Understanding What Quarter-Life Crisis Really is, tackling it

Are you in the age of between 18 to 30 and every day when you wake up. You are feeling like not going to do anything in life, feeling unmotivated, and don’t know what you are going to do with your life. You feeling really confused and lost. The every-single day you wake up, you feel like dread about the day coming ahead. If you feeling like this every day then you might be going through a Quarter-life crisis.

People don’t aware or familiar with this term but it is a serious issue in today’s millennial generation. According to The Guardian, the quarter-life crisis affects 86% of millennials, who report being bogged down by insecurities, disappointments, loneliness, and depression.

What Is a Quarter-life crisis?

We can define the Quarter-life crisis as A crisis “Involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one’s life.”

Or

“A period of insecurity, doubt, and disappointment surrounding your career, relationships, and financial situation.”

• So what it means

If you look at the time perspective of your life on a timeline. You’ll find out ” You have regret, guilt, shame over the past. Because of that in the present, you don’t know. Who you are? You don’t know. What do you want in life?

Presently speaking you don’t know what your identity is and for that reason, you are worried about the future goals. You see too many options and you don’t know which one to choose.

Basically quarter-life crisis is a crisis of transition. it’s a moment of transition. The transition is that you are going from being a child/teenager to being a young adult.

If you don’t know who you are? and don’t know what you want? then you are not an adult. You are a child, doesn’t matter if you are 30 years old or 40 years old.

There are 3 main reasons for a quarter-life crisis

• Career

Fear that you choose the wrong career, fear that you study the wrong thing and now you stuck doing that thing for your entire life and because of that, you became anxious for your future. You see insecurity for your future and this insecurity leads you to the quarter-life crisis. This is very common in college students.

• Relationships

There are different types of relationships. So There are many different ways a quarter-life crisis comes into your life.

Maybe you are spending so much time in school or university hanging out with a bunch of people because you wanted to be popular or trying to make many friends as you could but in reality, you don’t know who’s best friends are.

You are hanging out with many people but when you are feeling low then you don’t know who to call? This is very common. If you ask 1 out of 3 from all of us. We don’t have close friends. You could be popular. You could have a lot of acquaintances but when you’re in pain and no one to call then these perpetual feelings of loneliness cause the quarter-life crisis.

Sometimes Parents also become the reason for the quarter-life crisis. Maybe you are in school or college and wanted to move on to the thing that you loved to do. maybe your parent supports you or not. But most of the cases, Parents have an idea that who you should be? Most of the cases parent project their ideas onto their child. But the child has a different idea for himself/herself.

If that’s the case in your life then both of you can’t get around the same page because they are different ideas that what’s best for you? It creates sort of this dissonance. Where you can’t get to a consensus. So what happens your relationship breaks or get rocky or you don’t know that you should stay with your parent or not.

It creates a conflict between you and your parent’s relationship and you don’t know how to solve that and became anxious.
Now you are afraid of the future direction of your life. you don’t know where are you going? because you don’t know your parent still support you or not?

• Financial Situation

In this situation maybe you are comparing yourself with a lot of others. You look at social media, where you see people have a lot of money. Maybe your friends, you were friends with now they have a career in their dream domain and you are the envy of them cause they’re making a lot of money.

You are playing this comparison game which is making you miserable inside. You are imagining your future in which you are miserable and couldn’t get success in life. Maybe You’ve completed your graduation and can’t get a job. Because of this, you can’t see the clear path to financial success.

Maybe you’ve made a fantasy of reality in your mind and then reality comes in, When they both clash with each other then your whole life became upside down. Then you tell yourself “life isn’t fair, this is not for me.” You look back to your entire life and feeling regret and become anxious and insecure about your future. This led to your quarter-life crisis.

• There are different ways that a quarter-life crisis can manifest and also there’re different layers of complexity of it.

The quarter-life crisis could be mixed with an existential crisis that is more dangers and there’s no timeline for it. It’s not like a transition thing. In an existential crisis, you are feeling like life is meaningless and there’s no purpose in life.

It’s like this. When you are going through the transition phase. You realize your Job has no value. You don’t like your friends and you don’t like your family and realize life is meaningless. Basically You just jumped from your quarter-life crisis to existential crisis.

It can also be mixed with an identity crisis.

What is an Identity crisis?

“a state in which a person experiences uncertainty about who they really are and their proper role in life”

So basically Identity crisis is like, you don’t know who you are and don’t know what you want. It’s like, you are in limbo mode. You thought that you were that cool guy but it turns out you are not. It’s more like you are shy and introverted dude. when you realize that you became confused and lost your identity.

What Is Limiting you Into Quarter-life Crisis

• Your limiting beliefs

Your mind is the first thing that is blocking you. All your past beliefs about yourself, what family told you about yourself? what society tell you about yourself? all this thing creates limitations in your mind.

Maybe you’ve heard this kind of thing, someone, from in your childhood that you can’t do this because you are poor or your family tells you that we are the Hindu or Muslim. we can’t do this or that… etc etc
Now you may think what is wrong with this. Well, this kind of thought makes an imaginary boundary in your mind and you can’t think outside of that boundary. As you grow up the imaginary boundary became a thick wall and you can’t look outside of that wall.

Sometimes little things of childhood cause a large impact in your adult life and that is how your limiting beliefs about yourself created.

• Your story about yourself

Sometimes you are stuck in a quarter-life crisis cause you made a story about yourself and always tell yourself things like, “Oh I grew up this way, I raised in that country, I lived in a slum. I can’t do this cause I’m not raised in a high standard family. My ancestor never did so I can’t do this either.”

This kind of silly thoughts come in your mind. These thoughts create a perfect environment to make you anxious, Insecure, and doubt yourself. This silly kind of thought is the reason you can’t get out of a quarter-life crisis.

• Comparison To Others

If you are millennial and you are 18 to 30 years old. Then surely I can say, you spend so much time on social media. You are seeing people and their high standard lifestyle then you are comparing yourself with them. That comparison makes you feel low. That’s why the comparison is very dangerous because It made you always unhappiness and make you feel like your life is shit and this is really stupid.

If you are always comparing yourself to others you will never get out of the quarter-life crisis. That’s the reason, why you stuck in a quarter-life crisis.

Thanks for reading Understanding What Quarter-Life Crisis Really is, tackling it. Also, read How to manage Anger, hints to control your temper. Also, check our Instagram.