By Daniel

The last time I left you I was having brunch with a gorgeous girl from LA and then taking a step back from life over a beer with my mentor. These past few posts have felt like a throw back to MTV’s Diary circa 2002.  Deep insights and revealing stories all around this thing we call a quarter-life crisis. “You think you know… but you have no idea”.

This is cringing at the thought of settling, the crossroads of life direction, and of course the new responsibilities and decisions of a different life stage. Welcome to team angst,  with the unrelenting feeling that happiness may be a fish you can’t catch.

So how to deal? Sifting through blogs and articles this week I couldn’t help but see things through these quarter life lenses. Here are some of my take outs from my literary dine-ins.

Your Calling is Something You Grow Into

In last month’s New Yorker, Atul Gawande described the future of America’s healthcare using a theory called path dependence. He observed that each country has built on its own history, however imperfect, unusual, and untidy. The path of getting there from here starts with embracing the past and then building on what we already have. Our course to health reform will be a journey that is American and America’s alone.

Atul’s ideas of reforming the intricacies of our health care system relates to the struggles that we face in life. Looking into the future and seeing what we want, and feel is right, starts with embracing where we are and what we have now. Every heartbreak and failure has shaped our path. At the same time, every friendship and success that we’ve achieved has molded our history.

Happiness is a choice. We can’t keep dwelling on the past or longing for the future. We can’t focus on the façade of other people’s lives around us. Our trajectory will be different and unique. We have to start with what we have now and accept where we are in life before we can tackle the changes that surround us.

A Paradigm Shift in the Way We Think

Bill Taylor, at Harvard Business Publishing, recently blogged about two mindsets that I think apply to our quarter-life crisis. Pulling from the research of Professor Saras Savanthy, he outlined the difference between effectual reasoning (used mostly by entrepreneurs) and causal reasoning (aligned more with MBA graduates).

Effectual reasoning, for a person, doesn’t begin with a set goal. It allows “goals to emerge contingently over time from the varied imagination and diverse aspirations” from themselves and the people they interact with. On the flip side, causal reasoning is more formulaic; it contains a predetermined goal, a given set of means, and logic that seeks the optimal way to achieve that goal.

I believe our education system has engrained causal reasoning into our little brains as we’ve grown up. We’ve lived our lives in nicely packaged semesters for 22 years knowing the exact formula to get from middle school to high school to college. Unfortunately, we all know that life is anything but formulaic/logical. It’s actually pretty messed up. Our post-graduation life requires effectual reasoning, and we can’t deal with it because we don’t think that way.

At this point in our quarter life crisis there are no absolutes, no formulas, and there are no course descriptions. It’s a clean canvas. We’re going to be painting and re-painting before we get anywhere close to mastering the art of this so called life. The fluidity of effectual reasoning is the best mindset to have at this stage. This approach constantly interacts with life and the people in it, allowing those ingredients to shape our goals and identify opportunities.

Get off the Floor!

My last post ended as I was sitting on the floor pondering life’s questions. The truth is, to have the life we all dream of probably doesn’t result in the way we all imagined in our teens, twenties, and farther on. Getting there from here requires building on where we are and being content with what we have now. From there, taking on a mindset that engages with our environment, and those around us, to help shape and mold our future. This is probably me beginning to step out of my quarter life crisis. I’ll end this post with some insight into my thought as I got up off the floor…

“I want to create something I’m proud of. To put my blood and sweat into it and feel the scars on my arms and legs as I fall, get back up, and fall again. You see, the journey is just as important, if not more for me. I want the people I care about and trust pushing me, carrying me, and running with me along the way. Life is about relationships and community. Without it, life is nothing…”