Identity capital is our stock of personal assets. It is how we add value to who we are, and it is what we have to show for how we have spent our time. These are the investments we make in ourselves, or the things we do well enough or long enough that they become a part of who we are. Rather than coming from that “lightning bolt of intuition” Helen

those who are underemployed for as little as nine months tend to be more depressed and less motivated than their peers—than even their unemployed peers.

Many twentysomethings assume life will come together quickly after thirty, and maybe it will. But it is still going to be a different life. We imagine that if nothing happens in our twenties then everything is still possible in our thirties. We think that by avoiding decisions now, we keep all of our options open for later. But not making choices i

When Danielle called her mother, she was doing what therapists call “borrowing an ego.” She was reaching out in a moment of need and letting someone else’s frontal lobe do the work. We all need to do that sometimes, but if we toss our distress like a hot potato too much, we don’t learn to handle bad days on our own.

She imagined that people at work either had confidence or they didn’t, so any little thing that went wrong on the job suggested she didn’t. Rather than missteps, her mistakes became statements about who she was. Instead of being seen as feedback about what she needed to learn or about where she was in her career—the beginning—every reprimand indica

the fact that I never felt like I was better than those around me, and that I was just focused on learning and getting results, is what has led me to better and better things at my company.

I saw that bigness came from investing in what I had, from taking part in what was in front of me.

Feeling better, then, doesn’t come from avoiding adulthood. It comes from investing in adulthood.

A more expansive sense of interconnectedness rests not on texting best friends at one in the morning, but on reaching out to people that make a difference in our lives even though they don’t have to.