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

“You can keep learning to live with the fact that family will never envelop you. Maybe creating that for your own children will be enough. But it is hard work, spending a lifetime giving something you never get. When you partner with someone, you have a second chance at family.”

Twentysomethings who take the time to explore and also have the nerve to make commitments along the way construct stronger identities

Like the easiest way to explain black is to call it the opposite of white, often the first thing we know about ourselves is not what we are—it’s what we aren’t. We mark ourselves as not-this or not-that, the way Ian was quick to say he didn’t want to sit at the same desk all day. But self-definition cannot end there. An identity or a career cannot

Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids. Even if it’s a bit edgy, a bit out of your comfort zone, saying yes means you will do something new, meet someone new, and make a difference. —Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google

Identity capital is our collection of personal assets. It is the repertoire of individual resources that we assemble over time. These are the investments we make in ourselves, the things we do well enough, or long enough, that they become a part of who we are. Some identity capital goes on a résumé, such as degrees, jobs, test scores, and clubs. Ot

Carstensen used virtual reality to help twentysomethings imagine their future selves. In one condition of her experiment, twenty-five subjects entered an immersive virtual reality environment and, in a virtual mirror, they saw digital representations of their current selves. In the other condition, twenty-five different subjects entered the same vi

What no one tells twentysomethings like Emma is that finally, and suddenly, they can pick their own families—they can create their own families—and these are the families that life will be about. These are the families that will define the decades ahead.

Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best inte

something to remind them that life is going to continue on past their twenties, and that it might even be great.