I wrote this first part in 2019, but I ultimately decided not to publish it because it was “just a rant.” In 2019, I couldn’t decide what the point of my blog is, though I still don’t. I thought it might be a good on-ramp to uploading on my blog, with some updated thoughts on it now. The problem with "adulting" (January 30, 2019)Language is important. A few years ago, I read “What to Say When You Talk to Your Self,” a book about self-talk and how to frame things positively when using your inner voice. To me, the book was equally about the importance of language, rephrasing your internal statements to use words that make you feel better. Language can shape the way we think, feel, and behave all the time. Yet, it doesn’t seem like people promote this sort of technical solution to their mental health. Think of how helpful it would be to adjust the language you assign to yourself instead of just trying to “be more positive.” Obviously, the same concepts of language and attitude apply when communicating with others. Think about the way you hold onto positive emotions when somebody compliments one of your strengths or hold onto negative emotions when somebody insults one of your insecurities. Now, I think everyone in their twenties is familiar with this phrase: Adulting: “I can’t hang out this weekend because I have to work Saturday and go grocery shopping on Sunday. Adulting is so hard!” In my opinion, the way we use adulting in sentences day-to-day is really problematic. The problem with “adulting” is that we’re using the word to catch any sort of discomfort or negative emotions we feel about growing up. The problem with that is anybody over 18 is legally an adult. Most people using this phrase are young adults. It’s a label you cannot shed, and yet, you’re attaching the word “adult” to only the negative aspects of growing up. For some reason, now, being an adult is associated with paying bills, working long hours, or applying to new jobs but never to the autonomy you have or the opportunities you have for growth in front of you. More so, you’re distancing yourself from the term as if being an adult is something you need to act and not already are. Some other examples of this phenomena: Life: “I know it sucks working overtime for two weeks, but that’s life. Get used to it!” Real world: “It’s just so much harder making ends meet when you go out into the real world.” If you’re following my thinking, the way we use “adulting” is literally distancing us from embracing adulthood, making us dread coming changes, and stunting our potential growth in areas that we need to work on. This is all because of the way we use a word as a catch-all for negativity. In another example, we use “that’s life” to catch negatives like working long hours, waking up to early alarms, or even the death of a family member. In reality, life is embracing all of the positives and negatives that come your way. I think we can do the same thing with adulting. Being in your twenties is a unique opportunity. You get a relatively free pass to try new things and get better at them in the process. Life in your twenties is filled with notable milestones and unignorable growing pains from achieving those milestones. So, what should we do? First, stop using adulting or other phrases as a catch-all term for negativity. The phenomena above show ways that we can start to feel bad about being an adult or even living. Then, get specific with what you’re good at and what you need to work on (note: not what you’re bad it, phrase it constructively). There are so many things to be confident in because you made it this far. Big decisions coming up? You’ve probably made so many big decisions already. This is just another round of them. Things to work on? Definitely. I’m sure we all need to develop our communication skills with older adults, increase our comfort levels with debt, and work on having a better attitude when that alarm goes off at 6 a.m. But I think that defining these tasks more specifically is going to help everyone’s mental health. Instead of viewing adulting as a barrier to overcome, let’s start conforming to it as a part of life. That means we choose to talk about the good parts too. The problem with communicationAs it turns out, writing a blog of my rants was not a substitute for meeting weekly with a licensed mental health professional who gives me constructive feedback on my destructive thought patterns and behaviors. This is what most people call therapy, though my therapist and I haven’t really agreed on what we call it yet. I’m still not sure if it matters. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about verbiage, conflict, and communication. At its core, this is what communication is. We’re doing it now: I, the sender, have something I want to tell you. I’m encoding it in these words, putting it in a Microsoft Word document that will later be a page on my blog, and sending it to you, the receiver, to decode. When I wrote “The problem with adulting” in 2019, I went through this process because I wanted to talk about how it was weird that I felt we were all engaging in this self-destructive behavior of linguistically equating adulting with negative chores. When my first readers read it, they decoded it as a rant with no real target. Me in 2019 got that feedback and decided nobody else really needed to read it. So, my therapist and I were recently talking about an example where I was giving advice, and the person I was talking to said it was bad advice. I was taken aback by this feedback and stunned to the point that we pretty much ended the conversation right there. The more my therapist and I broke it down, the more we realized the sender and the receiver were standing in two different places and looking at the same thing. “But that couldn’t happen to me,” I said, “Because I’m a good communicator, and they should have known where I was coming from.” The next week, I came back after having a little think about it, and I admitted she was right. I said that the reason I was able to get over this example was putting my “ego” aside. As soon as I said that, we got in a new debate. “Well, you’re not really talking about ‘ego’ in a Freudian sense,” she said, “You’re talking more about pride or self-importance.” Ironically, now, I realize we had devolved into a similar debate that prompted “The problem with adulting” from a similar debate that led to me not publishing it. “Honestly, I’m not smart enough to know what that means.” I admitted. So, we spent the next twenty minutes asking questions and citing examples. It was like we were in a plane above a small planet, exploring the clouds around the word we were searching for without ever landing on the surface. By the end, we both knew what we were talking about, we just didn’t have a word for it. We were speaking two different languages, and the encoding/decoding process wasn’t perfect, but we were communicating. The problem with communicating is that there is more than one player, and there are so many pieces to it. While I am confident that I can fully understand what “The problem with adulting” means to me, I will never understand how it reads to another person. And each person is going to have their own interpretation on that too. Is Dr. Mario a doctor?... and similar questions |
AuthorI am a proud creative, U-M LSA employee, University Activities Board at Michigan State University alumni, pro wrestling fan, Detroit sports follower, Nintendo geek, and sandcastle champion. Categories |