Of course it is normal to be afraid of normalcy! (Wait a minute. See, everyone wants to be at least a little bit normal....) So, the next time you think about avoiding life’s responsibilities or another life lesson to be learned, instead take the time to make it a habit. Some of the best areas you can start doing that with are the ones Meg covers, but also your finances, your health, your faith/spirituality, and your personal development. Never building up this capital and never getting good jobs leads to depression, sitting around at home, drinking, the opiod epidemic…

It was as if I had my own personal psychotherapist in the comforts of my own room, spoon-feeding me the ugly truth and guiding me towards my desired pathway of success and happiness....minus the outrageous charges. It’s been a mere 10 years since this book was published and yet, I found it so outdated that I’m not sure what benefit there actually is to reading it nowadays. Jay is a therapist who seeks to write a guidebook for people in their twenties based on her experience but that experience feels far from reality nowadays. Improving your relationships as a 20-something is a great way to start setting up the right habits for the rest of your life. The Defining Decade has changed the way millions of twentysomethings think about their twenties—and themselves. Revised and reissued for a new generation, let it change how you think about you and yours.I feel so conflicted about this book. I really, really wanted to like this a lot more than I actually did. My first issue with this book is that Jay is convinced that life ends at 30. She makes some arguments for this- if you don't plan out your twenties, you won't be able to achieve certain goals later in life. This is particularly true for pregnancy. That said, this isn't what twenty year olds necessarily should be told. I firmly want to believe that 47 year olds can also change the direction of their lives, even if it's harder. Our options end once we believe they're gone. The pressure this mindset places on twenty year olds is so unfair. Imagine being a functional adult, like pfft, I just filled up an obscene amount of paperwork and hopefully didn't sign away my entire life There are fifty million twenty-somethings in the United States, most of whom are living with a staggering, unprecedented amount of uncertainty. Many have no idea what they will be doing, where they will be living, or who they will be within two or even ten years. They don’t know when they will be happy or when they will be able to pay their bills. They wonder if they should be photographers or lawyers or designers or bankers. They don’t know whether they are a few dates or many years from a meaningful relationship. They worry about whether they will have families and their marriages will last. Most simply, they don’t know if their lives will work out and they don’t know what to do.” Last but not least, facing up to your finances is empowering. Don't let money feel like a monster under your bed you are scared to peek at.

And, whatever you build for yourself should please you, not your parents. What makes parents happy is seeing their children happy. There are problems with the book. Mainly the genre. Didn't feel like a real psychology book, probably because its also in that kind of self help genre which inevitably seems seems trite and preachy after a while. The romance chapter was true, but less intuitively obvious so that was a plus. However, I do think she overstates the importance of marrying early. The main reason she cites for this is so that you have a better chance of having a baby. But having a baby which is biologically related to me seems of very little importance to my overall happiness in life, and is certainly not worth sacrificing money, career advancement, or leisure time to achieve.A job, even as simple as a customer service representative, often requires a college degree and pays higher than a high-school job like a cashier or barista. So don’t just settle because you are unsure.

I don’t believe we should put so much pressure on one decade of our life. Sure building a strong foundation in life is important, but focusing too much on your 20’s could cause you to feel stressed out most of the time because you’re not making this the best decade of your life. Also who knows what life will bring and what moments will be the most defining?After graduating and being fixed on the college process, many students feel they’re “failing” in their 20s because they don’t know how to get an A anymore. They’re used to having a formula for success, and now that it’s gone, they feel lost. I appreciate Dr. Jay's credentials as a clinical psychologist, but this book doesn't quite speak to twentysomethings who, for whatever reason, have not gone through higher education. It also fails to consider the macro level issues (i.e. the recession) twentysomethings face. I know from experience that it is seriously hard to find employment for post graduates. So instead we find ourselves unemployed or underemployed because we have to survive. An additional issue was that Jay buys into the assumption that everyone seeks to reach the same specific goals: a successful career, a happy family, etc. However, for many, adulthood is also the time to break free from these expectations. I’ve been inspired by 40 year olds I know who are living an unconventional life. Digital nomads, gatherers of MA degrees, eternal volunteers, career shapeshifters and more. They exist and well, why can't we be like them? Sooo….never read one of these before, and I always assumed that the audience of self-help books was composed largely of people who don't actually have what I think of as "problems." And by that I mean self-help books are for people dealing with something that can be dealt with, as opposed to something that can't. The difference between 'I need to learn to be more assertive' and 'my retina tore in half and it's inoperable' (true story). Because my assumption has always been that dealing with things that can be dealt with is a skill that results from all the shit you learn from the things that can't be dealt with. After I graduated from college, I faced so much anxiety. I was so unsure of what to do with the rest of my life. I didn’t know what job to take, how to feel fulfilled in my career, and how to even find what I was most passionate about.