Turning Quarter-Life Crisis into Clarity | Gap Year Chronicles

by Panzer
how often do we pause to ask ourselves if the life we lead is the one we truly
desire or maybe it's time to change your path instead hi there in this video I want to share
an ongoing journey of self-discovery in my 20s one that might hopefully resonate with my new
over the past 2 years my life has undergone through significant Transformations I Left
My Home Country to go and study in a university in the United States and I immersed myself into
a vibrant new culture but somewhere along the way I lost touch with myself I was so swamped
with Studies classes social life and work trying to maintain at all that I felt like
I did not have enough time for self-reflection and did not have enough time to understand what
exactly I wanted to do with the future it felt like my identity was sort of getting diluted
in a mixture of other people's goals other people's ideas and expectations from life
and I was just desperately trying to to find the authentic self my authentic self during my
psychology classes I first discovered the term of quarter-life crisis which is the period of
intense introspection which occurs in your early 20s to early 30s and as soon as I learned about
this term I knew I had it instantly I knew that I wasn't sure what my passions were and I was
trying to figure it out out and I was trying to figure out my authentic self as I said before it
felt like I was standing at a Crossroads and seeing no Clear Directions according to one
LinkedIn study that they did in 2017 around 75% of people from 25 to 33 years old feel
like they have a quarter-life crisis which again says that if you're experiencing these feelings
you're not alone this is extremely common and I guess most young people have to deal with
the feeling of being overwhelmed let me to think about the Paradox of choice in a
world of Endless Options making a choice can be very much paralyzing this Paradox applies
not only to choosing the outfit for the day but also to making larger Life Choices like
choosing a country to live in or choosing a career to pursue it's very difficult when you
have so many opportunities and you don't know which one would be the best in long
there's this rule that really helped me with making decisions it's called 10 10 10 rule here's
how it works when You Face a difficult decision split it into three parts and ask yourself how you
will feel about it in 10 minutes 10 months and 10 years this helps you eliminate options that
will not be good in the long term and just makes it easier to figure out what you want to do for
example this spring in college I was thinking if I should take a gap here so I decided to use this
rule thought if in 10 minutes I decide to take a gap here I'll be happy because I'll know that the
next year I'm going to be spending in Europe and in 10 months I know that if I do this Gap here I
will be in Europe traveling and enjoying my life and I'll be very happy about it and in 10 years
I don't even know what the impact of this decision will be make on my life in 10 years it's very much
possible that this Gap year will potentially help me to stir myself into the direction um of the
career that I want it's definitely a win on three of the dimensions so I did decide to take this Gap
so now I'm on this Gap here exploring Germany with a new job new culture new
country and I've really been enjoying it this whole European Rhythm has given me
space to realign my focus on the things that matter to me and the things that
I find interesting and if you're looking for perhaps taking a sabbatical gap here