“I’m having a quarter life crisis, mom,” my daughter, a Junior in college, said to me.  “A what?” I replied. “A quarter life-crisis,” she affirmed. “I looked it up. It’s a thing.”  Sure enough, according to Wkipedia’s definition, a quarter-life crisis is a “crisis involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one’s life” which can happen as early as age 18 and last into the 20’s.  John Mayer even had a song about it, concerned the choices he was making weren’t leading to the fulfillment he expected.

It might be a quarter life crisis/ Or just the stirring in my soul/
Either way I wonder sometimes/ About the outcome/Of a still verdictless life/
Am I living it right?/Am I living it right?/Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia, why?
John Mayer, Georgia

As I talked to her about it and considered how to respond, comparing the idea of a quarter-life crisis to a mid-life crisis, and the idea of any type of life crisis at all, it occurred to me that perhaps having this type of crisis at a young age may be a good thing.  When we have a life crisis, commonly around a big birthday or life event, it gets us to question our values and our choices. Wondering if how you are living is truly in line with the values you have is a great thing. The problem, however, with any life crisis is when we focus too heavily on expectations and not values.  When a crisis leads to despair, it’s often because we’re evaluating life not from our own values, but from societal expectations. Feeling like you haven’t achieved enough, made enough money, had enough success as defined by others is the root of a lot of unnecessary pain and an empty search for happiness.

In general, having a plan and meaningful expectations is a good thing.  It gives us direction and purpose. However, in looking back on my life and in hearing the stories of so many people I work with, often the very best things that happen in life were not planned and we could never have predicted.  If you had asked me at age 21 where my life would be now, I would never have predicted I would be living where I am, doing what I am doing, married to the man I am married to – and these are the very things that make me happy now.

A friend of mine shared a quote with me that feels so appropriate for this blog post: Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” ~ Paulo Coelho

Thinking about this quote helps me respond to my beloved daughter around her anxiety that she “isn’t where she thought she would be at this point” in her life.  Maybe this crisis is a wonderful opportunity to learn early on that life will most often not go as you plan or expect. But along the way, she’ll find many more wonderful things she never could have even imagined!  If we are too busy looking straight ahead down the road, we’ll miss the side roads that lead to beautiful places. Taking the time, whether you are at quarter-life, mid-life or later-life, to “un-become,” shedding expectations, leaves us living within our own unique values and appreciating what we have right in front or even to the side of us.  Not that this shedding doesn’t come with pain, and often disappointment and anxiety, when things don’t work out as we had hoped at the time. But what leads to authentic happiness is having the resilience in staying the course of what matters most and being open to the unchartered course that may lead to an even better destination.

The more we can unbecome, the more likely it’ll be that over the long term we’ll be living life in line with our values, inoculating us from the kind of regrets that cause life despair.  We won’t end up at the “wrong” place if we are taking the right journey all along the way.

I attended a training on coaching people for change (thank you my Health Education Department at Kaiser) and I learned a relatively quick and easy tool for making changes.  I have tested it out a few times and found it to be helpful, especially with people who feel stuck with something they have intended to do, but haven’t quite put into action.  So if you have any New Year’s Resolutions that have already fallen by the wayside, perhaps you might like to give this technique of Focus Mapping a try.

Focus Mapping was developed by Stanford researcher BJ Fogg, who describes himself as an expert at “behavior design and persuasive technology.”  Very Silicon Valley, don’t you think? Despite its branding, this particular tool only requires a white board and some post it notes, or you can simply do it on a piece of paper.  

The first step is to think about the change you want to make.  Let’s say for example, just a random idea out of thin air, you sit a lot at work and are kind of lazy when you finish your day at a Health Center.  You’ve been intending to get more exercise, as there are days your activity tracker wonders if you’re still alive, but you haven’t been successful.  So you take your white board (or paper) and write “Most Effective” at the top and “Least Effective” at the bottom.  Then you mark “Less Likely” on the left hand side and “Most Likely” on the right side.  Now is where the exciting part comes in.  Begin to brainstorm ideas that might help you reach your goal.  Don’t judge or evaluate them, just try to come up with some creative ideas that would be steps that would help you move toward your goal.  Write each idea on one post-it note. For example, one post-it might say “pack your bag with sneakers and work out clothes the night before”.  Another might say “park your car in the far parking lot.” Try to come up with as many ideas as you can.

Once you have a pile of post-it notes, evaluate each idea on the axis of your whiteboard and stick it on.  So if the idea is “run in the morning before work,” you would ask yourself how effective this would be. Highly effective, you think.  Then ask how likely is this? Now the hard part is to be as honest with yourself as possible. While the idea sounds great, and you would love to be the kind of person with that motivation and drive, the truth is, it is not an idea that is likely to happen.  So place the post-it in the top left corner of the whiteboard, in the highly effective, but not likely category. Now go through each of your ideas and place it on the board. Once you finish it will look something like this:

Focus mapping now has identified several steps that are good places to start as a way to break through stuckness – the post-its in the “more likely and more effective” quadrant. These are behaviors that  have been vetted for changes that are likely to be effective, but most importantly, as likely to be completed. Focus mapping is also a good way to learn about yourself, as it helps explain why you might have been stuck.  For example, if your plan was to run in the morning, you will feel like a failure each day you don’t complete your plan, and give up. With your honesty, you can either change your plan, and decide that running in the morning as an idea just isn’t a good choice and choose something else to meet your overall goal, or it may motivate you to make it happen and you can break that change down into smaller steps, such as starting out by walking the block before breakfast.

As a tool, focus mapping is relatively easy, but it can generate a lot of good ideas and clarify where you are with a particular change.  You can use it for everything from drinking more water to getting a new job. The key, and this is the hardest part for most of us, is being honest with yourself about what you are and are not likely to do.  Try to be non-judgmental, as the goal of the entire activity is to pave the way toward change.  Focusing in on small steps, but ones you will actually do, will be bring bigger results in the long run!