Home > Author > Meg Jay

Meg Jay QUOTES

Meg Jay QUOTES

1 " The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

2 " But while the urban tribe helps us survive, it does not help us thrive. The urban tribe may bring us soup when we are sick, but it is the people we hardly know - those who never make it into our tribe - who will swiftly and dramatically change our lives for the better. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

3 " Traveling in a third-world country is the closest thing there is to being married and raising kids. You have glorious hikes and perfect days on the beach. You go on adventures you would never try, or enjoy, alone. But you also can't get away from each other. Everything is unfamiliar. Money is tight or you get robbed. Someone gets sick or sunburned. You get bored. It is harder than you expected, but you are glad you didn't just sit home. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

4 " It’s the people we hardly know, and not our closest friends, who will improve our lives most dramatically "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

5 " Doing something later is not automatically the same as doing something better "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

6 " What no one tells twentysomethings like Emma is that finally, and suddenly, they can pick their own families - they can create their own families - and these are the families that life will be about. These are the families that will define the decades ahead. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

7 " I wasn't scared of losing my past. i was scared of losing my future. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

8 " In one way or another, almost every twentysomething client I have wonders, 'Will things work out for me?' The uncertainty behind that question is what makes twentysomething life so difficult, but it is also what makes twentysomething action so possible and so necessary. It's unsettling to not know the future and, in a way, even more daunting to consider that what we are doing with our twentysomething lives might be determining it. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

9 " Shoulds can masquerade as high standards or lofty goals, but they are not the same. Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best interests. "

― Meg Jay

10 " As we age, we feel less like leaves and more like trees. We have roots that ground us and sturdy trunks that may sway, but don't break, in the wind. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

11 " Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part when, somewhere inside, I think he knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying uncertainty is wanting something and not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

12 " When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do. But it isn't. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

13 " The lottery question might get you thinking about what you would do if talent and money didn't matter. But they do. The question twentysomethings need to ask themselves is what they would do with their lives if they didn't win the lottery. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

14 " If the first step in establishing a professional identity is claiming our interests and talents, then the next step is claiming a story about our interests and talents, a narrative we can take with us to interviews and coffee dates (...) a story that balances complexity and cohesion is frankly, diagnostic. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

15 " I think part of making any decision in your twenties is realizing there is no twenty-four flavor table. It's a myth. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

16 " Life stories with themes of ruin can trap us. Life stories that are triumphant can transform us. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

17 " Distinctiveness is a fundamental part of identity. We develop a clearer sense of ourselves by firming up the boundaries between ourselves and others. I am who I am because of how I am different from those around me. There is a point to my life because it cannot be carried out in exactly the same way by any other person. Differentness is part of what makes us who we are. It gives our lives meaning. "

― Meg Jay

18 " Despite its revolutionary promises, Facebook can turn our everyday lives into that wedding we have all heard about: the one where the bride chooses her prettiest friends, not her best friends, to be bridesmaids. It can feel like a popularity contest where being Liked is what matters, being the best is the only respectable option, how our partners look is more important than how they act, the race to get married is on, and we have to be clever all the time. It can be just another place, not to be, but to seem. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now

19 " Among the most supported theories is that what is actually most useful about telling our secrets goes further than simple stress release; putting our experiences into words helps us begin to make sense of our thoughts and feelings. Remember, especially for children, secrets are often the product of moments when we say to ourselves, if we say anything at all, “There are no words. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know where to put that.” What does it mean, then, to take a feeling or an experience and, literally, “put it into words”? Words are labels and categories. They are boxes that organize the scattered contents of our minds. So when we talk about our experiences we are sorting them out, whether we intend to be or not, just by putting them into places where they might fit. We are able to say, “There are words. I do know what to do with that. I do know where to put that.” The very act of doing so makes our most confusing or disturbing experiences more organized and understandable, and it makes them less scary and upsetting as well. Like P. D. James said about the detective story, putting feelings into words can be a restoration of order. "

― Meg Jay , Supernormal: The Untold Story of Adversity and Resilience

20 " Your iPod is whispering in your ear. It was keeping you company, but now it's like a good friend turned bad [...] It is turning your life into a dark, looping rock opera. "

― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now