Everything is fine

When you’re 25 and your life is at a crossroad by Felicia Vigliotti

Feeling lost and accepting it. A circumstance that many young people in the world face and that can even help them find themselves.

Since I was born in the early nineties, I do belong to the category “Millennials”. Millennials should be the productive generation, the one who grows, travels and has fun. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Indeed, many of my peers and I might experience anxiety about failure, disappointment about unfinished work and a sense of emptiness that was never known before. The period between the ages of 25 and 35 is the hardest for many people, as they are feeling what has been defined as the quarter-life crisis. That is the time when you feel lonely, lost and quite often unmotivated. This happens because rather than finding your place in the world, you are trapped in that phase of transition between being autonomous and being family dependent.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

What is the crisis? No more finding yourself when you look in the mirror and having no prospects. It frequently manifests itself when you are looking for your first job, when you move out or when you end a relationship. It is something much more natural than we might have thought. The depressive state that comes with change. And it probably sounds bizarre, but this state of total abandonment is required - as it represents the first stage of the crisis - to be able to get back into the game again.

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

— Steve Jobs

— Marie Curie

The biggest problem for young people is that they do not understand what exactly they are going through. They should take a deep breath and move on. Give up the haze for excellence and success, whether professional or personal, in order to live the life that they want. It is necessary to understand what they need, setting priorities, building a future without the need to succeed in everything. Well, there is a need to reconcile with failure, give it a space and take care of it.

Finding out what you want can be painful. The process of self-discovery, indeed, may require an extraordinary effort and even more time than one would have expected. Feeling lost and accepting it. A circumstance that many young people in the world face and that can even help them find themselves. Indeed, the second phase of the crisis reflects the awareness of what we are going through and the will to begin the change. In other words, the intention to give a form to negative thoughts and to be able to turn them into something positive.

Quarter Life Crisis

Source: Pinterest

The third and fourth phases of the quarter-life crisis are about building the new and its implementation. But how could this be done? By stopping to please others and - on the contrary - firmly asserting their positions. Follow your ideas, support them, give them a voice. Discover yourself and do it accurately, finding the hidden talents and the most intimate desires. If being Millennials has one advantage, it’s that you still have time to risk everything and challenge yourself. They often say, “Don’t worry, everything’s fine.” And it’s true, everything is fine. There is no shame in losing the compass for a while and then finding it again later pointing in a different direction. Human nature is built to be tested and to be able to win its struggles. Going through a personal crisis, one in which everything is questioned, can only lead to a better, brighter and probably unexpected result. That is why the quarter-life crisis is nothing more than a result of life’s natural path. Having anxiety, worries and moments of discomfort make you understand what is important and what you want. A rediscovery of creativity and cleverness, exploring new tools and new possibilities. You should not be frightened, everything is fine.