Markers of adulthood: Expectations, possibilities, identity and loss
- HeardinLondon
- May 7
- 3 min read
Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 181
Quite often on coaching calls, I hear people say, "I don't think I'm very good at adulting." Underneath that is often the message, " I thought my life would look different to this."
What are the markers of what would make a good adult life for you? Often what I hear coming up in coaching calls is being able to drive. Maybe it is some ideas that you have about your career or your financial goals. Maybe it's tied to the number of kids that you have or don't have. Maybe it was the traveling the world or the getting the house, or to be on your fifth divorce by now. What are your markers of adulthood, and who taught you that? And how do these things align with your value metrics? Do they align with your politics?
Do they align with the kind of way that you judge other people as to whether they're doing humaning right?
How can you have some of these things and not have some of these things, and not judge yourself? That's what we're gonna be looking at in this course. We're gonna be looking at some of these things and the way that we've spoken to ourselves about what does and doesn't make a good, strong life that we can be happy with. And also to hold some space for the sadness that some of this stuff hasn't happened for us and may not happen for us.
And then we're gonna go digging around in this a little bit and try and work out which one of those things really are impossible and which ones did we put aside because we were told we shouldn't have needs or wants. We're gonna look at where some of this messaging comes from.
And in order to do that, I'd like you to just begin to have a little think about what is it that you think makes an adult?
What is the life that you thought that you were gonna have?
Where are you now in that timeline?
And is there anything that you put down that perhaps you'd still like to do?
And I invite you to just have a think about what you think you would feel if you had all of those things. We're gonna be doing a lot of work on this course about looking at the way that we think about things and how that reflects in the way that we feel about stuff.
Speaker: I invite you to get curious about why you want these things. What do you think they would give you that you don't have now?
Do these things align with your values? Do you think that they would expand or shrink you? In order to have these things or not have these things that you decided would be the way that your life should look, doing a lot of work on that word "should", what contracts would you need to break in order to get those things in your life?
What contracts would you need to break if you were to stop wanting them?
And is it still possible to live a happy life going forward without these things?
We're gonna be looking at that in great detail.
So how can you hold all of this stuff, and maybe some grief as well?
I'm gonna invite you to look at the grittiness of the whole spectrum of life and just ask what's possible. What's possible from where you are now? And how do we do this whole 360 and still hold ourselves without losing our identity?
We're gonna be asking ourselves what you gave up in order to live this life, and sometimes we're gonna be asking if that was really a choice.
Most important question that I want to leave you with for now as the introduction to this course is, what if things turned out better than I possibly hoped?
We begin with the first module on the 1st of June will be appearing in the portal below. You've got some homework to do until then.
Have a look at some of those questions, and I look forward to seeing you inside.
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