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121 " The key finding in the study was that the twenty-four-flavor table attracted more attention yet it resulted in fewer buyers. Shoppers flocked to the exciting array, yet most became overwhelmed and dropped out of buying jam altogether. Only 3 percent of those who "
― Meg Jay , The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now
122 " What I tell my clients about “the cohabitation effect” is this: The effect that living together has on your partnership will likely depend not on whether you live together but how. "
123 " What I most notice about spending less time on social media is that I finally get to think my own thoughts. "
124 " Older spouses may be more mature, but later marriage has its own challenges. Rather than growing together while their twentysomething selves are still forming, partners who marry older may be more set in their ways. "
125 " When we cannot connect something we see or hear to something we have seen or heard before, or when the words will simply not do an experience justice, "trauma mocks language," says feminists scholar Leigh Gilmore, "and it confronts it with its insufficiency." We literally do not know how to think about it. The unlinkable is unthinkable. "
― Meg Jay , Supernormal: The Untold Story of Adversity and Resilience
126 " In the twentieth century, it was tempting to minimize the effects of divorce. Some adults in unhappy marriages imagined trickle-down happiness: They would be happier after divorce; therefore, so would their kids. But as these kids matured, “the unexpected legacy of divorce” was undeniable. Many children of divorce said they had not much noticed—or cared—whether their parents were happily married. What they did know was that their lives fell apart after their parents split, as resources and parents became stretched too thin. "
127 " Unthought knowns are those things we know about ourselves but forget somehow. These are the dreams we have lost sight of or the truths we sense but don’t say out loud. We may be afraid of acknowledging the unthought known to other people because we are afraid of what they might think. Even more often, we fear what the unthought known will then mean for ourselves and our lives. "
128 " Most twentysomethings know better than to compare their lives to celebrity microblogs, yet they treat Facebook images and posts from their peers as real. We don’t recognize that most everyone is keeping their troubles hidden. This underestimation of how much other twentysomethings are struggling makes everything feel like an upward social comparison, one where our not-so-perfect lives look low compared to the high life everyone else seems to be living. "
129 " With all the attention paid to the urban tribe, however, many twentysomethings have limited themselves to huddling together with like-minded peers. Some are in almost constant contact with the same few people. 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. "
130 " Weak times feel too different or, in some cases, literally too far away to be close friends. But that's the point. Because they're not just figures in an already ingrown cluster, weak ties gives us access to something fresh. They know things and people that we don't know. Information and opportunity spread farther and faster through weak ties than through close friends because weak ties have fewer overlapping contacts. Weak ties are like bridges you cannot see all the way across, so there is no telling where they might lead. "
― Meg Jay
131 " Every day, I work with twentysomethings who feel horribly deceived by the idea that their twenties would be the best years of their lives. "
132 " The best is the enemy of the good. —Voltaire, writer/philosopher "
133 " Weak ties feel too different or, in some cases, literally too far away to be close friends. But that's the point. Because they're not just figures in an already ingrown cluster, weak ties gives us access to something fresh. They know things and people that we don't know. Information and opportunity spread farther and faster through weak ties than through close friends because weak ties have fewer overlapping contacts. Weak ties are like bridges you cannot see all the way across, so there is no telling where they might lead. "
134 " Identity capital is our collection of personal assets. It is the repertoire of individual resources that we assemble over time. These are the investments we make in ourselves, the things we do well enough, or long enough, that they become a part of who we are. "
135 " Sometimes my clients are unclear about whether they are striving toward their potential or are on a search for glory, but a search for glory is pretty easy to spot. Any search for glory is propelled by what Horney called the tyranny of the should. Listening to Talia talk, it was difficult not to notice the “shoulds” and “supposed to’s” that littered her sentences: Work should be Wow! She should be in graduate school. Her life should look better than it did. 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. "
136 " Rather than a way of catching up, Facebook can be one more way of keeping up. What’s worse is that now we feel the need to keep up not just with our closest friends and neighbors, but with hundreds of others whose manufactured updates continually remind us of how glorious life should be. "
137 " For many, Facebook is less about looking up friends than it is about looking at friends. Research tells us that, on average, Facebook users spend more time examining others’ pages than adding content to their own. The site’s most frequent visitors—most often females who post and share photos and who receive status updates—use the site for “social surveillance.” These social investigators usually aren’t getting in touch or staying in touch with friends as much as they are checking up on them. And my clients are right: Judging and evaluating are involved. In one study, nearly four hundred participants examined mock-up Facebook pages and rated web-page owners for attractiveness, only to decide that the best-looking owners were the ones with the best-looking friends. "
138 " Talia’s friends invalidated what was real about Talia by assuming that searching was better than finding, friends were better than family, and adventure was better than going home. "
139 " If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are. —Charles de Montesquieu, writer/philosopher "
140 " often the first thing we know about ourselves is not what we are—it’s what we aren’t. We mark ourselves as not-this or not-that, the way Ian was quick to say he didn’t want to sit at the same desk all day. But self-definition cannot end there. An identity or a career cannot be built around what you don’t want. We have to shift from a negative identity, or a sense of what I’m not, to a positive one, or a sense of what I am. This takes courage. "