How To Escape the Quarter Life Crisis
By Ryan Felman
One of the biggest shocks to a man’s life is going from the fast-paced college life to the slower career life. Overnight you lose most of the close friends that you lived with, drank with and bonded with. It can even be depressing to see your youthful, energetic and optimistic classmates replaced with older, overweight and dull coworkers. This often leads to what is called, “A Quarter Life Crisis.”
This is a sample of an upcoming eBook I’ll be launching soon. And I’ll be giving it away for free for a limited time to email subscribers.
I struggled with this myself when I graduated from the University of Illinois and found myself moving to a small town. I had traded in my apartment and roommates for a nicer apartment living alone. I traded in the exciting college town that always had something to do for a quaint midwestern town.
My first week there, I walked into a small bar and I asked the bartender to turn on the hockey game, but she was clueless to which game I was referring. It was the Stanley Cup. It was at that moment that I knew I was in for an adjustment. After the initial novelty of getting a steady paycheck wore off, I found myself in a bit of a quarter life crisis. Life had gone from 60 to 0.
I began to buy into the lie that college is the best time of your life. Most of my days revolved around working long hours, hitting the gym and then watching a movie with a cocktail. Occasionally I’d go to the bars with my coworkers but these sleepy towny bars were a far cry from the college bars full of hot young women. The intelligent and motivated drunks were replaced with depressed and older drunks. In both situations the energy was infectious.
Despite having an amazing college experience, some of the best years in my life were yet to come. It just took some growing pains and readjustments to my daily routine for me to realize this. Unfortunately, many men never figure this out.
My girlfriend was still in college and I would go visit her about once a month. She was more interested in pursuing a career and subconsciously I knew it wouldn’t last. I found myself spending more time hanging with my friends when I went back to Champaign to visit her. In hindsight this was probably for the best as she is no longer in my life yet those friends are.
When you’re young and naïve, you look at the world romantically, so you expect these relationships you forge to last forever. The truth is, due to geography and personal growth, most of these relationships have deadlines. No one really warns you about this. You’ll outgrow many of your friends, or they may outgrow you. Eventually they’ll get families and move across the country. It becomes impossible to keep them all in your life.
Stay Connected with Your Old Friends
If you’re lucky, you’ll find a good core group of friends that you can keep together for the occasional trip. I have been in the same group chat with 4 other high school friends since graduating college 10 years ago. I highly recommend this. It allows you to keep in touch with your childhood friends, to joke about the same dumb shit you found funny at 18 as you’ll still find funny at 30. And it creates a constant reminder that you guys once formed a close connection. The loss of your friends is one of the biggest contributors to your quarter life crisis. Seeking new connections or forming a tribe is part of your solution to this problem.
Take it a step further and organize the occasional group trip. You’ll live a charmed life if you can manage to get even a few of these guys to meet up with you about once a year on some random trip. My group of friends and I have gone to New Orleans for a weekend bender full of stories those stories should probably be left unsaid. We’ve had tamer golfing trips where we stay at a lake house. And we’ve had the occasional bachelor party where someone pukes on the rooftop bar and gets kicked out. Some things never change.
Level Up Your Wardrobe
One of the biggest problems I see with young men is they don’t know how to look presentable or they don’t care to put any effort into their appearance. If you don’t care how you look, you’re holding yourself back in life. The love of your life (or a fun fling) might pass you up because you look homeless with the holes in your sweatshirt. You might meet a potential employer, but he doesn’t think you’re mature enough because your hat says “Female Body Inspector.”
First thing to do is to start throwing out all the immature items that work for college but not the real world. Dumb sexual jokes aren’t as funny or clever as they seemed when you were drunk. Retire the logo tees and other pieces with big logos. Anything with holes or tears is garbage.
Work on the basic pieces early and you’ll find it easier to put together outfits that make you look successful and put together. Start buying more cardigans and quarter zip sweaters in a solid color. Get a nice pair of leather boots. This will be one area where you should spend serious cash because a quality pair of leather boots will last you years and be a versatile piece of your wardrobe. I’ve owned these Wolverine 1000 Mile boots for about 6 years now and they still look great. You can check the price on Amazon here.
Stop wearing jeans every day. Its lazy and you know it. Mix in some corduroy and khakis to keep your looks fresh. It may feel awkward at first, but this is a massive gamechanger. People will judge your appearance before you even open your mouth.
And if you really want to step it up a notch, get an unstructured blazer. When you’re about to head in town for errands, grab your blazer instead of your hoodie and people will start treating you like an adult instead of a hoodlum that might be about pickpocket you. You can wear this over pretty much anything too. Dress it up with a dress shirt or dress down with a henley or basic tee. You can find a reasonably priced one at places like Gap or Banana Republic. Look for something simple and light with minimal or no shoulder padding.
Spruce Up Your Living Space
Guys catch a lot of flack for their barebones living spaces, but when you’re young it makes sense to keep it simple. You’re likely to be moving often in your twenties and you won’t spend much time in your “bachelor pad.” You’re too busy working, hitting the gym and going on pub crawls. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore the aesthetics of your space.
Get a plant. This can help keep the air feeling fresh and it has real health benefits. It keeps the air fresh and research shows that looking at greens can help calm you down.
Get some artwork on the walls. And no, scantily clad women don’t count as art. Get a couple decent pieces that speak to you and if they’re prints, get them framed. It may feel weird to put a $100 frame on a $10 art print, but it will look classy and women will definitely take notice. Check out old advertisements like this old Guinness poster.
Create Your Own Guide to Life
This is a lot easier than it sounds so bear with me here. Get yourself a physical notebook or a digital journal. I recommend Evernote as you can jot down ideas on your phone or laptop and Evernote will sync your notes.
Have you ever found yourself having a revelation or a brilliant idea, only to forget about it later like a dream you didn’t write down? Well some of these ideas may be life changing. Yet you let them escape your grasp because you never enacted a system to track these ideas. Create a running list of brilliant ideas. A list of habits or systems that make you a productivity machine.
This may seem foolish or ineffective at first. But over time, this can build into a powerful resource for you. This can serve as a lifelong reminder of your greatest ideas and truths.
Keep this habit up and you’ll one day have your own guide to living a great life. A reference book for you to check whenever you’re feeling down or lost. This is will help keep you organized and on track.
Living Lives of Quiet Desperation
There are many men who find themselves living lives of quiet desperation. They’re trapped in a house or apartment they hate, working a job they find dull and unfulfilling with a girl that only tolerated them. We grew up with grand aspirations of becoming millionaires, driving fast cars and living exciting lives.
Yet somewhere on our paths, we hit road bumps in life. Your girlfriend cheats on you. You get laid off from your job. You have health problems and gain a bunch of weight. These setbacks make it tough to live the life of your dreams. Most people give up at the first sign of adversity and they don’t have anyone keeping them accountable. One small road bump steers you into a lifetime of mediocrity because you stopped trying. You stopped caring. You find other nihilists online and you join in the self-deprecating humor for dopamine boosts via upvotes and likes.
Back in college you couldn’t let yourself give up. Your friends were right there to keep you in check. They’d get you drunk, talk to you about your problems and then help you rally. How many times did your roommate encourage you to get back in the gym or convince you to sign up for a recreational sport? All these tough but fun activities you do with your friends help establish the deep meaningful brotherhood that is often missing from adult life. After college, all your friends have moved on with their lives. They’re busy working jobs they hate and dealing with their own ungrateful girlfriend. Everyone is too busy with their own lives to be there for you.
But you don’t have to go it alone. You can form your own tribe, even as an adult. And the most successful people have their own network of people they can depend on and return the favor. You need brotherhood. You need friends you can lean on. You need someone you can have the hard conversations with and talk about more meaningful topics than sports and the latest show.
I spent years looking for this very sort of connection during my own quarter life crisis. I went to bars looking for friends and wound up with alcoholic friends who only wanted to go out drinking. I wasted so many nights forming blurry memories and letting my health slide. Ultimately this proved unfulfilling. I spent years on various forums talking with other men and this helped because these were more meaningful conversations, but I never found a brotherhood. No one was holding each other accountable and most simply chased the dopamine rush of getting upvotes.
Everything changed when I started writing and taking social media more seriously. When I started this website and began sharing my authentic feelings and frustrations with the current world, I began to forge real connections. Finally, I was gaining real friends that were concerned with staying healthy, self-improvement and making the world a better place.
Now I’m offering the same salvation to you! If you feel lost and disillusioned with life, know that there is a brighter future for you. An opportunity to form a real brotherhood with like-minded men that want to make the future of masculinity better for all men. A group to hold you accountable.
Upgrade Your Social Media Presence
You likely view social media as a waste of time, but it can be your key to opening up doors in your life. These doors can be anything from your next girlfriend to your next job opportunity.
Picture this, you’re out having coffee and you hit it off with the girl standing in line with you. You start talking and get her name and number. She gets curious about you and wonders if you’re living an exciting and ambitious life or if you’re just another boring guy who drinks and watches sports. She pulls you up on Instagram. What does she see?
She might see a guy who hasn’t done much with his life and doesn’t seem to have any interesting friends. Or maybe she sees a guy who’s done a respectable job of showcasing the highlights of his life. She sees a man who’s traveled to interesting places, who is in pics with friends and attractive women, who is actively engaged in his local community. It’s popular to say that when a girl won’t respond to you, its because she found another guy. While likely true, its very possible you weren’t enticing enough to hook her in. And many of you fumble here before you even get to the first date.
Social media can also be a powerful networking tool if you use it the right way! I’ve made great friends on through social media. I’ve made business connections. I’ve made consistent monthly income through social media. And you can do this too if you use it right.
So how do you use social media the right way? It starts with following the right people. Get away from people who are constantly negative. Get away from people who obsess with politics. And avoid people who are not moving forward in life. You can call them losers or whatever you want, but you understand what I mean. Follow positive, insightful and motivated people. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. And this is also true of social media. Their energy is contagious.
Start writing yourself too. You can share helpful tips on Twitter, you can share your thoughts and ideas on a blog. You can write articles on Linkedin. At first, no one will really notice you, but if you stick with it and write consistently, you can grow an audience of loyal readers and change their lives! Building an online audience is one of the greatest tools to building a better life and most people don’t even realize how powerful this can be!
But its hard to get started. You don’t have a big audience. You’re not getting the engagement you want, and you likely don’t even know where or how to get started. That’s why I’ve built the Twitter Dominance Tribe, where I personally will coach you in getting started with your online presence. I’ll show you how to build a significant Twitter following so you can promote your blog or simply reach more people. I’ll give you the insider tips you need to start making money online. And I’ll help create a tribe of like-minded people for you to form a brotherhood with. The key being successful in the online world, is to build a tribe for support, tips and boosting your message.
If you’d like to learn more, check out the Twitter Dominance Tribe. You can learn more here.
This is a sample of an upcoming eBook I’ll be launching soon. And I’ll be giving it away for free for a limited time to email subscribers.
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The handbook for young men everywhere who are lost and need direction and guidance in life.
It is never too late to change your life. What can you do today to improve yourself?
The handbook for young men everywhere who are lost and need direction and guidance in life.
It is never too late to change your life. What can you do today to improve yourself?
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When I think of the most interesting people I know, it’s not the hyper-specialized experts in one field. It’s the people who find a unique juxtaposition of different walks of life. I’m drawn to those who can be both physically fit and intelligent enough to write. Two skills that are not that common alone but uniquely rare when found in the same person.