Don’t Overlook Your 20’s

Ted Talks is devoted to ideas worth spreading. My favorite Ted Talk is one that is geared towards people in their 20’s. Being 24, I am starting to develop a sense of who I am, where I want to go, and where I want to be. Meg Jay spoke about how the 20’s are often looked at as a stepping stone to your 30’s.. however you will see how this is incredibly wrong and can hurt your future goals. It’s similar to the game of life where what you choose at the beginning affects you in the end.

Meg Jay when she was in her 20’s saw her first psychotherapy client Alex and heard all about her guy problems. Jay wasn’t taking these sessions seriously until she was given a wakeup call by her supervisor when she told her that her client was dating down and was being stupid but she wasn’t going to marry the guy. Her supervisor responded by saying “Well not yet. But she might marry the next one. The best time to work on Alex’s marriage is before she has one.”

This is when Jay made the epiphany that 30 is not the new 20. The 20s are not a passing phase—it’s the developmental sweet spot as it is when a person starts to plant seeds of marriage, family and career are planted. Half of Americans are with their future partner by the age of 30. Also, the first 10 years of a career have an exponential impact on how much money a person is going to earn. She wants 20-somethings to be as intentional with love as they are with work.

There are 50 million 20-somethings in the US — that’s 15% of population. And Jay wants them to consider themselves adults, and know that this period is as important for their development as the first five years of life. “Claiming your 20s is one of simplest things you can do for work, happiness, love, maybe even for the world,” says Jay. “We know your brain caps off its second and last growth spurt in your 20s as it rewires itself for adulthood. Which means whatever you want to change, now is the time to change it.”

“Too many 30-somethings and 40-somethings look at themselves and say about their 20s, ‘What was I doing? What was I thinking?’” says Jay. “When a lot has been pushed to your 30s, there is enormous 30-something pressure to start a family, have your career, pick a city. Many of these things are incompatible to do all at once.”

So what can 20-somethings do? They can own their adulthood. They can invest in identity capital—courses, skills, friends—that add value toward who they might want to be. They can work on building a wide social network, instead of a tightknit one that doesn’t allow for outside opportunities.

Jay explains, “Twenty-somethings are like airplanes, just taking off from LAX heading for somewhere west. A slight change in course on takeoff is the difference between landing in Alaska or Fiji.”

And where will I end up? Well I guess I will see when I land.. Live your 20’s before they slip away!