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1、20岁光阴不再来When I was in my 20s, I saw my very first psychotherapy client. I was a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Berkeley. She was a 26-year-old woman named Alex. Now Alex walked into her first session, wearing jeans and a big slouchy top, and she dropped onto the couch in my office and kicke
2、d off her flats and told me she was there to talk about guy problems. Now when I heard this, I was so relieved. My classmate got an arsonist for her first client. And I got a twenty-something who wanted to talk about boys. This I thought I could handle. But I didnt handle it. With the funny stories
3、that Alex would bring to session, it was easy for me just to nod my head while we kicked the can down the road.Thirtys the new 20, Alex would say, and as far as I could tell, she was right. Work happened later, marriage happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later. Twenty-something
4、 like Alex and I had nothing but time. But before long, my supervisor pushed me to push Alex about her love life. I pushed back. I said, Sure, shes dating down, shes sleeping with a knucklehead, but its not like shes going to marry the guy.And then my supervisor said, Not yet, but she might marry th
5、e next one. Besides, the best time to work on Alexs marriage is before she has one.Thats what psychologists call an Aha! moment. That was a moment I realized,30 is not the new 20.Yes, people settle down later than they used to, but that didnt make Alexs 20s a developmental downtime.That made Alexs 2
6、0s a developmental sweet spot, and we were sitting there blowing it. That was when I realized that this sort of benign neglect was a real problem, and it had real consequences, not just for Alex and her love life but for the careers and the families and the futures of twenty-somethings everywhere. T
7、here are 50 million twenty-somethings in the United States right now. Were talking about 15 percent of the population, or 100 percent if you consider that no ones getting through adulthood without going through their 20s first. I specialize in twenty-somethings because I believe that every single on
8、e of those 50 million twenty-somethings deserves to know what psychologists, sociologists, neurologists and fertility specialists already know that claiming your 20s is one of the simplest, yet most transformative, things you can do for work, for love, for your happiness, maybe even for the world. T
9、his is not my opinion. These are the facts. We know that 80 percent of lifes most defining moments take place by age 35.That means that eight out of 10 of the decisions and experiences and Aha! moments that make your life what it is will have happened by your mid-30s. People who are over 40, dont pa
10、nic. This crowd is going to be fine, I think we know that the first 10 years of a career has an exponential impact on how much money youre going to earn. We know that more than half of Americans are married or are living with or dating their future partner by 30.We know that the brain caps off its s
11、econd and last growth spurt in your 20s as it rewires itself for adulthood which means that whatever it is you want to change about yourself, now is the time to change it. We know that personality changes more during your 20s than at any other time in life, and we know that female fertility peaks at
12、 age 28,and things get tricky after age 35.So your 20s are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options. So when we think about child development, we all know that the first five years are a critical period for language and attachment in the brain. Its a time when your ordinary, day
13、-to-day life has an inordinate impact on who you will become. But what we hear less about is that theres such a thing as adult development, and our 20s are that critical period of adult development. But this isnt what twenty-somethings are hearing. Newspapers talk about the changing timetable of adu
14、lthood. Researchers call the 20s an extended adolescence. Journalists coin silly nicknames for twenty-somethings like twixters and kidults. Its true. As a culture, we have trivialized what is actually the defining decade of adulthood. Leonard Bernstein said that to achieve great things, you need a p
15、lan and not quite enough time. Isnt that true? So what do you think happens when you pat a twenty-something on the head and you say, You have 10 extra years to start your life? Nothing happens. You have robbed that person of his urgency and ambition, and absolutely nothing happens. And then every da
16、y, smart, interesting twenty-somethings like you or like your sons and daughters come into my office and say things like this:I know my boyfriends no good for me, but this relationship doesnt count. Im just killing time.Or they say, Everybody says as long as I get started on a career by the time Im 30, Ill be fine.But then it starts to sound like this:My 20s are almost over, and I have nothing to show for myself. I had a better rs
