If You’re Feeling Behind in Life, Listen to This

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And after today's conversation, lemme tell you something in particular when you hear the research that I have uncovered, when you hear the strategies that I'm going to share with you based on the age that you are right now, you are going to feel different in your life how you see where you are right now based on your age, it's going to be different because the fact is you're not behind. You're not late. You are in the exact same boat as almost every other human being on the planet right now who has this sense that they're behind in life, that there's some sort of checklist that you're supposed to be checking off in your twenties or thirties or forties or fifties or sixties and beyond. And that if you're not checking off these things on the list that, oh, I should be doing this by then, I should be engaged.

 

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I should be having kids, I should be buying a house, I should be doing this. That if you're not checking these things off, that you're losing in life, that you're behind, that somehow you're the only person on the planet that hasn't figured this out. And the reason why I know that you're struggling with this is first of all, this is a universal experience in life. I have felt this in my life. My kids who are in their twenties have felt this in their life. My husband has felt this at various ages, but more importantly, I'm seeing your messages that are flooding into the inbox@melrobbins.com. I'm seeing what you're writing in the comments on social media and the number of you who are writing in right now. And you may be thinking, wait, Mel's reading my comments. Of course, I'm reading your comments. Of course, I'm reading your inbox and it's kind of startling the number of you that are writing in saying, I just feel lost.

 

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I feel behind in my life and I so relate to that sentiment, but I didn't realize how many of you are feeling this right now. And so I'm like, we got to dig into this and we got to not just kind of talk about it as a thematic thing. Let's do the research, let's find the experts. Let's figure out what this sense of being behind in your life actually is. And this is such a common experience in life. It's so common in fact that there's a word for it. It's called the social clock that is the technical name based on research for this sense that there's some invisible checklist that you're supposed to mark your success in life by. And the research is incredible. I mean, if you're watching me on YouTube right now, you see that I have a stack of paper here. I have 21 pages of research to share with you today. This is such a cool topic and it's going to completely transform how you feel about where you are in life.

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And here's an interesting note about 65 and retiring. Where do these numbers come from? Why do we all think we're supposed to do certain things by a certain time? Well, they come from societal norms and what you're about to discover, this blew my mind when I dug into the research is so many of the societal norms were determined like 50 to a hundred years ago when life was different. In fact, life expectancy was completely different. So that kind of general notion that you should retire at the age of 65, check this out. You want to know when that became the social clock or the invisible checklist? 19 35, 19 35 was when the social security act happened and it created this moment in at the age of 65 where social security was a thing. That's when you were supposed to retire. And we all were just like, okay.

 

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And then we set the social clock at 65 and then we all live our lives as if we're supposed to retire at 65 says who? I guess everybody since 1935 isn't that kind of dumb that we have this stupid age. We're supposed to do something by my son Oakley. I'm thinking about something else. My son Oakley, he had a lot of challenges going through school. He bounced from public elementary school to a school for kids with language-based learning disabilities because of dyslexia. Then he had to go to another smaller school because that school stopped at the age of eighth grade and he had to repeat a grade. So now he's ending his freshman year of college and he just turned 20 and he's like, I feel weird because I'm older. Aren't you supposed to be like 18 when you're a freshman? Says who? I guess we did.

 

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That's what this concept of social clock is, that if you follow the clock and you're a freshman at 18 and not 20, you're quote on time. But if you're not following the clock and you retire at 75, you're off time. If you haven't had kids by the time you're 30, if you haven't met the one by the time you're in your late twenties, that you're off time, you're falling behind. That's where this sense that you're falling behind comes from. It's these weird societal norms that we set way back when for when somebody is supposed to be doing something. And what I'm going to prove to you today is that the timeline that is in place that your parents live by, that your grandparents live by, that your friends are all following, that you are feeling all this pressure around. It's completely made up and it was also made up when life was totally different.

 

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I mean, wait till I just unpack all this for you. It's crazy when you hear this, and I want to bring in another researcher that I absolutely love. This is research from Dr. Robert Waldinger book, the Good Life Lessons from the World's longest Scientific Study on Happiness. Now, Dr. Robert Waldinger, he has been on this podcast, he's absolutely fantastic. He is a professor at Harvard Medical School. He's also the fourth director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is the longest study that has ever been done on what it means to live a happy and meaningful life. This thing's been in existence for 86 years and the data is very conclusive, and he actually writes about this idea of a social clock and how it screws us all up. It makes us unhappy, it makes us feel like we're falling behind or we're losing in life.

 

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So Dr. Waldinger takes Bernice new Garten's research about this social clock even a step further because he says it's not just society and things like we got to retire at 65 or we got to graduate by the time we're 18. That put pressure on us. But there's also social clocks that you may feel based on your upbringing or based on influences like your friends or news or social media or movies. They create this sense that, oh my gosh, okay, that's what other people are doing right now. So that's what I need to be doing right now. Whether it's, oh, my friends are now all leaving big cities and moving out to where the mountains are and maybe I need to be doing that, or Oh my gosh, my best friend just got engaged and I'm still single. Maybe I need to be doing that right now.

 

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And they also differ from culture to culture, generation to generation, which we're about to get into when I unfold how different life was one or two human beings ago and how we still live by some of the same social clocks as people had 50 years ago. You're going to think to yourself, this is ridiculous. Why am I doing this to myself? And Dr. Waldinger writes about the fact that there are these key events in everybody's life, like when do you leave a childhood home? When are you going to enter into a committed long-term relationship? Are you having kids and if so, at what age? When are you buying a house that these can also have a cultural value based on where you were raised, based on where you grew up, based on your religion, based on your grandparents and your parents' personal history? That is what creates the sense that you're off time because you're not on time based on your parents' expectations or based on what your friends are doing or based on what is sort of valued in the culture that you grew up in.

 

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And this is where it gets really important and interesting to me is that it's not that being off time is stressful in and of itself. What makes it stressful is the fact that you don't think you're meeting the expectations that society or your parents or your friends have for you. That's what makes this so challenging. See, the sense of falling behind is based on falling behind to whom? Falling behind based on what falling behind, based on whose expectations at the heart of this. And that's why I think this is so commonplace in terms of an experience that you're feeling right now, that there is this crazy expectation that society has for where you're supposed to be in your life based on your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and you've just adopted it. When is the exact age that you should go to nursing school? When is the time limit for when you could apply to go back to school?

 

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Where's the time limit to you reinventing your career? Where's the time limit for where you can no longer get good with money? There isn't one, and that's why this whole notion that you're behind in life is a freaking joke and it's time to stop playing into it at the beginning of the 18 hundreds. Can you guess what the average life expectancy was here in the United States? So it's the 18 hundreds, what do you think the average life expectancy is? Just take a guess. 29 years old, 29 years old, of course you're getting married at the age of 20. I mean you're almost dead for crying out loud. You got to hurry up, but that's not your life today. No wonder people were trying to get it all done because if your average life expectancy is 29, you got to hurry up every second counts for crying out loud.

 

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Think about your grandparents. Life in the fifties was completely different. If you ever turned on a movie from the fifties, it looks like a different planet. From the cars to the clothes to the way the saturation of the film looks to the social norms. And so the reason why your grandparents and sometimes even your parents don't understand what you're doing in your twenties is because they literally lived in a different reality. Their friends were dying in their fifties. That's why they hurried up and had certain expectations about things. You live in a completely different moment of time, which means you have to have completely different expectations for yourself and what's possible, and a lot of those expectations that need to change about where you're supposed to be in your life are so exciting and so full of possibility and this stupid social clock and this checklist from the 1950s, oh, I got to be this by this.

 

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I got to figure it out by my twenties, I got to be married by this certain time. It's so dumb because that's not the world you live in, and it's not only dumb, it can make you miserable because you may be making a major life decision right now because of approval, not based on what's going to make you happy. You may be torturing yourself, telling yourself that you have to have everything figured out right now in your twenties or your thirties or that it's too late to reinvent yourself because of the mistakes that you've made and now you're in your fifties complete bs. It's not the truth, and yet you're making yourself miserable because of these stupid checklists that we're all adhering to. The pressure to be on time in life isn't the truth. It's social conditioning and it ends today. 

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The twenties is a decade of possibility. That's what the twenties are. I want to read to you a message from Mimi who is a listener of this podcast and she wrote into mel robbins.com. Hey Mel, I'm 25 lost, jobless, and I regret the degree I spent four years on. It feels too late to pursue something meaningful like met or law school. How do I break out of this rut and stop comparing myself to those who had a clear path from a young age? First of all, this notion that you're too late to apply to med school is a lie. You can apply to med school at the age of 80. There is no age limit for applying to medical school even if you didn't do a pre-med major. You can do a post-bac pre-med program and then apply to law school. There are people right now that are listening around the world that applied to law school in their forties, fifties, and sixties.

 

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It's a joke. So stop putting that pressure on yourself that there was some time that you were supposed to do it and now you're late. No, you're not. You're figuring your life out. Your twenties is a time that is full of possibility. So before I talk about how I want you to reframe your mindset to possibility and really embrace that in your twenties, I don't want you to have things figured out in your twenties. I want you to be exploring and figuring out who you are and what you like. And if by the age of 25 you have woken up and realized, oh my gosh, I really do feel this call to become a doctor, great, go explore her. Great. Check out the possibility. And for those of you who are listening who are not in your twenties, I really need you to understand something.

 

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Being a 20-year-old today is not the experience that you had in your twenties. The statistics that I'm about to read to you are so sobering and it's important for all of us, whether you're the parent or the aunt or the uncle of a 20 something or whether you're the older brother or sister of a 20 something or if you're a 20 something and you're beating yourself up or you're thinking, you got to have it all figured out. I really want you to hear this because it's going to validate this sense of feeling lost. The average 20-year-old today is under so much stress and pressure and chaos right now, and it's not pressure and stress and chaos that existed five or six years ago. It's just changed. And we sit here and we look at 20 somethings and we're like, oh, they're weak or they're addicted to social media, all anxious or this or the other thing.

 

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Have you stopped to consider what it's like to be a 20 something today that first of all, five or six years ago you went into an office work was very predictable. You kind of knew what it was going to look like when you graduated from high school or college and yet started going into a company and commuting. That's not what work is today. Nothing is stable. It's all hybrid. It's 24 7. In fact, Dell did some research. Did you know that 85% of jobs that are going to be around in the next 10 years haven't been created yet? Home ownership is out of reach. The generational wealth gap is absolutely massive. Nearly 10 million people right now are falling behind in their student loans. That's 250 billion worth of debt that is passed due. The world is in chaos and most 20 somethings have parents that lived in a very predictable, stable economy.

 

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They went to a corporate job, they reported to the office, they had a network of friends at work. That's not the typical 20-year-old experience. They're now in the middle of a recession and hybrid work. The world is shifting, the landscape is shifting. People are all over the place and scattered. Nothing is as it was even six years ago. And it's time to wake up and recognize that if you feel lost, I'm not surprised. I would too. In fact, I felt lost in my twenties. I didn't know what I wanted to do yet. I bounced from one thing to the other and I wasn't dealing with half the stuff that you're dealing with. Not going into work consistently, not having a really core group of friends at work, not feeling like there's something that you can count on in terms of predictability, not quite knowing what industry to go into because AI is here and things are changing.

 

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This is exactly how you should feel. And so if you are feeling lost right now, if you have not figured out your career good, you're doing your twenties correctly. There's nothing wrong with you. It's a perfectly normal response to the decade that you're in based on the moment in history that you're in. And for those of us that have 20 somethings that we want to support, I think showing up with a bit more compassion based on the facts on how difficult this is to navigate. And none of us have experience with this, so we can't exactly help them based on our own life experience In the middle of this too, feeling lost is to be expected, which is why shifting your mindset from this ridiculous social clock expectation that you should have it all figured out yet to shifting your mind to, oh, I'm basically in a decade of possibility.

 

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I'm not supposed to have it figured out. I'm supposed to be exploring. And one thing that you do have on your side that I want to point out is that because you're digitally native and because all of the jobs that are coming are going to have to do with being online and technology and ai, one of the best things that you can do is double down on learning ai, on leaning into tech, on embracing the fact that it is a skill to be digitally native. It is a skill to be able to communicate the way that you do. This is not a deficit. It's an asset. It's embracing that because it's going to be a part of any single career path that you choose. But hear me loud and clear, get rid of the checklist that you have to have your career figured out in your twenties.

 

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In fact, think about your friend Mel Robbins. In my twenties, I had approximately 11 job changes. I graduated from law school. I hated law school. I then went and was a public defender. I liked that job. I did that for a couple years. Then I bounced to a large law firm, hated that job. Then I quit that job after a year. Then I went not to one startup, not to two startups. I went to three startups in three years. Then I studied to be a life coach. Then I invested in a little tiny paint your own pottery business. Then I tried a little radio. I bounced from one thing to the other. So the idea that you're supposed to have it figure out complete garbage. In fact, you may be the kind of person like me that actually needs to explore and you need to bounce from one thing to another to figure out what you like because it's how something feels that tells you whether you like it or not.

 

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And every one of the things that you're going to try in your twenties brings experience, experience that you're going to build on skills that you're going to build. And so embracing this idea that I don't have to figure it all out. I'm exploring this is a decade of possibility and I'm going to embrace it. Have you ever shown up at a beach on a wave day? Aren't wave days the best? The big rollers come in and you grab the boogie board and you jump in the waves and you ride 'em up and down. That's what I think the twenties are figuring out what you like learning how to ride the waves. That's what you're going to do. And look, I want to acknowledge something. It's easy for me to sit here and say, oh, it's a decade of possibility. You're going to figure it all out.

 

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I understand that there are going to be moments in your twenties where you do feel desperate. In fact, there are going to be moments in every decade of your life where you're going to think like you've made a major mistake. You're going to feel like you're not quite sure if you can go on. And I can really relate to this feeling because our daughter Sawyer, who is now 26 years old, she's the exact opposite of me in terms of how she goes about her life, how she thinks, and she just has everything all mapped out, okay, going to go to high school, then I'm going to go to college. During college, she got herself an internship at this huge cybersecurity firm. During the internship, she gets herself the offer to get the job After college, the pandemic hits, a lot of plans go sideways. In three years of working for this massive cybersecurity firm, never went into work three years, never went into work even though she loved her boss, even though she was engaged in her work, she hated never going into work.

 

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She never left her apartment. She would literally sit in south in Boston and work all day. And if you're in your twenties, that may be your experience. Hybrid work has done a number of things. Yes, it's wonderful to have the flexibility, but it has imploded people's networks at work. It has imploded a sense of structure and rhythm to your day. It has destroyed the separation between your home space and your workspace, which is why people feel lonely and isolated. And that's what she started to feel. And so she saved her money and she went on this lifelong dream to go on a four month long solo backpacking trip and that was a highlight of her life, something she had been planning for seven years. She quits her job and one of the reasons why she didn't want to quit her job is because check this out.

 

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She was worried about what future employers would think and what it would look like on her resume. Why? Because of the social clock, because of this expectation, the checklist in my twenties, I got to make sure that I stay at a job for a certain amount of time, that I stay in an industry for a certain amount of time, that I don't quit too soon or I don't stay too long so that it looks a certain way to other. This is all the same thing, not wanting to look behind other people, not wanting to look bad to other people based on what the expectations are of other people in society. Well, thankfully she finally decided, I'm going to go on this trip. She spends four months solo backpacking great because in your twenties decade of possibility, you don't have kids, you don't have obligations, you don't have the massive amount of things that pile up in your life when you're in your thirties, forties and fifties.

 

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That's the time to do it. That's the time to move to a different city. That's the time to explore new things. That's the time to jump from one thing to the other because it is the decade of possibility. But then she came home completely broke and having no idea what to do with her life. And if you don't have somebody in your life who is lost or feels behind, I want to play a little selfie video for you that she took of herself in her bedroom upstairs while she was living here at home with her parents at the age of 25 feeling broke and lost and not knowing what to do with her life. This is what it feels like to be behind in your twenties.

 

Sawyer Robbins (00:26:52):

Hey, I can't stop crying. My face is so puffy and it's all because I have no fucking idea what I'm doing. I want to make a lot of money as everyone does, but as a 25-year-old coming home from an extraordinary trip and thinking, I'm going to make so much money off the bat, I'm not. And I also haven't done anything to make money either I'm dying. I feel like there's a million things to do and I can't do anything. My to-do list feels like so long. But on my to-do list, it's like, call so-and-so catch up with blank. Stop crying. Oh my God. Oh god, I will be okay.

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:14):

Yes, you will be okay. And yes, you're going to figure it out and you don't have to figure it out today and you don't have to figure it out next week. All you got to do is keep telling yourself, I'm going to figure this out. I'm capable of putting one foot in front of the other. I'm capable of networking with people. I'm capable of landing a job and feeling it out. I'm capable of leaving a job if I don't like it. I'm capable of moving to another city. I'm capable of saving money because the decade of your twenties is not where you're supposed to figure it out. It's the decade of possibility where you have so many experiences because you're figuring out who you are and what you like. And none of that can be distilled down into a checklist. And so instead of trying to check the boxes, I want you to take a step back.

 

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I want you to see that the twenties right now are really different. That it is challenging. It is overwhelming, it is confusing. And so feeling that way is normal, but the best thing that you can do is to remind yourself that you don't need to figure it out. Nobody has it figured out. But step by step, day by day, you have to remind yourself that you have the ability to explore, to make changes, to learn about yourself. And if you do that, I promise you, you are going to wake up at the end of your twenties and go, not only am I doing okay, but I've learned a lot about myself and you're also doing better than you think you are. And if you're listening right now and there's a 20 something in your life, that's exactly what you need to say to them. You are going to figure this out.

 

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Your twenties are very hard. This hybrid work thing is so confusing trying to network with people that don't even show up to an office. It is really difficult. You're right. And guess what? You're still going to figure it out and I'm going to be here every step of the way to support you in doing it. So stop putting the pressure on yourself. Take a breath, go for a walk, and then take the next right step. That's what we need to be saying to the 20 somethings in our life. So if you're twenties are the decade of possibility. 

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And I'm going to unpack them both one by one. And I've been getting a lot of messages from people recently, and I want to read one from a listener name, Shauna. She writes, Mel, I recently turned 35. I've been somewhat single for five years and I have a big wish to be a mom. I've always loved and wanted children. Taking care of kids is second nature to me. But as the months roll by and as I've matched my thousandth matched on all the dating apps that I've been on for four years, I'm hitting a wall of despair. My life is not budging. The apps aren't happen. Meeting people in real life is not a thing anymore as no one ever talks to me when I go out. I don't have eligible single friends, nor are there friends of friends left. I can't be the only woman in this situation and I don't know how to go on living like this.

 

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Well, first of all, yes you do. You do know how to go on living, you're going to go on living. And based on what I'm going to unpack for you, I'm going to give you a sense of power and freedom that I want you to really embrace in your thirties because what you're feeling is extraordinarily common. And there is a big difference between the topic of having children and the reality that I need you to take seriously versus the pressure that you feel to do it by a certain time and the pressure that people also feel during this decade to find the one to get married, to buy the house. Okay, so let's talk about the pressure to have kids because I want to be extremely responsible about that. The decade of your thirties is not the decade when you're supposed to settle down. The decade of your thirties in my opinion is where you need to dig into the research and settle in on what matters to you.

 

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This is particularly true when it comes to kids. Just because you haven't gotten pregnant yet, you haven't met the one yet, you're not a mom yet, doesn't mean you're not going to be one. But when it comes to the topic of having kids, it is critical in your thirties that you be honest with yourself about what you actually want because for women in particular, there is a biological deadline if you want to have your own biological children. So let's take fertility for example. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say that a women's best chance at getting pregnant is in her late teens to her late twenties. And fertility does start to decline around 30 and starts to drop off more significantly around 35. So what does that mean for you? That means that you don't need to settle down, but you need to be honest with yourself about what you want, and you've already done that part.

 

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You want to be a mom, you'd love to have children of your own. Great. If you're 35, that means you need to freeze your eggs. Do not gaslight yourself. Do not hold out on this. Follow the research and the medical facts and set yourself up to be able to make a decision in the future. Yes, the biological clock is a very real thing, which is why I want you to understand there are very real options that you have to make sure you don't miss the window just because it feels like this sense that, oh my God, I'm 35 and there's this checklist and there's a social clock, and the door is closing. It doesn't mean your life is, it doesn't mean the options are closing and you will feel so empowered if you take the step to freeze your eggs, which is what I would recommend that you do if this is something that you're serious about.

 

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Here's another thing that I would get serious about. If you're in a relationship right now and you know want kids and your partner's like, eh, I don't dunno, I want kids or not, do not waste this decade with somebody who does not want the same things that you want. Do not tell yourself that the person is going to change your mind because if you continue to stay in a relationship with somebody who does not share the same vision for life, who does not have the same values for what you want on something as important as whether or not you're going to have kids, do not do that to yourself because you'll waste the rest of this decade with a person that you hope changes their mind and then the door will be closed and you're going to regret this for the rest of your life.

 

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And so you got to be very serious. Again, this is not where you settle down and you settle when it comes to your values and your vision for your life. Your thirties is where you get honest with yourself about some core things. But now I want to talk to you. If you're in a situation where you're like, okay, I get it, and I still want to find the love of my life, I want that for you and you are going to find the love of your life. And here's what I want to say about that though. I wrote about this a lot and researched this in the Let Them Theory, and I think there's some important research, if you quote haven't met the one, you've dated a lot of people or you've been in a bunch of relationships and it hasn't turned into a long-term committed relationship, there's very interesting research around this that you need to dig into.

 

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So on page 2 52 of the Letham Theory book, I also address this fallacy that the purpose of dating is to find the one. And I think this is a reason why dating is so hard is that you don't understand the true purpose. You're not just trying to find the one. Dating is helping you learn more about yourself and what you want and what you don't want. And the Let Them theory is going to be super important for you because you got to let people show you who they are, and you got to focus on what you actually want to feel and the type of person that you want to be with. Because the more time you spend chasing the wrong people, the longer it's going to take you to find the right one. And one of the most important lessons that you're going to learn is the kind of behavior that you will not accept the kind of person you truly want to be with.

 

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And if you get so obsessed with finding the one, and you feel so much pressure because of the stupid social clock as to when you're supposed to be in a committed long-term relationship, you're going to miss all of the information and the lessons that dating is trying to teach you. You weren't put on the earth to be somebody's wife or husband. You are here to fulfill your dreams, share your story, and create a big, beautiful, amazing life. No one else is going to create that life for you. The person you choose to love gets to share that life with you. That's why you got to be choosy. See, when you're dating, have a lot of fun, but don't ever forget the bigger picture. You're looking for someone who is capable of helping you become your best self and co-creating a beautiful life together. And so it's important to understand that you're learning more about yourself.

 

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And here's what I want you to do. It's easy to close yourself off. See, if you focus on the social clock, and I should have been finding the person by now, I am 35. If you start doing that, you get pickier. That's an interesting thing. You get pickier because you're looking for a needle in the haystack. That's not actually how you meet somebody that amplifies you. You actually have to do the opposite. You have to become more flexible. You have to be willing to be less choosy and meet more people. You got to be more open to lots of different types of people because ultimately, the more people that you meet, the more you open yourself up to people of different heights, of different backgrounds, of different body types of different professions. Ultimately it will lead you to choosing someone amazing who makes you feel incredible, who chooses you back.

 

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And look, I get it, it's kind of hard to embrace this idea that you've got to be more open, but I promise you when you realize that it's your own insecurity and desperation around this, that's narrowing the field, you got to do the opposite and opens yourself up to new experiences and new people and change the filters is what everybody says. Change the filters, change the height filter, change the mileage. Filter. Open yourself up. I promise you, the love of your life is just around the corner. In fact, if you knew that the love of your life we're right around the corner, how would you be living your life differently now? There you go. Alright, let's talk about the third big thing that is one of these milestones on the checklist in your thirties, which is, I got to buy a house. I got to buy a house, I got to have my first house, I got to have a house, got a house, I got to buy a house.

 

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I want to share if you're in your thirties or heck forties or fifties and you're wanting to buy a home and you're somewhere in the world where you feel like it feels out of reach, when did real estate become so expensive? Because you're not wrong. Real estate is just, shocking is the wrong word. It's unfair in my opinion, what's happened. I want to share some research with you because it's different. I'm sorry. It's different than the situation that your parents and grandparents were in when they were buying their first home. The American dream in particular is now like the American nightmare. And a lot of experts say that the vehicle that was the primary vehicle where people could establish wealth, which is buying a home, is no longer the primary, is not accessible to a lot of people anymore. Let me just hit you with some of the facts. You ready? In 1950, the average cost of a home, so we're talking the house that your grandparents or your parents bought you ready, you want to buy a house, the medium price, $7,300, $7,300.

 

(00:41:46):

Some of you may be paying that in rent every two or three months. I think you could afford a house at $7,300. But if we were to convert that in today's dollars, what would the actual cost be adjusted for inflation in today's dollars? If we were looking at kind of like, okay, well if we do apples to apples, if your parents were paying 7,300 adjusted for today's dollars, that would be $88,000. That means there's an 11 x increase between what your grandparents were paying and what you now need to pay. What does that mean? Different world, different reality, which means you got to have different expectations. And there's a reason why this has happened. Check this out. In 1991, the average home buyer was 35 years old. Today, the average home buyer, 56 years old. If you live in a world where the average home buyer is 56 years old, why on earth would you tell yourself you have to have a house by the age of 30?

 

(00:42:45):

Why are you putting so much pressure on yourself to do this? And if you're wondering, wow, it just seems like rents and housing costs have gone up significantly in the last couple of years. It has in the last three years, the housing market in Boston has gone up 73%. You're not imagining this. This is the reality. And I'm sure you've even seen this in your own neighborhood. The world has changed, which means you got to change the expectations and the pressure that you put on yourself. First of all, hybrid work coming out of the pandemic, it just imploded everything. And one of the things that it impacted is real estate costs because people that were living in big cities could move to smaller markets, which meant all of a sudden there was this huge bubble everywhere, even in places where normally it would cost way less to buy a house.

 

(00:43:33):

Another reason a lot of people don't talk about this, but it's true, all of those supposed federal grants that were supposed to go to payroll and to helping businesses stay open, you know what a lot of people did with that money? They invested in real estate, so did private equity. That's why you've got situations where there's no rental stock. Why it's impossible to buy a house. This is a reality. And I'm not saying this to make you depressed. I'm saying it because how are you possibly going to settle down if you're not accepting where the world is right now? And so here's what I want you to do. If buying your own home is an important core value to you, fantastic. And I personally believe that you can figure out how to do it and you can figure out how to do it in a great place.

 

(00:44:21):

And you can find a house and you can buy a house and you can fix up a house if that's your dream, wonderful. But I want you to stop holding this checklist or this social clock over your head. And I want you to embrace reality that things have changed. The real estate market is different, and I want you to do your research just like I'm asking you to do the research around kids. Do the research, embrace the fact that this is not something that has a timeline. It's a dream that you own, and there are things that you can do to set yourself up for it. It might take you four or five years to save the money to get a house. It might take you researching, going to auction on houses, going to foreclosure. You might decide when you do the research, Hey, you know what I've realized I actually want to rent where I am.

 

(00:45:05):

But maybe what I'm going to do is I'm going to look into buying a small little unit that I can rent that's in a place that I want to move to in five years. And so I'm going to think about this differently because I live in a different moment in time. And if I really double down on what I want and then I start getting smart and doing the research about how to work with what I've got and to embrace the reality of the decade I'm living in and the moment in history that I'm in and the place that the market's in and finances are in, I can figure this out. And if I loosen my timeline and I give myself some grace, I'm going to feel motivated to do it. And I might just do this in a way that's super cool. I'm going to rent a house, I'm going to get an investment place.

 

(00:45:47):

I'm going to learn how to make money on the side. And then guess what? When I move up there in about five to 10 years, I'm going to have paid off a lot of that mortgage. I'm going to be sitting really pretty. In fact, I not only now have a house, I did it in a way that it was even smarter than what my parents and grandparents did. And for those of us that are not in our thirties, really understanding that the landscape is different, understanding that housing prices are exorbitant, and to level set your expectations is important because then you're not adding undue and unnecessary pressure on yourself, which is only going to make you feel lost and depressed, and now you don't have to because you can figure it out. So 

(00:47:25):

I mean, I'm talking another seven different pivots. And so here I am 41, I'm about 14 jobs in my career. It didn't look like a resume. It looked like a choose your own disaster adventure. And now I'm feeling at the age of 41. I've completely blown it. I've blown it. And not only have I blown it in my career, I don't have any money. We've invested everything in my husband's restaurant business that's now failing. So you want to talk about that sense that you're not only behind, but that you've royally screwed it all up. I thought in my, there's no way I'm getting out of debt. There's no way I'm getting the liens off the house. There's no way I'm going to be able to pay for my kids' college. There's no way I'm ever going to be successful in my career. That's how I felt at the age of 41.

 

(00:48:21):

I wasn't just behind. I effed the whole thing up. And I'm here to tell you that you're just getting started when you hit your forties. And one of the best things about being in your forties is that even if your career or your financial life is a complete train wreck like mine was, you still are not starting from scratch. That's the coolest thing. Every single thing that you've done up until this point is actually building experience, experience that you can build on. And so you're not too late. In fact, if you look at the life expectancy of 77, you're like got 37 more years. Do you know how much you can get done in 37 years? And here's the thing I want you to really think about. If you're going to hold yourself to a standard that by the age of 40 you should have things figured out, that means that you can kind of figure things out over the next couple of decades, okay?

 

(00:49:18):

You got plenty of time and beating yourself up and telling yourself that you're lost and telling yourself that you've screwed up. Do you know what that does? It doesn't motivate you. It actually makes you depressed. It makes you feel like a loser, and you're not a loser. You just have a winding path. You are probably just stubborn like I am. And you learn lessons the hard way. You explored a lot and now you know a lot. And so you cannot afford to tell yourself this stupid lie that it's too late, that you're behind, that you've screwed it up, that you can't turn it around because it's complete BS. If I can do it, you can do it. And it's not just me. Do you know Vera Wang, the famous fashion designer, wedding designer, she started designing wedding dresses at the age of 40. Samuel L. Jackson landed that role in Pulp Fiction, 45, Julia Child.

 

(00:50:14):

Do you know how old she was? Famous French chef, Julia Child when she published her very first cookbook, 49. And here's the other thing that you have in your forties. You have a network of people that you have a number of experiences, you have a lot of lessons that you've learned, and now you know what you have in your forties that you didn't have in your thirties. You have a sense of urgency and you can use that to your advantage. Take everything that's happened in your career to this date and say, you know what? I'm going to figure this out in my decade. I'm going to triple down and I'm going to go for it. Your forties aren't a finish line. Your forties are the launchpad for the next decade of your life. That's what they are. It's where you can truly launch forward in your career.

 

(00:51:00):

You can do something new. You can build on what you've learned, the mistakes that you've made. That's why the forties are incredible. And by the way, the other reason why the forties is really fun to do is because everybody around you is so distracted, typically raising kids or they're engaged in their career or they're doing other things that nobody cares what you're doing. So you can do anything that you want. And that is super cool. I mean, that's true about all the decades, but in the forties in particular, you're going to notice people don't care as much and you're not going to care as much either. And here's another statistic that I want to give to you. Maybe things haven't worked out because you're supposed to do your own thing. Maybe your forties is where you take that interest that you had or that side hustle or that thing you've always imagined doing and you actually launch your own thing.

 

(00:51:51):

Do you know this is research from a study at MIT Sloan School of Business, the average age of a successful startup founder 45, kind of cool, huh? You want to know why the average age is 45? Because you have a certain amount of wisdom and a certain amount of failure and a certain amount of clarity after four decades of your life about who you are and what your strengths are and what you're interested in. And you're also sick of the bs. And so you can laser focus in on what you actually want to do. And for me, it was my forties where I got tired of my own excuses and I forced myself to do it. And I think that's the invitation that your forties have for you. If you don't like where you are, then stop listening to your excuses and use this decade to change your life.

 

(00:52:39):

If you've been sitting around waiting for somebody else to come rescue you, stop gaslighting yourself and take responsibility for creating what you want. Because it was my forties in that rock bottom moment that forced me to discover the strength that I have and the capacity that I have to do the things that needed to be done in order to change my life for the better. And regardless of whether you're successful or you're struggling, I was, you have that exact same ability and your forties are your invitation to get honest with yourself and get to work.