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

confidence that overrides insecurity comes from experience. There is no other way.

secular culture. An increase in student loan

Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds judge us from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams, while shoulds feel like oppressive standards.

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.

take the job with the most identity capital.

true and authentic identity should not be rushed and, to that end, he advocated for a period of delay when youth could safely explore without real risk or obligation.

The young look older and the old look younger, collapsing the adult life span into one long twentysomething ride.

The future isn’t written in the stars. There are no guarantees. So claim your adulthood. Be intentional. Get to work. Pick your family. Do the math. Make your own certainty. Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do. You are deciding your life right now.

Irving lets us know that good stories, and happy endings, are more intentional than that. Most twentysomethings can’t write the last sentence of their lives, but when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their thirties or forties or sixties—or things they don’t want—and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multi