Relationships January 8, 2018
First of all, stop complaining about having to be an adult.
The idea of being an adult or adulting is truly terrifying. One moment you’re living under your parents’ roof, being fed three meals a day and walking into a clean home. The next moment you’re living on your own, being forced to take control of your own life, cook, clean, pay taxes and more.
There is no handbook or manual. There is little to no training on how to be an adult. We’re thrown into it and not everyone can handle it.
I don’t think there ever is a point where everything clicks and we learn how to become an adult. However, there are steps we can take to deal with adulting.
So, here’s how to be an adult.
You’re an adult now. I know, it sucks. But you have to just deal with it at this point. Life coach and therapist John Kim wrote in a Psychology Today article that being an adult means taking full responsibility of where you are in life right now. If you want to make a place for yourself in this world, you have to accept where you are in life right now. You can’t whine and complain about the bad hands you’ve been dealt. By taking responsibility, you can take back ownership of your life and control it to go how you want it to go.
Even if you’re not in a position to be saving money because you’re not making enough money, putting that $5 you would have spent on a cup of coffee into your savings makes all the difference. Instead of budgeting, find how much money you have left over after you pay your bills and put some of that money into your savings. Then, let yourself spend the rest as you please. It may seem hard but it’ll pay off in the long run when you actually have money in the bank for emergencies.
Stop worrying because adulting is hard for everyone. You’re doing fine. Adulthood is a social construct so trying to reach something that isn’t actually real is just making your life much more difficult.
“It’s not just hard for Millennials, I think it was hard for Gen X-ers, I think it was hard for Baby Boomers,”Kelly Williams Brown, author of “Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps,” told the Atlantic. “All of a sudden you’re out in the world, and you have this insane array of options, but you don’t know which you should take. There’s all these things your mom and dad told you, presumably, and yet you’re living like a feral wolf, who doesn’t have toilet paper, who’s using Arby’s napkins instead.”
Realizing that adulting isn’t easy for anyone relieves some stress, and you’ll be able to actual adult on your own terms.
You can’t rely on mom and dad to tell you what to do anymore. Your parents aren’t going to tell you what career path to follow or whether or not you should quit your job or where to live. You have to start making these decisions on your own if you want to be an adult.
Research Jeffrey Jensen Arnett told Business Insider that being an adult is “finding out who you are and how you fit into the world and there is a range of decisions that go into that.”
He also says that being an adult is a “quest for finding identity.”
So, create your own path and find yourself.
Business Insider also states that being financially independent is the third most common threshold into adulthood. Arnett also said that many young adults are striving for financial independence but still rely on their parents for emergencies due to the current economic client.
But relying on your parents is fine because patience is a part of adulthood. You’re not going to reach it all at once, and that’s fine. You have to be patient, and, eventually, you will become a stable adult.
There isn’t a formula for adulthood. There isn’t a point you have to reach to become an adult. Your transition from completely lost to independent and stable can be easier by making small strides.
