Navigating the Quarter Life Crisis

is this what my life is do I wake up every day commute an hour to work work 9 to5 come commute an hour back have 45 minutes of recreation time and then go to sleep because I need to eat get eight hours of sleep at night is this what life is this is not what I was promised this is not what I thought I thought I was going to be free and having fun so I went through a quarter life crisis a little bit before it was cool about 20 years ago I was stuck I was failing out of college we'll get into some details I went to India I found myself in today I'm very happy and what I see in the world around me is that so many young people have no idea what to do with their lives they're living in a world where they were taught these expectations of if you do a b and c you will be happy you will be successful but it seems like this is a huge scam and so they end up having this crisis this existential crisis in their early 20s or mid 20s they don't know who they are they don't know what they they should do they don't know how to take risks they don't know how to make choices and at first I thought that this was like a minority of people right I thought I was the exception because 20 years ago not everyone was doing it but if you look at research today quarter life crises are one of the most common experiences of young people one study by LinkedIn actually found that 75% of people go through a quarter life crisis and this is what I see there is a generation of people who don't know what to do with their lives who don't know who they they are because y'all were given a script right you were told do this go to college get a job find love buy a house get a mortgage do all these things and then you will be happy and y'all did what you were supposed to do you did everything that the older generation told you to do but now you find yourself in your mid 20s maybe a little bit older maybe a little bit younger and 75% of y'all and you have no idea what to do you don't know who you are you don't know what you want you are watch all these [ __ ] videos on the internet from gurus who are telling you do this do this do this do this you chase those things and for some of y'all it works and for some of you it doesn't and that's the real tragedy of a quarter life crisis which is that a quarter life crisis is not a bad thing if you look at the Chinese character or the Japanese kanji for crisis it is two pictograms put together it is danger and opportunity that's really what a crisis is and what we know from the research on quarter life crisis is that they are something that is a very powerful developmental tool the problem is that navigating the quarter life crisis is not something that we know how to do sometimes people will ask me this question if you could go back in time and give advice to your younger self what would you tell yourself and I tell them I would not tell myself a damn thing because everything that I went through made me the person that I am today so in my case I had no idea what I was doing I failed out of college went to India found myself now I'm happily married I have a job that I love I work really hard my external environment and my internal environment are in sync and I'm pretty happy today thankfully and that's what we see with a quarter life crisis is that some people successfully navigate it and are so much stronger at the end all of us are looking for Solutions but the problem is that the solutions seem to work for some people but don't work for other people a great example of that this is put yourself out there right so when you talk to people who have successfully found relationships or found their career and you ask them what do I need to do they say you just have to put yourself out there and then you may try to put yourself out there but for some reason it doesn't work for you and then you're left scratching your head I don't know is this like are they different am I different why does it not work for me am I doing it wrong we're struggling with all of these questions but this is what's really cool in The Last 5 Years there's been an explosion of research on the quarter life crisis because so many people are experiencing it and what we figured out is that there are actually four to five stages to this process and it is textbook I will tell yall a little bit about my life and as we go through the stages if yall have been watching this channel for a while you'll have heard me talk about each of these steps and the problem that we run into is not that the advice doesn't work but that we sometimes apply it out of order that putting yourself out there only works if you do a set of things first that's what makes it successful hey all' if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life check out Dr K's guide to mental health it combines over two decades of my experience of both being a monk and a psychiatrist and distills all of the most important things I've learned into a Choose Your Own Adventure format so check out the link in the bio and start your journey today so let's start with the goal so a life structure is a developmentally achieved integration of internal structures such as values goals and beliefs Allied to external structures such as roles commitments relationships and activities so what are we looking for what's the basic problem the basic problem is that this thing in here and that thing out there don't fit and there's a really good reason for this so if you look at the the research on quarter life crises what you find is that early on we're teenagers right and when we're teenagers we don't have freedom oh my God my parents are telling me to stop playing video games they're telling me I don't want to study I don't want to do it me I want to be an adult and when I'm an adult I get to do whatever I want and then what happens is you become an adult and then you discover that despite you having all of the freedom you have no Freedom At All you thought that the moment that you became an adult everything becomes easy but what I see more and more and more is constantly these posts of is this what my life is do I wake up every day commute an hour to work work 9 to5 come Comm mute an hour back work out because I'm supposed to work out have 45 minutes of recreation time and then go to sleep because I need to eat get 8 hours of sleep at night is this what life is this is not what I was promised this is not what I thought I thought I was going to be free and having fun and so this is where the quarter life crisis starts we have this conception that as we grow older we will be free but as we grow older we discover our freedom has is restricted by the world around us that we actually need some way to fit into the world so as teenagers all we want is freedom and then once we get our freedom what ends up happening is we realize we need to fit into the world around us and that leads to stage number one which is locked in so often times when we're trying to figure out what we want to do in life we don't know what we want we don't know who we are right because we haven't lived life yet so we look to other people so for example when I was 9 years old my dad told me me and my brother one of y'all is going to be a doctor and one of y'all is going to be a lawyer my brother was older he went to law school so I felt like I had to become a doctor I was genetically Premed and so phase one of the quarter life crisis is called locked in and it's a sense of being trapped so early on in life you make decisions based on extrinsic motivation right you're told to study this people say oh this is going to be a good job you should do this thing you should do this should should should should should should should and you're like yes sir I will do it yes sir yes sir yes ma'am yes ma'am I will do do it I will do it I will do it you follow all of these external scripts and then you find yourself in a place that you don't like and you feel trapped so phase one is defined by a central commitment or set of commitments within a life structure that is no longer desired but which is not yet perceived as a realistic Target of change this leads to a a felt sense of powerlessness and being trapped so what ends up happening is we're following these extrinsic motivations and we find oursel we wake up one day in a life that we no longer like so there are many things that can trigger this feeling sometimes it's a relationship we started dating in high school and we've been together for seven years but I don't know if I want to be with this person I'm kind of operating based on momentum or inertia I'm operating I'm living my life based on autopilot or it's something like a career where like now I have this job I majored in this thing I studied this crap for 4 years I got this job now this is the only thing that I know how to do and I don't enjoy it anymore but it feels like it is impossible to realistically change so I see this a lot in residency so I work with medical residents these are people who are Premed in college so they spent four years planning to become a doctor then they do four years of medical school where you learn about being a doctor and then they're halfway through residency they're on year three of their surger Surgical residency now they devoted 11 years of their right life to this career path and they wake up one day and they realize I don't like being a doctor right so the first four years of Premed you're like studying literature and organic chemistry that's not being a doctor med school isn't really being a doctor it's learning about medicine then you start actually practicing medicine and then for the first year you're like oh my God it's so hard and I'm so burnt out and it's so stressful it'll get better and the second year rolls around it'll get better I'll get used to it and people tell themselves these kinds of things and they wake up in year three 11 years of investment at this point and they're like I don't like this but it's too late I feel incredibly trapped this is what triggers the quarter life crisis and when this crisis gets triggered it also affects the way that we see ourselves so in terms of identity a person in Phase One experiences a sense of outward identity that has been formed to adapt to the role they are in which conceals a more authentic sense of self now this is no longer what I want but it is something that I have to do this is where the quarter life crisis begins so during this first phase of the quarter life crisis called locked in we see that it also affects someone's identity a person in Phase One experiences a sense of outward identity that has been formed to adapt to the roles there in which conceals a more authentic sense of self and this is why a quarter life crisis is so so important we view it as a problem but it is critical to our development because without this sensation we would stay trapped in that in our life if we actually look at the the research behind crisis what we find is that a crisis can help overcome the change inertia that has been found to characterize adult life structure so this kind of goes back to this uh you know this Kani of Crisis which is danger and opportunity without this internal sense of unhappiness we would be stuck in this life of autopilot and it is this sense of unhappiness which actually prompts us to change the challenge is that unless we know how to do it right we'll get stuck there's another feature of phase one which is really really interesting and may resonate with y'all which is that phase one frequently involves compulsive activities such as drug or alcohol use particularly in males which may add to the sense of being out of control and so this paper was written in 2013 so back then social media technology video games weren't as prevalent as they are now but this is the other thing that happens in Phase 1 is that we feel internally trapped we don't enjoy our life so what do we do we go to these compulsive activities drugs alcohol video games pornography that help us cope with this life that is unfixable this is literally in the scientific research and then we move on to phase two which is separation so in Phase 2 we either physically or mentally check out of our situation so internally I don't want to do this anymore externally I'm trapped in this life I can't change it right I can't really go back I've wasted 11 years in this medical career I've wasted seven years in this relationship I can't change it so what do we do we mentally or physically check out this is actually a developmental step now this is what's crazy so checking out is actually the process of the quarter life crisis it is something that is not a problem to be fixed it is a phase to be gone through the separation phase is the most affectively intensive period that means emotionally intensive period of a crisis emotions experience may include guilt sadness anxiety excitement relief and shame while self-evaluations May oscillate between upbeat self-confidence and self-disgust so I see this so much where everyone's like I'm so checked out Al life I'm so burnt out how do I find motivation how do I make this checked outness go away how do I find this intrinsic motivation which by the way a quar life crisis going through a quarter life crisis is literally how we move from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation and so what we are filled with is all all kinds of piles of emotions I'm worried about my future but I feel guilty for like I don't like I'm not putting forth the effort that I need to I feel ashamed of myself and y'all may be confused by this oscillation between confidence and and shame or feeling upbeat and feeling depressed but this is something that I've seen so much in my clinical practice right and I'll explain it to you all when you're in Phase 2 you're mentally checked out but you look back at your life and it seems good on paper right so you look at this and you're like oh I've been in this relationship for 5 years like it's a good relationship for a lot of reasons my partner is not abusive but I don't enjoy it anymore so there are times where you can look back you're in your third year of residency and you've accomplished so much you go to a place like Harvard Medical School and you have so much to be proud of sometimes in this separation phase we can look back and feel really good about some of the things that we did but something is missing and when that thing is missing we also beat ourselves up a lot because it's I worked really hard but I'm unhappy I feel stuck so there this is the most as the paper points out affectively intense period of the quarter life crisis this is where a lot of people get stuck because there is a very specific way to navigate this which a lot of people don't really understand and they actually make a mistake so Phase 2 is when a lot of people end up getting stuck this is where they stall because they don't know how to move out of this phase they view this as a problem not part of the process this affects our sense of identity okay so having lost the identity that defined them during phase one right so you you grew up and you were like I'm going to be this thing when I grow up you have this sense of identity you're going to be this person you fall in love with your high school sweetheart y'all are going to grow up and get married and get a house and have kids and everything was planned out you constructed this false identity of yourself based on expectations of the external world but this is no longer working and so but not having yet gained a new identity to replace it right this is no longer who you are so this doesn't feel like you you have a temporary identity vacuum I've invested all my life in this identity but I don't like that so then we're left with this identity vacuum Now we move on to phase 2B which is time out and this is a big mistake that a lot of people make is they think that once I separate right once I'm mentally checked out this is a problem and I need to retreat back into life so here's life that I don't like this is the the external e extrinsically motivated life that I've constructed I feel mentally checked out and so what everyone does is they try to move back into this life okay they go see a therapist they try to learn how to be accept and they try learn they learn how to do resignation and they go to therapy and they do this they try to make this old life work you go to couples counseling to try to make the relationship work even though it's dead on the inside and you don't want to do it but you try to make it work this is what's crazy this is a mistake don't move back towards your old life so phase 2B is something called timeout so after separation the best thing to do in a quarter life crisis is to intentionally move away from your old life separation is not something that you choose it's something that happens to you you mentally check out you kind of burn out timeout is when you say hey I'm I'm done with that I don't want to do that this is not working for me I need some kind of break you intentionally move away from your old life which is the exact opposite of what a lot of us feel like doing we feel like clinging to the old life which is a mistake so so during this phase a person intentionally takes time to reflect on their transitional situation to resolve painful emotions and develop a new foundation for their adult identity I think this is the biggest mistake that most people make during the timeout period a person often travels or moves to a different physical location in order to gain some distance and perspective on their troubles into a motivationally this period is described by avoidance the desire to not bind into new commitments or per pursue future aspirations so the first thing is like research in this study was examining themes from 50 people who went through a quarter life crisis and what this study basically found is once you feel mentally checked out you have to embrace that and people will literally gain physical distance hell I flew halfway across the world right to a different location that allowed me to take a step out of my life so what my life life used to be was grades grades grades got to get to medical school I'm competing with all these preds these [ __ ] tryhards are like Gunners and they want to be the best they all want to go to Harvard I want to go to Harvard it's like oh like I want to be the best I want to be the best I was surrounded by this very incestuous culture and I literally went halfway across the world which is a theme that has been supported in research people will get physical distance they will move out they will take a break from their relationship and you have to embrace that now here's the another really interesting thing about phase 2B that a lot of people miss out on see when I'm leaving my old life it's very anxiety provoking there's a lot of uncertainty and so what a lot of people want to do is they want to leave this old life but they want the security of a new life so I see this all the time on our subreddit people ask me questions how do I know if this is the right choice how do I know what should I study how do I know if I should break up with this person if I should stay with this person how do I know that going on this trip will how do I guarantee that I will find a new partner if I break up with this person how do I know that I'll be happy in this new career so people who successfully navigate phase 2B actually have avoidance of the future as well now this is something that we think is a problem right everyone thinks like okay now that I'm abandoning this this old life I need to make sure that my new life is kind of set you know in order to find your way you have to leave home you don't know exactly where you're going to end up when you leave and it's that uncertainty that you have to be able to sit with instead what we find is that a lot of people are looking for a guaranteed future they're not willing to tolerate the uncertainty of I don't know what's going to happen everyone is looking for a Surefire thing which makes perfect sense right because you made this mistake the first time when I work with a resident who has invested 11 years in of their life into becoming a surgeon they are terrified of wasting more time I don't have the time to afford so I need to figure it all out before I get started this keeps them stuck in Phase 2 a phase 2B is characterized by a timeout and an intentional avoidance of the past and avoidance of the future you can't start planning yet this is a huge mistake that people make you're not ready to make a plan now let's talk about faith phase three okay so phase three is exploration so in this phase new commitments and goals are proactively tried out and explored but you can't do this until you decide that like okay it's not about finding your future if this makes sense it's about figuring things out right it's not about finding the right answer a purp a person now purposefully looks for ways of developing a life structure that is more aligned with their own values aspirations and inner identity more so than the pre crisis okay participants describe becoming increasingly comfortable with exploring their identity in an open-ended way allowing it to evolve and change rather than fix onto a particularly externally defined role the self becomes a question rather than an answer a process rather than a product so people will ask me Dr K how do I find myself how do I figure out what is right for me right so what they're always focused on is the find of yourself and this is the reframe that people who successfully navigate phase 3 do they reframe from finding themselves to exploring themselves they reframe from figuring out what is right for them or or discovering who they are into crafting who they are it is a process of discovery and reinvention not finding the right answers and if yall are members of this community and hopefully yall can like comment and stuff like that too if you know what I'm talking about pay attention to people's language who are struggling because what everyone is looking for they assume that their the right answer is out there the perfect career exists for me I just need to find it and the problem is I don't have the time to experiment right so that's the that's what everyone assumes there's the right answer I just don't have the luxury to experiment that's not actually what goes on phase three in a quarter life crisis is not about finding what is right for you that is an old way of thinking right that's what people told you at the the beginning they told you this is the right career Alo you will be a very good doctor one day that is what you should do everyone told you there was a right answer there is no right answer the right answer has to be crafted you have to change you have to reinvent yourself and this is also where we get to putting yourself out there unless you have separated from your past life unless you have taken an intentional time out you said I'm done with that then putting yourself out there doesn't do you any good this is what I see so much with my patients they're like okay people say I should date so I should just put myself out there but in their heart of hearts they're still attached to their ex they have so much emotional baggage we all know if you have emotional baggage screws your next relationship you can't really put yourself out there until you leave home and this is what happens with people is mentally they stay in their old life they stay attached to their old identity they stay hung up full of resentment or love for their ex and then when they put themselves out they're not cognitively in the right frame of mind so then people tell you oh yeah just put yourself out there it worked for me but that's because that person was ready for phase three which involves that intentional separation from your old life and then we move on to the last phase which is rebuilding so the rebuilding phase involves a renewed engagement with long-term commitments and clear plans motivationally this period is defined by a stronger sense of intrinsic motivation than pre-crisis work and life home life are described as more inherently satisfying and enjoyable okay work and home life are described as more inherently satisfying and enjoyable and more reflective of personal interests and passions compared with pre crisis identity in phase four when compared with pre-crisis descriptions is distinct by being more coherent inner values preferences feelings and goals are now expressed in outward Behavior leading to a stronger sense of authenticity what got us in this problem in the first place is that we crafted a life without understanding who we are without sort of Reinventing ourselves exploring ourselves so there is a fundamental mismatch between the life around you and who you are in order to get through the quarter life crisis you have to first of all recognize that this sucks for you secondly you mentally check out third you intentionally check out then you start exploring yourself it's not about finding the right answer it's about discovering who you are and unless you've intentionally left your life which sometimes means going to a different physical location finding a different group of friends you can't do that exploration once you have that exploration done and not 100% done but then you have a sense of intrinsically who you are this is when we get to phase four so once you know who you are you start crafting your external life in alignment with who you are this is who you are this is who I discovered who I am and now I'm crafting my external life to be aligned with who I am internally and this is the story of my life I went to I was failed out of school right had all these high expectations and literally like all this stuff about autonomy and stuff that's me textbook as well so my parents were very restrictive they were like strict Indian parents so when I went to college I was like I'm a date girls I'm going go on parties I'm going join a fraternity I'm going play video games all night I had so much freedom and then the world smacked me in the face and is like hey you can't be doing this otherwise we're going to kick you out of college and then I created and then I mentally checked out I was burnt out I had maladaptive coping behaviors like video games very common for men in phase one shocking I mentally checked out I gave up on life then there was physical separation I went to India then I started literally exploring who I am I discovered a technique for self- exploration I let go of all of my past answers I didn't care about the future I said [ __ ] the future I'm going to be monk I'm not going to have a job I'm not going to get married I'm not going to do anything sit on my ass and meditate this is textbook then I discovered who I am once I discovered who I am then I discovered I actually don't want to be a monk I'm in love with this woman and that's how I feel this is not something to be conquered spiritually it is part of who I am so I went back I got married paradoxically went to med school but this time instead of trying to force myself to study I didn't even care about the grades like this is terrible I did not show up at my med school award ceremony where I got two Awards because I never looked at my grades I didn't I gave so little shits about the external world that I didn't even show up it's so embarrassing one of my professors was like I nominated you for an award where the [ __ ] were you and I was like my bad I'm a degenerate gamer who doesn't show up and leave the house I finished med school and I was like I'm going to play video games that's literally what I did and then I went to residency I decided I actually love Psychiatry I don't care that psychiatry aren't real doctors that's what my grandmother told me she's like don't do this it's not a real doctor and I was like no I'm going to do this so I started crafting my life and then when I finished residency I had two amazing job offers from two amazing mentors and I turned them all down and started this I started crafting my external life to fit who I am on the inside this is the resolution of a quarter life Crisis crisis helps us overcome the change inertia that has been found to characterize adult life structure without this crisis you would never have the energy or momentum to leave the autopilot of your relatively comfortable but quite unsatisfying life and 75% of young people are going through this we've accelerated this process it used to take human beings about 40 years to figure this out but the world is becoming increasingly difficult to live in people are becoming increasing L happy and it's happening earlier and as someone who has been through the end of this I love the fact that I had a quarter life crisis med school was incredibly easy for me everyone else was so caught up about failing and being at the top of that my class I had already failed I was like I know who I am at this point I'm going to work really hard and whatever happens happens if I'm at the top of my class great if I'm at the bottom of my class also totally fine the only thing I care about is not failing out that internal sense of confidence that people sort of why do you watch why do people watch me right and and I kind of say I'm not special and I still insist that I want y'all to understand now more than ever that I am not superhuman the only difference between potentially me and you but even though I don't know that that there's a difference you're maybe a little bit younger than I am that's the biggest difference is I went through this process and it is absolutely a process it is not magic it is not Brilliance it is like literally a scientifically explored hypothesis that has been developed in 2013 and has been expanded on over the last decade and you can go through it too the quarter life crisis is your inner self telling you to wake the [ __ ] up and then you look around and you see your life and you're like I can't change this and then you mentally check out and you're like this is a problem I feel burnt out how do I re-engage in in life so I had a patient once who came in and he kept on having these relapses of depression and so three or four years into our treatment he was like you know like I need your help help again and I was like No And he was like surprised and he's like I'm done doing this I'm tired of patching you back up and sending you back into battle where you're just going to get eaten alive this is not working anymore something fundamental needs to change it's not about coping it's not about therapy it's not about adjusting it's not about accepting if your life is not what you want you need to change it that is what the quarter life crisis is all about the reason it's hard to change is because it's [ __ ] scary to abandon it you have to embrace uncertainty you have to jump off of the coast and start swimming into the ocean without seeing land on the other side don't do that practically that sounds hella dangerous and it's so hard because when you say enough with that life this voice inside you will panic and it'll say what if there's nothing on the other side damn right because your strength your resilience is born of making that jump and not knowing what's on the other side and then when you get to the other side nothing will be able to stop you the very thing that you are looking for is what is holding you back you want assurances that the other side is there and so you're waiting and waiting and looking and looking and looking and listening to podcast and watching videos and reading books and seeing therapists just so you're looking for a guarantee but as long as you're looking for a guarantee you will never believe in yourself the quarter life crisis is the problem of this generation their papers that talk about it in Indonesia papers that talk about it in the United States up to 75 people per of people are experiencing it we see it on the Internet is this what my life is I'm so burnt out I'm so checked out this sucks I don't know what to do dating is a mess I'm alone I'm on autopilot I'm burnt out I want to stop I don't know how to continue I want to find myself I don't know what the right answer is how do I find the right answer this is the problem of Our Generation and it's not just about the abstract it's about you as an individual this is the problem of your life and I can tell you as someone who's jumped into the ocean and ended up on the other side holy [ __ ] it's amazing y'all should come and join me so thank you for coming to my TED Talk and good luck and lastly we're here to help so if you need more from me you let me know let us know what's next what is the challenge that you face and we will build videos to help you that's all I have to say good luck B [Music]

is this what my life is do I wake up every day commute an hour to work work 9 to5 come commute an hour back have 45 minutes of recreation time and then go to sleep because I need to eat get eight hours of sleep at night is this what life is this is not what I was promised this is not what I thought I thought I was going to be free and having fun so I went through a quarter life crisis a little bit before it was cool about 20 years ago I was stuck I was failing out of college we&#39;ll get into some details I went to India I found myself in today I&#39;m very happy and what I see in the world around me is that so many young people have no idea what to do with their lives they&#39;re living in a world where they were taught these expectations of if you do a b and c you will be happy you will be successful but it seems like this is a huge scam and so they end up having this crisis this existential crisis in their early 20s or mid 20s they don&#39;t know who they are they don&#39;t know what they they should do they don&#39;t know how to take risks they don&#39;t know how to make choices and at first I thought that this was like a minority of people right I thought I was the exception because 20 years ago not everyone was doing it but if you look at research today quarter life crises are one of the most common experiences of young people one study by LinkedIn actually found that 75% of people go through a quarter life crisis and this is what I see there is a generation of people who don&#39;t know what to do with their lives who don&#39;t know who they they are because y&#39;all were given a script right you were told do this go to college get a job find love buy a house get a mortgage do all these things and then you will be happy and y&#39;all did what you were supposed to do you did everything that the older generation told you to do but now you find yourself in your mid 20s maybe a little bit older maybe a little bit younger and 75% of y&#39;all and you have no idea what to do you don&#39;t know who you are you don&#39;t know what you want you are watch all these [ __ ] videos on the internet from gurus who are telling you do this do this do this do this you chase those things and for some of y&#39;all it works and for some of you it doesn&#39;t and that&#39;s the real tragedy of a quarter life crisis which is that a quarter life crisis is not a bad thing if you look at the Chinese character or the Japanese kanji for crisis it is two pictograms put together it is danger and opportunity that&#39;s really what a crisis is and what we know from the research on quarter life crisis is that they are something that is a very powerful developmental tool the problem is that navigating the quarter life crisis is not something that we know how to do sometimes people will ask me this question if you could go back in time and give advice to your younger self what would you tell yourself and I tell them I would not tell myself a damn thing because everything that I went through made me the person that I am today so in my case I had no idea what I was doing I failed out of college went to India found myself now I&#39;m happily married I have a job that I love I work really hard my external environment and my internal environment are in sync and I&#39;m pretty happy today thankfully and that&#39;s what we see with a quarter life crisis is that some people successfully navigate it and are so much stronger at the end all of us are looking for Solutions but the problem is that the solutions seem to work for some people but don&#39;t work for other people a great example of that this is put yourself out there right so when you talk to people who have successfully found relationships or found their career and you ask them what do I need to do they say you just have to put yourself out there and then you may try to put yourself out there but for some reason it doesn&#39;t work for you and then you&#39;re left scratching your head I don&#39;t know is this like are they different am I different why does it not work for me am I doing it wrong we&#39;re struggling with all of these questions but this is what&#39;s really cool in The Last 5 Years there&#39;s been an explosion of research on the quarter life crisis because so many people are experiencing it and what we figured out is that there are actually four to five stages to this process and it is textbook I will tell yall a little bit about my life and as we go through the stages if yall have been watching this channel for a while you&#39;ll have heard me talk about each of these steps and the problem that we run into is not that the advice doesn&#39;t work but that we sometimes apply it out of order that putting yourself out there only works if you do a set of things first that&#39;s what makes it successful hey all&#39; if you&#39;re interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life check out Dr K&#39;s guide to mental health it combines over two decades of my experience of both being a monk and a psychiatrist and distills all of the most important things I&#39;ve learned into a Choose Your Own Adventure format so check out the link in the bio and start your journey today so let&#39;s start with the goal so a life structure is a developmentally achieved integration of internal structures such as values goals and beliefs Allied to external structures such as roles commitments relationships and activities so what are we looking for what&#39;s the basic problem the basic problem is that this thing in here and that thing out there don&#39;t fit and there&#39;s a really good reason for this so if you look at the the research on quarter life crises what you find is that early on we&#39;re teenagers right and when we&#39;re teenagers we don&#39;t have freedom oh my God my parents are telling me to stop playing video games they&#39;re telling me I don&#39;t want to study I don&#39;t want to do it me I want to be an adult and when I&#39;m an adult I get to do whatever I want and then what happens is you become an adult and then you discover that despite you having all of the freedom you have no Freedom At All you thought that the moment that you became an adult everything becomes easy but what I see more and more and more is constantly these posts of is this what my life is do I wake up every day commute an hour to work work 9 to5 come Comm mute an hour back work out because I&#39;m supposed to work out have 45 minutes of recreation time and then go to sleep because I need to eat get 8 hours of sleep at night is this what life is this is not what I was promised this is not what I thought I thought I was going to be free and having fun and so this is where the quarter life crisis starts we have this conception that as we grow older we will be free but as we grow older we discover our freedom has is restricted by the world around us that we actually need some way to fit into the world so as teenagers all we want is freedom and then once we get our freedom what ends up happening is we realize we need to fit into the world around us and that leads to stage number one which is locked in so often times when we&#39;re trying to figure out what we want to do in life we don&#39;t know what we want we don&#39;t know who we are right because we haven&#39;t lived life yet so we look to other people so for example when I was 9 years old my dad told me me and my brother one of y&#39;all is going to be a doctor and one of y&#39;all is going to be a lawyer my brother was older he went to law school so I felt like I had to become a doctor I was genetically Premed and so phase one of the quarter life crisis is called locked in and it&#39;s a sense of being trapped so early on in life you make decisions based on extrinsic motivation right you&#39;re told to study this people say oh this is going to be a good job you should do this thing you should do this should should should should should should should and you&#39;re like yes sir I will do it yes sir yes sir yes ma&#39;am yes ma&#39;am I will do do it I will do it I will do it you follow all of these external scripts and then you find yourself in a place that you don&#39;t like and you feel trapped so phase one is defined by a central commitment or set of commitments within a life structure that is no longer desired but which is not yet perceived as a realistic Target of change this leads to a a felt sense of powerlessness and being trapped so what ends up happening is we&#39;re following these extrinsic motivations and we find oursel we wake up one day in a life that we no longer like so there are many things that can trigger this feeling sometimes it&#39;s a relationship we started dating in high school and we&#39;ve been together for seven years but I don&#39;t know if I want to be with this person I&#39;m kind of operating based on momentum or inertia I&#39;m operating I&#39;m living my life based on autopilot or it&#39;s something like a career where like now I have this job I majored in this thing I studied this crap for 4 years I got this job now this is the only thing that I know how to do and I don&#39;t enjoy it anymore but it feels like it is impossible to realistically change so I see this a lot in residency so I work with medical residents these are people who are Premed in college so they spent four years planning to become a doctor then they do four years of medical school where you learn about being a doctor and then they&#39;re halfway through residency they&#39;re on year three of their surger Surgical residency now they devoted 11 years of their right life to this career path and they wake up one day and they realize I don&#39;t like being a doctor right so the first four years of Premed you&#39;re like studying literature and organic chemistry that&#39;s not being a doctor med school isn&#39;t really being a doctor it&#39;s learning about medicine then you start actually practicing medicine and then for the first year you&#39;re like oh my God it&#39;s so hard and I&#39;m so burnt out and it&#39;s so stressful it&#39;ll get better and the second year rolls around it&#39;ll get better I&#39;ll get used to it and people tell themselves these kinds of things and they wake up in year three 11 years of investment at this point and they&#39;re like I don&#39;t like this but it&#39;s too late I feel incredibly trapped this is what triggers the quarter life crisis and when this crisis gets triggered it also affects the way that we see ourselves so in terms of identity a person in Phase One experiences a sense of outward identity that has been formed to adapt to the role they are in which conceals a more authentic sense of self now this is no longer what I want but it is something that I have to do this is where the quarter life crisis begins so during this first phase of the quarter life crisis called locked in we see that it also affects someone&#39;s identity a person in Phase One experiences a sense of outward identity that has been formed to adapt to the roles there in which conceals a more authentic sense of self and this is why a quarter life crisis is so so important we view it as a problem but it is critical to our development because without this sensation we would stay trapped in that in our life if we actually look at the the research behind crisis what we find is that a crisis can help overcome the change inertia that has been found to characterize adult life structure so this kind of goes back to this uh you know this Kani of Crisis which is danger and opportunity without this internal sense of unhappiness we would be stuck in this life of autopilot and it is this sense of unhappiness which actually prompts us to change the challenge is that unless we know how to do it right we&#39;ll get stuck there&#39;s another feature of phase one which is really really interesting and may resonate with y&#39;all which is that phase one frequently involves compulsive activities such as drug or alcohol use particularly in males which may add to the sense of being out of control and so this paper was written in 2013 so back then social media technology video games weren&#39;t as prevalent as they are now but this is the other thing that happens in Phase 1 is that we feel internally trapped we don&#39;t enjoy our life so what do we do we go to these compulsive activities drugs alcohol video games pornography that help us cope with this life that is unfixable this is literally in the scientific research and then we move on to phase two which is separation so in Phase 2 we either physically or mentally check out of our situation so internally I don&#39;t want to do this anymore externally I&#39;m trapped in this life I can&#39;t change it right I can&#39;t really go back I&#39;ve wasted 11 years in this medical career I&#39;ve wasted seven years in this relationship I can&#39;t change it so what do we do we mentally or physically check out this is actually a developmental step now this is what&#39;s crazy so checking out is actually the process of the quarter life crisis it is something that is not a problem to be fixed it is a phase to be gone through the separation phase is the most affectively intensive period that means emotionally intensive period of a crisis emotions experience may include guilt sadness anxiety excitement relief and shame while self-evaluations May oscillate between upbeat self-confidence and self-disgust so I see this so much where everyone&#39;s like I&#39;m so checked out Al life I&#39;m so burnt out how do I find motivation how do I make this checked outness go away how do I find this intrinsic motivation which by the way a quar life crisis going through a quarter life crisis is literally how we move from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation and so what we are filled with is all all kinds of piles of emotions I&#39;m worried about my future but I feel guilty for like I don&#39;t like I&#39;m not putting forth the effort that I need to I feel ashamed of myself and y&#39;all may be confused by this oscillation between confidence and and shame or feeling upbeat and feeling depressed but this is something that I&#39;ve seen so much in my clinical practice right and I&#39;ll explain it to you all when you&#39;re in Phase 2 you&#39;re mentally checked out but you look back at your life and it seems good on paper right so you look at this and you&#39;re like oh I&#39;ve been in this relationship for 5 years like it&#39;s a good relationship for a lot of reasons my partner is not abusive but I don&#39;t enjoy it anymore so there are times where you can look back you&#39;re in your third year of residency and you&#39;ve accomplished so much you go to a place like Harvard Medical School and you have so much to be proud of sometimes in this separation phase we can look back and feel really good about some of the things that we did but something is missing and when that thing is missing we also beat ourselves up a lot because it&#39;s I worked really hard but I&#39;m unhappy I feel stuck so there this is the most as the paper points out affectively intense period of the quarter life crisis this is where a lot of people get stuck because there is a very specific way to navigate this which a lot of people don&#39;t really understand and they actually make a mistake so Phase 2 is when a lot of people end up getting stuck this is where they stall because they don&#39;t know how to move out of this phase they view this as a problem not part of the process this affects our sense of identity okay so having lost the identity that defined them during phase one right so you you grew up and you were like I&#39;m going to be this thing when I grow up you have this sense of identity you&#39;re going to be this person you fall in love with your high school sweetheart y&#39;all are going to grow up and get married and get a house and have kids and everything was planned out you constructed this false identity of yourself based on expectations of the external world but this is no longer working and so but not having yet gained a new identity to replace it right this is no longer who you are so this doesn&#39;t feel like you you have a temporary identity vacuum I&#39;ve invested all my life in this identity but I don&#39;t like that so then we&#39;re left with this identity vacuum Now we move on to phase 2B which is time out and this is a big mistake that a lot of people make is they think that once I separate right once I&#39;m mentally checked out this is a problem and I need to retreat back into life so here&#39;s life that I don&#39;t like this is the the external e extrinsically motivated life that I&#39;ve constructed I feel mentally checked out and so what everyone does is they try to move back into this life okay they go see a therapist they try to learn how to be accept and they try learn they learn how to do resignation and they go to therapy and they do this they try to make this old life work you go to couples counseling to try to make the relationship work even though it&#39;s dead on the inside and you don&#39;t want to do it but you try to make it work this is what&#39;s crazy this is a mistake don&#39;t move back towards your old life so phase 2B is something called timeout so after separation the best thing to do in a quarter life crisis is to intentionally move away from your old life separation is not something that you choose it&#39;s something that happens to you you mentally check out you kind of burn out timeout is when you say hey I&#39;m I&#39;m done with that I don&#39;t want to do that this is not working for me I need some kind of break you intentionally move away from your old life which is the exact opposite of what a lot of us feel like doing we feel like clinging to the old life which is a mistake so so during this phase a person intentionally takes time to reflect on their transitional situation to resolve painful emotions and develop a new foundation for their adult identity I think this is the biggest mistake that most people make during the timeout period a person often travels or moves to a different physical location in order to gain some distance and perspective on their troubles into a motivationally this period is described by avoidance the desire to not bind into new commitments or per pursue future aspirations so the first thing is like research in this study was examining themes from 50 people who went through a quarter life crisis and what this study basically found is once you feel mentally checked out you have to embrace that and people will literally gain physical distance hell I flew halfway across the world right to a different location that allowed me to take a step out of my life so what my life life used to be was grades grades grades got to get to medical school I&#39;m competing with all these preds these [ __ ] tryhards are like Gunners and they want to be the best they all want to go to Harvard I want to go to Harvard it&#39;s like oh like I want to be the best I want to be the best I was surrounded by this very incestuous culture and I literally went halfway across the world which is a theme that has been supported in research people will get physical distance they will move out they will take a break from their relationship and you have to embrace that now here&#39;s the another really interesting thing about phase 2B that a lot of people miss out on see when I&#39;m leaving my old life it&#39;s very anxiety provoking there&#39;s a lot of uncertainty and so what a lot of people want to do is they want to leave this old life but they want the security of a new life so I see this all the time on our subreddit people ask me questions how do I know if this is the right choice how do I know what should I study how do I know if I should break up with this person if I should stay with this person how do I know that going on this trip will how do I guarantee that I will find a new partner if I break up with this person how do I know that I&#39;ll be happy in this new career so people who successfully navigate phase 2B actually have avoidance of the future as well now this is something that we think is a problem right everyone thinks like okay now that I&#39;m abandoning this this old life I need to make sure that my new life is kind of set you know in order to find your way you have to leave home you don&#39;t know exactly where you&#39;re going to end up when you leave and it&#39;s that uncertainty that you have to be able to sit with instead what we find is that a lot of people are looking for a guaranteed future they&#39;re not willing to tolerate the uncertainty of I don&#39;t know what&#39;s going to happen everyone is looking for a Surefire thing which makes perfect sense right because you made this mistake the first time when I work with a resident who has invested 11 years in of their life into becoming a surgeon they are terrified of wasting more time I don&#39;t have the time to afford so I need to figure it all out before I get started this keeps them stuck in Phase 2 a phase 2B is characterized by a timeout and an intentional avoidance of the past and avoidance of the future you can&#39;t start planning yet this is a huge mistake that people make you&#39;re not ready to make a plan now let&#39;s talk about faith phase three okay so phase three is exploration so in this phase new commitments and goals are proactively tried out and explored but you can&#39;t do this until you decide that like okay it&#39;s not about finding your future if this makes sense it&#39;s about figuring things out right it&#39;s not about finding the right answer a purp a person now purposefully looks for ways of developing a life structure that is more aligned with their own values aspirations and inner identity more so than the pre crisis okay participants describe becoming increasingly comfortable with exploring their identity in an open-ended way allowing it to evolve and change rather than fix onto a particularly externally defined role the self becomes a question rather than an answer a process rather than a product so people will ask me Dr K how do I find myself how do I figure out what is right for me right so what they&#39;re always focused on is the find of yourself and this is the reframe that people who successfully navigate phase 3 do they reframe from finding themselves to exploring themselves they reframe from figuring out what is right for them or or discovering who they are into crafting who they are it is a process of discovery and reinvention not finding the right answers and if yall are members of this community and hopefully yall can like comment and stuff like that too if you know what I&#39;m talking about pay attention to people&#39;s language who are struggling because what everyone is looking for they assume that their the right answer is out there the perfect career exists for me I just need to find it and the problem is I don&#39;t have the time to experiment right so that&#39;s the that&#39;s what everyone assumes there&#39;s the right answer I just don&#39;t have the luxury to experiment that&#39;s not actually what goes on phase three in a quarter life crisis is not about finding what is right for you that is an old way of thinking right that&#39;s what people told you at the the beginning they told you this is the right career Alo you will be a very good doctor one day that is what you should do everyone told you there was a right answer there is no right answer the right answer has to be crafted you have to change you have to reinvent yourself and this is also where we get to putting yourself out there unless you have separated from your past life unless you have taken an intentional time out you said I&#39;m done with that then putting yourself out there doesn&#39;t do you any good this is what I see so much with my patients they&#39;re like okay people say I should date so I should just put myself out there but in their heart of hearts they&#39;re still attached to their ex they have so much emotional baggage we all know if you have emotional baggage screws your next relationship you can&#39;t really put yourself out there until you leave home and this is what happens with people is mentally they stay in their old life they stay attached to their old identity they stay hung up full of resentment or love for their ex and then when they put themselves out they&#39;re not cognitively in the right frame of mind so then people tell you oh yeah just put yourself out there it worked for me but that&#39;s because that person was ready for phase three which involves that intentional separation from your old life and then we move on to the last phase which is rebuilding so the rebuilding phase involves a renewed engagement with long-term commitments and clear plans motivationally this period is defined by a stronger sense of intrinsic motivation than pre-crisis work and life home life are described as more inherently satisfying and enjoyable okay work and home life are described as more inherently satisfying and enjoyable and more reflective of personal interests and passions compared with pre crisis identity in phase four when compared with pre-crisis descriptions is distinct by being more coherent inner values preferences feelings and goals are now expressed in outward Behavior leading to a stronger sense of authenticity what got us in this problem in the first place is that we crafted a life without understanding who we are without sort of Reinventing ourselves exploring ourselves so there is a fundamental mismatch between the life around you and who you are in order to get through the quarter life crisis you have to first of all recognize that this sucks for you secondly you mentally check out third you intentionally check out then you start exploring yourself it&#39;s not about finding the right answer it&#39;s about discovering who you are and unless you&#39;ve intentionally left your life which sometimes means going to a different physical location finding a different group of friends you can&#39;t do that exploration once you have that exploration done and not 100% done but then you have a sense of intrinsically who you are this is when we get to phase four so once you know who you are you start crafting your external life in alignment with who you are this is who you are this is who I discovered who I am and now I&#39;m crafting my external life to be aligned with who I am internally and this is the story of my life I went to I was failed out of school right had all these high expectations and literally like all this stuff about autonomy and stuff that&#39;s me textbook as well so my parents were very restrictive they were like strict Indian parents so when I went to college I was like I&#39;m a date girls I&#39;m going go on parties I&#39;m going join a fraternity I&#39;m going play video games all night I had so much freedom and then the world smacked me in the face and is like hey you can&#39;t be doing this otherwise we&#39;re going to kick you out of college and then I created and then I mentally checked out I was burnt out I had maladaptive coping behaviors like video games very common for men in phase one shocking I mentally checked out I gave up on life then there was physical separation I went to India then I started literally exploring who I am I discovered a technique for self- exploration I let go of all of my past answers I didn&#39;t care about the future I said [ __ ] the future I&#39;m going to be monk I&#39;m not going to have a job I&#39;m not going to get married I&#39;m not going to do anything sit on my ass and meditate this is textbook then I discovered who I am once I discovered who I am then I discovered I actually don&#39;t want to be a monk I&#39;m in love with this woman and that&#39;s how I feel this is not something to be conquered spiritually it is part of who I am so I went back I got married paradoxically went to med school but this time instead of trying to force myself to study I didn&#39;t even care about the grades like this is terrible I did not show up at my med school award ceremony where I got two Awards because I never looked at my grades I didn&#39;t I gave so little shits about the external world that I didn&#39;t even show up it&#39;s so embarrassing one of my professors was like I nominated you for an award where the [ __ ] were you and I was like my bad I&#39;m a degenerate gamer who doesn&#39;t show up and leave the house I finished med school and I was like I&#39;m going to play video games that&#39;s literally what I did and then I went to residency I decided I actually love Psychiatry I don&#39;t care that psychiatry aren&#39;t real doctors that&#39;s what my grandmother told me she&#39;s like don&#39;t do this it&#39;s not a real doctor and I was like no I&#39;m going to do this so I started crafting my life and then when I finished residency I had two amazing job offers from two amazing mentors and I turned them all down and started this I started crafting my external life to fit who I am on the inside this is the resolution of a quarter life Crisis crisis helps us overcome the change inertia that has been found to characterize adult life structure without this crisis you would never have the energy or momentum to leave the autopilot of your relatively comfortable but quite unsatisfying life and 75% of young people are going through this we&#39;ve accelerated this process it used to take human beings about 40 years to figure this out but the world is becoming increasingly difficult to live in people are becoming increasing L happy and it&#39;s happening earlier and as someone who has been through the end of this I love the fact that I had a quarter life crisis med school was incredibly easy for me everyone else was so caught up about failing and being at the top of that my class I had already failed I was like I know who I am at this point I&#39;m going to work really hard and whatever happens happens if I&#39;m at the top of my class great if I&#39;m at the bottom of my class also totally fine the only thing I care about is not failing out that internal sense of confidence that people sort of why do you watch why do people watch me right and and I kind of say I&#39;m not special and I still insist that I want y&#39;all to understand now more than ever that I am not superhuman the only difference between potentially me and you but even though I don&#39;t know that that there&#39;s a difference you&#39;re maybe a little bit younger than I am that&#39;s the biggest difference is I went through this process and it is absolutely a process it is not magic it is not Brilliance it is like literally a scientifically explored hypothesis that has been developed in 2013 and has been expanded on over the last decade and you can go through it too the quarter life crisis is your inner self telling you to wake the [ __ ] up and then you look around and you see your life and you&#39;re like I can&#39;t change this and then you mentally check out and you&#39;re like this is a problem I feel burnt out how do I re-engage in in life so I had a patient once who came in and he kept on having these relapses of depression and so three or four years into our treatment he was like you know like I need your help help again and I was like No And he was like surprised and he&#39;s like I&#39;m done doing this I&#39;m tired of patching you back up and sending you back into battle where you&#39;re just going to get eaten alive this is not working anymore something fundamental needs to change it&#39;s not about coping it&#39;s not about therapy it&#39;s not about adjusting it&#39;s not about accepting if your life is not what you want you need to change it that is what the quarter life crisis is all about the reason it&#39;s hard to change is because it&#39;s [ __ ] scary to abandon it you have to embrace uncertainty you have to jump off of the coast and start swimming into the ocean without seeing land on the other side don&#39;t do that practically that sounds hella dangerous and it&#39;s so hard because when you say enough with that life this voice inside you will panic and it&#39;ll say what if there&#39;s nothing on the other side damn right because your strength your resilience is born of making that jump and not knowing what&#39;s on the other side and then when you get to the other side nothing will be able to stop you the very thing that you are looking for is what is holding you back you want assurances that the other side is there and so you&#39;re waiting and waiting and looking and looking and looking and listening to podcast and watching videos and reading books and seeing therapists just so you&#39;re looking for a guarantee but as long as you&#39;re looking for a guarantee you will never believe in yourself the quarter life crisis is the problem of this generation their papers that talk about it in Indonesia papers that talk about it in the United States up to 75 people per of people are experiencing it we see it on the Internet is this what my life is I&#39;m so burnt out I&#39;m so checked out this sucks I don&#39;t know what to do dating is a mess I&#39;m alone I&#39;m on autopilot I&#39;m burnt out I want to stop I don&#39;t know how to continue I want to find myself I don&#39;t know what the right answer is how do I find the right answer this is the problem of Our Generation and it&#39;s not just about the abstract it&#39;s about you as an individual this is the problem of your life and I can tell you as someone who&#39;s jumped into the ocean and ended up on the other side holy [ __ ] it&#39;s amazing y&#39;all should come and join me so thank you for coming to my TED Talk and good luck and lastly we&#39;re here to help so if you need more from me you let me know let us know what&#39;s next what is the challenge that you face and we will build videos to help you that&#39;s all I have to say good luck B [Music]

Transcript for:Navigating the Quarter Life Crisis

Transcript for:
Navigating the Quarter Life Crisis