Oh hey there Miss/Mr “I feel stuck and Lost”, welcome to the quarter-life crisis crew! All jokes aside, have you been feeling directionless and uncertain over what steps to take in life? Yeah, same it sucks. In this article, we’ll discuss what a quarter-life crisis is, why we experience it, the signs and symptoms, the stages of a quarter-life crisis and how to overcome it. And briefly, I will share how I got into a quarter-life crisis.
Disclosure:
I am not a professional in any way, nor is this advice. It’s just my research and study around a quarter-life crisis and how to overcome it. This post may contain affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through my links, I may receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you.
What Is A Quarter-Life Crisis?
“In popular psychology, a quarter-life crisis is a crisis involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one’s life” – Wikipedia
“A quarter-life crisis is a period of uncertainty, questioning, and intense soul searching during your mid-20s to early 30s. Often, people experience this uncertainty because they feel trapped, uninspired, and disillusioned.” – Zippia.com
Through my research, I have come to the conclusion that a quarter-life crisis is basically having anxiety over your life’s purpose or goals. It’s the time when you deeply wonder what to do with your life and how to get there.
If we don’t know what we want, we feel stuck and lost. Pressure from society makes us feel like we’re not doing enough. We see people on social media and friends graduating uni, getting their dream jobs, getting married and having kids, seeming to have it all figured out. And here we are, 20-something directionless, confused and lonely.
How I Got Into A Quarter Life Crisis
As I turned 19ish, I started observing people around me, everyone around me seemed to have everything figured out. People my age seemed to know what they wanted out of life, seemed confident in the directions they were taking and accomplished good things. Here I was confused, uncertain and searching for my “purpose”.
Having a strong will to keep up as well, I somehow stumbled over the self-help community. I started reading personal development books, listening to talks, incorporating many new habits and setting myself big challenging goals.
These self-help gurus preached the HUSSLE mantra. Get up at 5 am, meditate, exercise, journal, work hard, always be productive, start a business, invest and the list goes on. There’s nothing wrong with that right?
No, but I took it too far too quickly. I did all that at once. Pushed myself so hard that I became extremely overwhelmed, depressed and confused. I was disappointed in myself when I wasn’t keeping up enough and didn’t really know what I was trying to achieve.
and that my friends, is how I got into a quarter-life crisis.
At What Age Does A Quarter-Life Crisis Start
Usually, a quarter-life crisis occurs in our mid 20’s or early 30’s. However, if you mature early as I have, you can start experiencing a quarter-life crisis as early as 20.
It starts when you deeply question your life’s purpose or ideal future and get frustrated when you don’t have the answers. Or, when you start comparing your life to others and feel as if you’re not good enough.
Why Do You Experience A Quarter-Life Crisis
Research indicates that we usually experience a quarter-life crisis because we are frustrated for not having it all figured out in life. We don’t feel good enough or we feel as if we’re not doing enough.
We feel the pressure to have it all figured out and believe we should’ve achieved major goals such as buying a property, having a stable career or getting married at this stage of our life.
Quarter-Life Crisis Possible Causes:
- Struggling to find your “purpose In life”
- Excessive career planning or business exploration
- Trying to make long-term personal or professional decisions
- Fear of major life changes or the lack of them
- Believing you should’ve achieved major goals by now
- Struggling to figure out what’s missing
- Comparing your life to others
- Struggling with your new way of living
Why I Got Into A Quarter-Life Crisis
I believe that the excessive career planning, searching for my life’s purpose and feeling the need to have it all figured out has got me to experience a quarter-life crisis. Comparing my life to others didn’t help either.
I rushed things, I felt that I was behind and ‘supposed’ to be doing this and that already. It led me to confusion and frustration.
14 Signs and Symptoms of a Quarter Life Crisis
Here are the signs and symptoms research suggests link to a quarter-life crisis. And oh boy, they’re right. I’ve been experiencing almost all of these signs and symptoms.
- Questioning your life’s purpose
- Feeling trapped or lost
- Feeling aimless
- Feeling directionless
- Feeling unmotivated
- Feeling frustrated with yourself
- Feeling like you’re running out of time
- Feeling lonely
- Fluctuating relationships
- Impulsive behaviours
- Feeling a need for change
- Comparing your life to others
- Insecurity
- Depression and anxiety
If you’re experiencing some or nearly most of these signs, don’t worry, you’re definitely not alone. Our 20s are about figuring out who we are and what we want in life and while we’re in the search for it, we may experience some of these signs.
A quarter-life crisis is not all that bad, in fact, it pushes us to get to know ourselves, get better and achieve more in life. You don’t grow when you’re comfortable.
Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations
Zig Ziglar
The Stages Of A Quarter-Life Crisis
While researching the stages, I noticed that everyone named them differently. Everyone’s stages were a little different as well. So I wondered which one was accurate. I compared many and noticed that although they all were slightly different, they all generally said it goes somewhat like this:
- The Initial Realisation Of Feeling Trapped or Lost
In the first phase, you notice that you have been feeling lost and trapped. It’s when you realise you have no idea what your purpose in life is. You feel aimless and directionless and become frustrated for not knowing what you want and for not having it all together.
- Questioning Everything & Struggling
The second phase is when you start questioning your whole existence. You wonder if you chose the right career or job, question if you’re doing the right things and struggle to understand what’s going wrong.
This is the stage when you start to experience most of the signs and symptoms of a quarter-life crisis.
- Self-Reflection
At this stage, you realise that you need to start doing something about the way you feel, you try to understand what’s wrong, and why you have been feeling the way you have been feeling.
You start to reflect on your emotions and actions, taking the time to learn about yourself and what you really want in life. You may find out what went wrong and start to make changes.
- Acceptance and Coming Up With A Resolution
Finally, you ease the pressure of ‘having it all figured out’ by understanding that life isn’t a race and you’ll get there eventually.
You come to understand that your 20s are about figuring out who you are and learning about what you actually want. You come up with a resolution by making new goals and taking your time.
How To Overcome A Quarter-Life Crisis
1. Figuring out the root cause of your crisis
The first step ladies and gentlemen, is, figuring out the root cause of your crisis.
Like in medicine, without the diagnosis, the doctor won’t be able to identify the correct treatment. The same goes for overcoming any emotional struggles we’re going through.
It is, therefore, necessary for you to try and go back and identify why you have been going through a quarter-life crisis. What triggered it?
I know It can be hard to identify what exactly triggered your quarter-life crisis as it can begin gradually until you hit rock bottom and question how you managed to get to this level.
How?
Take and pen and paper and try to note down the first realisations of the bad vibes you have been experiencing and note down the times you hit rock bottom. What triggered it?
Is it when you realised you’re frustrated for not succeeding as you liked? Is it when you caught yourself comparing your life to others? Or when you had anxiety over making big decisions?
2. Take Time Out
Usually, during a quarter-life crisis, we pressure ourselves to keep up with the world, we feel the need to get our life together and chase these big goals of ours but that only drains us, we become overwhelmed and upset.
So, just relax, take your time. Take time out to reflect on your emotions and actions. Maybe you won’t be able to get time off from work but you can take a few hours in the evenings for yourself to just take your time, relax and reflect.
This is the best time to get a daily journal and record your day-to-day life to identify thoughts and patterns in behaviour. Audit your days and daily activities and notice patterns in your feelings.
Discover what genuinely makes you happy and unhappy. Learn how you react to certain situations, what motivates you and what drains your energy.
It is also the best time to temporarily delete Instagram. Take time off from social media. We all know social media can sometimes make us feel miserable when we compare our life to others, so do yourself a favour and really disconnect to finally connect with yourself.
3. Taking Off The Pressure Of Your/Social Expectations
“I should’ve passed my driving test by now, I should’ve started a business by now, I should’ve been married by now”. Who said so? Who really?
There’s no age limit to when you can accomplish those things. Life isn’t a race. Everyone is different and that’s what makes life interesting. Trust me, even if seems like others have it all together, they most probably don’t. So take the pressure of these expectations and just appreciate the journey of getting there.
4. Taking Care Of Your Mental Health
A quarter-life crisis can drain us mentally. So if you have been struggling with it, start taking care of your mental health.
There are so many ways you can do this.
Mindfulness, meditation, and positive affirmations to name a few. These activities have many benefits in getting your mind in the right place. I highly recommend the Calm app, it’ll be your best friend during these hard times.
5. Consider Professional Help
Considering getting professional help from a therapist wouldn’t hurt.
Especially if you don’t feel comfortable telling anyone from your personal life about the way you feel. We all know that telling someone about the things we’re going through takes off a heavy weight from our shoulders.
This is why therapy is an amazing place to tell someone who genuinely wants to listen and help. You can be sure that a good therapist wouldn’t judge, in fact, they would be able to help you deal with your quarter-life crisis.
Also, if you’d like to find your purpose and achieve your goals, considering hiring a life coach could be beneficial as well.
6. Pursue Your Interests & Passions
As mentioned above, our 20s are about discovering who we are and what we like. We usually get a quarter-life crisis because we don’t exactly know the answers to that.
So, isn’t it the best time to take the pressure off your shoulders and focus on learning more about yourself?
Pursue your interest and passions. Try new things, and see what you like and dislike. Discover what genuinely makes you happy.
The more you’ll discover what you like the more able you’ll be to plan your life directions. You may also find your purpose in life.
7. Visualise Your Future Life
Now, this step will drastically help you with the following step so bare with me here.
Once, you have pursued your interest and passions, you’ll be more able to imagine what sort of life you’d like to have in the future.
If one of your interests is drawing for instance, then perhaps your ideal future self would be happy to live in a house that would involve a huge art room, surrounded by huge portraits and art equipment.
How?
If money wasn’t a problem, what would your future self do? What sort of activities would you enjoy? Where would you live? Who would you spend time with? Close your eyes and imagine this picture. In fact, take out a journal and write it all down! Yes, describe your ideal future self and life. Make sure to include values and personality. Self-confident? Good self-esteem? Self-disciplined?
Try to visualise this daily, to rewire your brain to believe it is possible. When the mind believes, nothing stops it from achieving!
You know what, why don’t you create a mood board, and make it easy for yourself? Have these images always in sight.
8. Setting Life Goals
To overcome your quarter-life crisis it is important that you set yourself reasonable goals. Goals that truly matter to you. Set yourself a time limit but take your time! Focus on your system of how you’ll achieve them instead of on the end result.
You have already imagined your ideal future self and life. So, what are you waiting for? Use that image to set for yourself goals!
9. Putting Goals Into Action
Now that you have a nice list of your goals, start planning! Yes, planning.
Plan how you’ll achieve those goals. What sort of things do you have to do in order for you to make it happen? What sort of resources would help you get closer to that goal? Who could assist you?
Write it down. Entitle them ‘Action Steps’. Keep this plan saved. Go back to it as often as you need to. Actually, use this plan to write your daily To-Do lists.
10. Choose Your Life’s Purpose
As we already know, we usually have a quarter-life crisis because we don’t know what we are meant to do. So yes, you read that right. Choose your life’s purpose. Click here to learn how.
You won’t find it. You choose it. Wanna impact the world by helping people with their mental health? Choose that! Whatever you want. Whatever makes you happy. Also, you can always change your life’s purpose.
But, if you’re like me and can’t choose yet, don’t worry! That just means you don’t know much about yourself yet and that’s okay.
This is why you should take this quarter-like crisis and switch it into something positive, use it to learn about yourself so that one day, once you discover what genuinely makes you happy, you’ll be able to choose your life’s purpose.
Conclusion
A quarter-life crisis is having anxiety over your life’s direction and it usually occurs in our mid-20s or early-30s. It usually starts when you deeply wonder what to do with your life and how to get there. You feel as if you’re not doing enough. During a quarter-life crisis, we feel directionless and uncertain. You may also experience depression and anxiety while going through a quarter-life crisis. A quarter-life crisis is not all that bad, in fact, it pushes us to get to know ourselves and find out what we actually want to do with our life. To overcome A Quarter-life crisis, you must take the time to slow down, take the pressure off and get to know what you truly want in life.
I wish you all the best, hopefully, you got something out of this article and maybe you feel less alone in this! Thanks for reading.
With love,
Nikol x
