Navigating the Quarter-Life Crisis: Stages and Insights

The quarter-life crisis is a vital developmental phase that prompts individuals to explore their true selves and craft a fulfilling life.

### Navigating the Quarter-Life Crisis: Understanding, Embracing, and Overcoming
* 🌀 The quarter-life crisis is a common developmental phase where individuals may feel **mentally or physically checked out** of their lives, marking a significant emotional journey filled with **guilt, anxiety, and self-doubt**.
* 🔍 This process is not a problem to be fixed, but rather a necessary phase that many people experience, with studies indicating that **up to 75% of young adults in the U.S.** go through it.
* 💔 The separation phase is particularly intense, as individuals oscillate between feelings of **self-confidence and self-disgust** while grappling with their **identity and future aspirations**.
* 🌊 Many find themselves trapped in a life constructed from **external expectations**, leading to **burnout and a yearning for intrinsic motivation**, which can only be discovered through **self-exploration**.
* 🚀 The journey involves several stages: from feeling **"locked in"** to intentionally **checking out**, exploring one's identity, and ultimately **rebuilding a life that aligns with personal values and goals**.
* 🧗 It’s essential to **embrace the uncertainty of this journey**, as true growth often requires **stepping away from the familiar** and allowing oneself the **freedom to reinvent**.
* ✨ Successfully navigating this crisis can lead to a **stronger sense of self** and a **more fulfilling life**, as individuals learn to **craft their identities** rather than merely find them.
* 💡 Ultimately, the quarter-life crisis serves as a **powerful opportunity for personal development**, pushing individuals toward a **more authentic existence** when approached correctly.

Is this what my life is? Do I wake up every day, commute an hour to work, work 9 to 5, 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. And 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 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 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 watching 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 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 y'all a little bit about my life, and as we go through the stages, if y'all 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 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 to 5, come commute 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 is restricted by the world around us.

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, oftentimes, 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 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 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 felt sense of powerlessness and being trapped. So, what ends up happening is we're following these extrinsic motivations, and we find ourselves, 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 surgical residency. Now they devoted 11 years of their 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 they're 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 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, 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 experienced 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 of 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 quarter-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 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; 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 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 external, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 discovering who they are into crafting who they are. It is a process of discovery and reinvention, not finding the right answers. And if y'all are members of this community, and hopefully y'all 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 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, it screws your next relationship. You can't really put yourself out there until you leave home. And this is what happens with people: 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 is 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, it 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 to go on parties. I'm going to join a fraternity. I'm going to play video games all night. I had so much freedom, and then the world smacked me in the face and was 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 a 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, I 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 psychiatrists 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 increasingly unhappy, 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 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 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 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 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 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 podcasts 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. There are papers that talk about it in Indonesia, papers that talk

about it in the United States. Up to 75% 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]

Why You Feel Lost in Your 20s

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The speaker reflects on their own quarter-life crisis, feeling stuck in a monotonous routine and disillusioned by societal expectations.

They emphasize the importance of aligning internal values with external life structures to create meaningful change.

The speaker shares their journey of self-discovery and offers a guide to mental health, encouraging others to take control of their lives and navigate the challenges of this transformative period.

Many young people in their mid-20s experience a quarter-life crisis, feeling lost and unsure of their identity and life choices.

This crisis is now a common experience, with 75% of people reportedly going through it.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of intentionally moving away from one's old life and identity to facilitate personal growth and rebuilding a fulfilling life.

The quarter-life crisis is triggered by the feeling of being trapped in a chosen path, leading to a struggle with identity and a sense of burnout.

Successful navigation of this phase involves reframing the search for identity from "finding" to "exploring" and "crafting" oneself.

Many people make the mistake of seeking a guaranteed future, rather than embracing the uncertainty that comes with change and reinvention.

The quarter-life crisis involves a struggle with emotions, oscillating between confidence and shame, and feeling mentally checked out despite past achievements.

Phase 2B is characterized by intentional avoidance of the past and future, making it difficult to plan for change.

Phase Three brings exploration and the proactive trial of new commitments and goals, ultimately leading to a life structure that aligns with one's true self.

The quarter-life crisis often involves a person reflecting on their transitional situation, leading to avoidance of new commitments and a desire for physical distance.

Many individuals experience anxiety and uncertainty during this phase, seeking security in a new life while feeling internally trapped.

Compulsive activities, such as drug use and video games, are common coping mechanisms during this period of feeling out of control and unfulfilled.

The quarter-life crisis is a common struggle, characterized by a sense of being trapped and uncertainty about one's identity and future.

Contrary to the belief that there is a "right" career path, the crisis is an opportunity for self-exploration and reinvention.

Embracing uncertainty and taking risks are essential for personal growth, and the journey of self-discovery can lead to unexpected and fulfilling life choices.

Navigating the Quarter-Life Crisis: A Personal Journey

The speaker's indifference towards grades in medical school led to missed awards and a focus on gaming.

They found their passion in Psychiatry despite external doubts and started crafting a life aligned with their values.

The quarter-life crisis is described as a process of self-discovery and intentional exploration, with the speaker emphasizing that it's not about finding the right answer, but understanding oneself.

The quarter-life crisis is a common developmental phase, characterized by emotional turmoil and a struggle between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

experience this crisis, leading to feelings of burnout, confusion, and a desire for change.

The process involves four to five stages, and while the advice for navigating it may vary in effectiveness, successful navigation can lead to personal growth and fulfillment.