The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now

As a twentysomething, life is still more about potential than proof.

What this means is that, in our twenties, the quick, hot, impulsive, pleasure-seeking, emotional brain is ready to go, while the slow, cool, rational, forward-thinking frontal lobe is still a work in progress.

The frontal lobe is where we move beyond the futile search for black-and-white solutions as we learn to tolerate—and act on—shades of gray.

We spent even more sessions helping her shift from being wanted to wanting. Cathy had never thought about what she wanted or needed in a partner. She never thought she could do the wanting.

“I want to be reaching my potential.”

Our twenties can be like living beyond time. When we graduate from school, we leave behind the only lives we have ever known, ones that have been manageably organized into semester-sized chunks with microgoals nestled within. There are syllabi and tests and papers and assignments that keep us on track. There are teachers (or parents) to tell us wha

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.

told Kate that while most therapists would agree with Socrates that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” a lesser-known quote by American psychologist Sheldon Kopp might be more important here: “The unlived life is not worth examining.”

I felt a lot of internal pressure to figure it out, but all the thinking I did was really debilitating and unproductive. The one thing I have learned is that you can’t think your way through life. The only way to figure out what to do is to do—something.