Book Review: The Defining Decade
I'm starting this series because I would love to share books that have inspired me, challenged my thinking and that have created a lasting impression.
I got this book just after I turned 20, I gave it a read-through and took the most important message home, your 20s are there for you to have fun but don't let them be wasted use this opportunity to set up your life. Then I continued my day-to-day and did my best to live according to this lesson. Using it as a reminder once in a while.
Post-graduation and into this strange phase of "what now" I saw the book on my bookshelf and felt compelled to read it again. To really digest what it says. So that is exactly what I did, I picked it up and with a bit more personal experience of my own twenties now that I am 22 I read it again.
The difference was astounding, the impact this book has left on me now is a lot more relatable and applicable than when I had just turned 20.
The Defining Decade.
Why your twenties matter and how to make the most of them now.
Meg Jay
Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist who focuses on adult development and specifically in our 20s. The book is inspired by her private practice in the USA. Through her research and teachings at the University of Virginia, and through her doctorate in clinical psychology and gender studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
The book combines her insights with current research on these crucial years and is divided into three sections: Work, Love and The Brain and The Body.
Although I recommend you read the book yourself to truly understand the message Meg is portraying. These are some of the most memorable lessons I take from each section:
Weak Ties
Being in like
Getting along and getting ahead
Weak Ties
The power of weak ties. Meg mentions that in our 20s there is often a real risk of limiting ourselves to huddling together with like-minded people. While this "urban tribe" helps you survive and is there as crucial support it often does not help one thrive.
Essentially expressing the unique value of people that we do not know well. "Weak ties" give you access to something fresh.
Opportunity and information spread faster and further through those we do not know. They have fewer overlapping contacts so they act as a connection between you and a whole new perspective or opportunity.
Because we are not the same and often think, act and talk differently to our weak ties. They, force us to communicate from a place of difference to be more clear in our communication.
Essentially Meg talks about the power of your greater network and how they can impact your life in transformative ways.
Being in like
"What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility"- Leo Tolstoy, writer
In this chapter, Meg showcases that compatibility is not always a negative and that by being "in like" one is alike to someone else in ways that matter and genuinely liking who the other person is.
She talks about the importance of personality and how our personalities are the parts of ourselves that we take with us everywhere we go. When in long-term relationships, personality tells you a lot about how you and your partner will deal with the good and the bad together. These relationships are often the gateway to hard work.
So the author challenges the reader to be picky, about things that matter, later on, the extreme differences in values, goals or personality. But not to fuss about the smaller everyday discrepancies that will benefit a relationship as well.
Getting along and getting ahead
This chapter ponders the question of whether people change in their 30s. One thing that researchers have agreed on is that our personalities change more during our 20s than any other time before or after that.
It is a time when we are given the best chance for change. Where people and personalities are perfectly positioned for change.
In our 20s life starts to feel better, we become more emotionally stable, less tossed about by the ups and downs of life, and more conscientious and responsible.
These changes don't just come about they happen by "getting along and getting ahead"
These positive changes come from investing in one's adulthood and from making adult commitments in life. These commitments change how we are in the world and who we are. Something as simple as having goals has proven to make us happier and more confident. As Meg says goals are how we declare who we are and who we want to be.
The investments we make into ourselves, into work, our health and love trigger personality maturation.
So look at the life you want to build for yourself and who you are now who you want to become and as Meg Jay puts it get along and get ahead, especially when you're primed for change.
The book goes into much more detail than these summaries. Providing information on the studies and research that has been done on these topics. These three lessons have stood out to me, from each section in the book and I hope will allow me to recall this book in the years to come to find some solace that you don't need to have everything figured out, change is possible during my 20s, and who you surround yourself with impacts your life tremendously.