect what they are going thru to be all about.
Quarter-life Crisis is a relatively new process actually and more socially driven rather than being based on a person’s natural life cycle. As a result people are still catching up to this newer concept. I think the term Quarter-life Crisis only got coined about 10 years ago for instance.
This is interesting. I’m a 25 year old male and have never heard of a quarter-life crises until now. I’ve been experiencing many of the symptoms from your mid-life crises page, though I thought I was surely too young for this. Normally I’m logical, calm, and a bit pessemistic but lately I’m finding myself to the point of almost outright aggression towards society as a whole. Marriage is in my near future, a new house, new state, new dogs (yes plural) and all of these made me so happy. But now I feel almost trapped and cynical towards everything going on around me. This article has given me a lot to consider. Thank you.
@Thomas:
Congratulations on all the new events in your life.
Take time to explore change, let your marriage be an exploration of change and helping each other grow, rather than keeping alive a concept of marriage that breaks when not allowed to be flexible.
( I marry people and I make sure people learn that marriage, if about love, must be about change (love is wanting to help another grow) otherwise you lose oneself to a concept of static marriage rather than growing over time)
Take time to shift in these times. We are at a change point in history, and that means the world becomes what we make it to become.
A powerful time indeed.
Quarter-life crisis, is not a crisis, but rather a pausing point in your life. Take the time to make your pause powerful, to reflect and set yourself up to move ahead with precision. To get yourself ready for changes ahead.
Casey I’d like to thank you again for your help on this situation. After reading this post the other night, I talked to my gal and explained to her what I had learned, what I’ve been feeling and what I’ve been thinking about. We have -extremely- great communication and she immediately did research herself the next morning to help me and understand where I’m at during this point of my life. We’ve discussed many options that will cultivate our personal growth as well as our growth as a couple. I only hope others that feel this way can be lucky enough to find this and get the same inspiration and calmness that it has brought me.
@Thomas: I am glad it was of help, Quarter-life crisis is actually an opportunity, once you understand it as a leaping off point to live a fuller life.
It’s easy to get depressed or fooled by the pause you are in since it doesn’t match to expectations of where you thought you should be.
But make no mistake, if you accept the pause as a natural resetting point, take stock, make minor changes to your lifestyle, quarter-life crisis can represent a truly major transformation point to moving ahead with your life based on your needs rather than expectations from outside measures… that dont really work.
Best of wishes as you explore ahead in your life and again congratulations for your upcoming marriage.
Hi Casey, Lately I have been going through so many emotions and experiences in my life that I turned to the net to figure out if I’m actually going through a crisis?? I’m 33 and have been married for three years. I am living in a a foreign country which to me has been the biggest change of all trying to adapt to everything new and trying to learn a new language I still struggle with it because I’m usually such a open person and the life of the party but cant be because I cant communicate with any one yet and it makes me feel so left out….. but I thought it would have been easy since I used to travel so much before that and being in foreign places used to excite me so much. I don’t know I constantly feel sad and angry unappreciated and misunderstood , and as good as it can be between me and my husband it can be bad too ,I get irritated with him and I feel lonely and trapped by the same routines everyday. I want us to do things together and make memories together,and not have life just pass us by I feel like we can’t communicate any more and we use to about everything , and lately I have become obsessed with having children because I feel like maybe this will change me and our relationship or fill this emptiness I have inside But when I get too emotional he then tells me we wont have kids if I don’t change my behaviour It does not make sense am I going crazy is it all in my head ?? I feel lost and is living in a different hemisphere from my family been to much of a big change for me??
Its incredible the way the world works. Im 25 and have been feeling lost symptimatic of a quater life crisis, when I stumbled into this article. I was looking for Taoist poetry because I feel a need for enlightment that wasnt there before and here I find this which pretty much sums up my world right now!I especially agree with the point about my generation having to deal with previous ones crisis, its scarily acurate and I can see in myself and in my friends a break in tradition. We no longer want to be married 9 to 5ers or rather, thats not all we want to be anymore. The only trouble is that I think we dont quiet know what to do with ourselves, but just the fact that people are talking and looking for help shows that theres hope . Thank you for this article it has helped me infinitly.
@ES: Having children won’t fix things when something is already broken. IN fact it’s the other way around, having children puts more stress and newer problems into the situation. Life crisis requires a changing in the way you see and work through the problems. Every solution to your life crisis based on compromise will only create discord or slowly erode your own life away.
@Shanan: Yes it is amazing. Quarter life crisis for you represents a whole new way to look at everything. Don’t fall for the trap that you can vote your way to a solution(that game is rigged in too many ways to count now). Don’t fall for the trap thinking a revolution is what is needed: that just turns the wheel back to the same place.
It’s time to live your life, as your life, to make your choices and build your communities with each other to be stronger.
Of course you don’t know what to do with yourselves, Quarter life crisis has become all about creating a brand new system from the ground up. That is evolutionary and wonderful. Whole new movements, gift economies and processes are starting all around you. Explore and live Quarter life crisis not as a crisis but as a start of Quarter Life Reinvention.