Where's My Stuff: The Quarterlife Crisis | Kenya Jackson-Saulters | TEDxGreenville

picture this you enroll in college prep high school get perfect grades resist the urge to drink or do drugs until you are well out of your parents house you double major in college and even date the same boy for five years even though you know that you're gay as a young adult you delay marriage in lieu of grad school you skip Spring Break to study and you spend your summers and internships all in the hopes of achieving the American dream but when you walk off the stage diploma in hand ready to get into your cushy job and into the arms of your beloved you are not met with any of that no instead you are met with one disappointment after another no this isn't a page out of some really sad but incredibly short novella this was actually my life see up until the age of 21 I committed to making all the right decisions everything from my course of study to my social calendar was meticulously planned to guarantee me the utmost success I was the consummate goody two-shoes so you can only imagine my disappointment and anger when four years after graduation I had three degrees one of which was a master's degree and no job I was knee-deep in a quarter life crisis and I was mad so mad that I would often sit in the middle of the floor of my empty apartment and scream where is my stuff seriously now I know some of you have never heard of the quarter life crisis and for those that have you probably think it's some temper tantrum that Millennials throw when we can't get our way but I assure you that's not the case the quarter life crisis is real in fact a B Willner defines the quarter life crisis as the period of anxiety questioning and inner turmoil that accompanies the transition to adulthood what she forgets to mention though is that it's also the period of unemployment unsolicited weight gain and overdrawn checking accounts that almost certainly accompany college graduation especially in the past ten years now before I go on I just want to address the elephant in the room yes the midlife crisis and the quarter life crisis sound the same but they're drastically different you see in many ways quarter lifers are trying to find themselves in an effort to create themselves whereas men lifers are kind of trying to lose themselves in an effort to recreate themselves but the difference is quarter lifers don't have the money to go out and buy a new Ferrari or a new wife when things get crazy in fact statistically quarter lifers don't have much of anything did you know that the unemployment rate for today's quarter Leifer is twice the national average or that the average American job hops eight times before the age of 32 or my personal favorite the average due loan debt is $30,000 I owe 100,000 but you know who's counting semantics so of course your next question is okay Kenya so you're going to do a TED talk on unemployment how original but no no no the quarter life crisis isn't a big deal because of unemployment or even because of delayed family planning it's a big deal because of the emotional damage that is done during this time in many ways the quarter life is the birthplace to bitterness if you ask me it's the reason why young people seem so lost and depressed the reason why your coworker and lessor nephew seem so distracted it is because they are desperately trying to figure out at what point they lost control of their lives plus guys a college degree isn't like a pair of jeans that you order off the inner if they don't fit you can't just call customer service and like send them back and get your time or money back quite the contrary there's often no one to call no one to blame and no one to talk to and so will you blame yourself you internalize the stress and you convince yourself that you are fundamentally flawed and that you're not worthy of all the things that you've worked so hard to achieve well okay at least that's what I did because by the time I was 27 my life was an epic mashup of rejection letters and eviction notices and I can tell you it did not feel like questioning it felt like being gutted from the inside out it felt like I had failed before I had even gotten started and it felt like being fired do you know I was fired four times in four years doing huh quarter life four times this this mini almost a whole hand I was fired and I wasn't getting fired because I was laid or because I was lazy I was getting fired because I was young see my employers felt like I was very educated but not very experienced right so they axe to me without regard assuming that my youth and education would allow me to bounce back quick but it did not but here's the cool thing about being fired four times in four years if there is a cool thing about being tired four times for four years you start to get really creative about how you make money so I decided to sell snow cones right so none of the degrees are in business or sales or anything but I'm going to sell snow cones right I go online and I pour all my money into a machine that I thought that was broken down and I decided that I'm going to make a killing in the festival scene right I'm from Atlanta Georgia and there's a huge st. Patrick's Day Festival every year in Savannah the advertisement said there would be a hundred thousand people there okay well I must have thought that every person and their children and their pets we're going to buy my shave ice because I made realistic projections of earning fifty two thousand dollars that weekend I thought I was going to earn fifty two thousand dollars in three days selling three dollar shaved ice well no one prepared me for how cold 64 degrees feels when you're eating snow cones or how they like to put the new vendors miles away from the crowd just for kicks we ended up being set up in the parking lot of a barbecue joint so needless to say I made so little money that night that I had to sleep in my car the next day I decided to spike the snow cones it was totally illegal but a little bit of vodka just helped me make the seven hundred dollars I needed to get back home when I got there I found myself right back in the middle of the floor of that empty apartment asking where is my stuff my money all I have is snow cones and that's all and this time I got an answer I got three answers and that's really what I want to share with you today I realized I had been confused about three core elements and that gaining clarity on those elements would help me find my ever elusive stuff so the first thing I realized is that there's a difference between being something and being someone you see for two-thirds of my life I had been being asked the wrong question and then therefore seeking the wrong answer ever since I was knee-high to a turnip someone has been asking me kenia what do you want to be when you grow up well that question is problematic for two reasons first off it assumes that you're not being anything right now and secondly it assumes that being something is the goal I wanted to be a pediatrician everybody wanted to be a pediatrician I'm really surprised that there's any childhood illnesses based on all of the pediatricians that were in my first grade class but the problem is guys a pediatrician isn't a purpose a pediatrician isn't a personality it's a job so what if you're like those quarter lifers I just told you about and you can't get the job or you're like me and you can't keep the job who are you then can you imagine the difference your life would have taken on had you been asked just one time who you want it to be versus what you want it to be and for my non quarter lifers I have something for you too part of the reason why young people think we have to do things a certain way is because we watched our parents waste their lives and jobs they hate relegating their talents to the weekend or worse yet retirement so be compassionate with the young people in your life but also don't be afraid to ask yourself who you want to be it's not too late the second thing I have been confused about is that there's a difference between a math tutor and a tennis coach you see most of us spend all of our time and energy trying to improve on a skill that we know we lack ie getting a math tutor versus trying to master a skill that we already have I getting a tennis coach so now I'm not saying give up math but I'm saying spend some time developing the thing that you're already good at and that's not a backhanded way of me telling you how to follow your dreams in fact I don't think you should follow your dreams most of us can only dream as big as we have seen which means if we haven't done it or seen someone close to us do it we think we can't do it but that's not true you can do anything you put your mind to and the last thing that I wanted to share with you is that everything comes from nothing and I just didn't understand that everything literally everything was first an idea I mean we're here celebrating ideas worth spreading and the cool thing about ideas is that ideas come from people not for money or from titles or even for first grade pediatricians so that means that your life can be as big as you think it can be and sometimes the easy way to nurture a new idea is to abandon all hope in an old idea in that way the quarter life is the perfect place to begin when I was 28 years old I got the word space tattooed on my arm to remind me that I am the space that gives birth to all things in all life so I want to leave you with a piece of advice the next time you feel lost and depressed which will happen I don't want you to panic instead I want you to take a second take a deep breath get quiet maybe indian-style close your eyes imagine yourself in the empty room but instead of asking where is my stuff ask who can I create from my nothing thank

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 51,197

Rating: 4.9382424 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Career, Happiness, Identity, Life Development, Purpose

Id: DYVvnbWX87o

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2016