The Most Stressful Decade in Your Life

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Tajan Braithwaite Renderos, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

The new mid-life crisis starts in your 30’s. Your 30’s are often a time when we’re trying to amass the trappings of adult success: the car, the home, the good-paying job, the husband, and the baby. Now, all of these trappings of success require an incredible amount of work and energy to get and maintain, especially when newly acquired. For example, when you buy a new house, you have to put in so much work to make it yours, you have to move in, paint, renovate, decorate in a substantive way before you just get to the maintenance phase. In the US, the average age women have their first baby is in their late twenties and early 30’s. It takes an incredible amount of work, time, and energy to care for a baby. A new husband or wife can be an incredible amount of work, because you’re still in the midst of negotiating and solidifying roles and preferences within your relationship. Also, by the time you hit you’re late 30’s you’ve had enough years of seasoning at your job so you’re credible enough to be considered for significant promotions, so you’re grinding to achieve that. Now, when you combine all of these things, the new house, the demanding job, the new baby, the young marriage, the combination can be extremely stressful.

The problem with this decade is that it’s a time period where many people are seeking validation outside of themselves, and it can feel like a decade where you’re a workhorse in a constant state of doing, and missing the state of blissful being that you had when you were a child. Now, if we fall short of any of the trappings of a successful thirty something year old, then society deems us to be not doing so well, stalled, stuck, or directionless. The societal pressure to amass everything in a short time is part of the reason why your 30’s can become a period of tremendous stress. I know women that are so terrified that they haven’t gotten married yet that they have anxiety attacks when their birthdays are coming around. I also know women who are married with children, while trying to over-work at work, literally fall apart from exhaustion, fatigue, and stress. The stress of obtaining and maintaining these trappings of success or the pressure to conform to these standards, and the resulting anxiety that takes over if we don’t means that we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t.

So, how can we ensure that we lead a more balanced life in our thirties? The first step is to know fully that you’re worth is within, not in the perception of success. So if you don’t have the nice house, marriage, and baby, you’re still entirely worthy just as you are, you are in no way living a smaller life compared to the woman or man who does have these things. The second step is to know for sure that how other people think your life is doing is their business not yours. They may offer their opinion, but you get to make the empowered decision to choose to give it value or not.The third step is to pay attention to stress signals from your body. The anxiety you feel as you play e-mail whac-a-mole at work, the fact that you wake up feeling tired every day, or you come home from work with a headache every day. These are all stress signals from your body that you must pay attention to and address. The only time society expects women to commit to self-care is when we’re pregnant and essentially caring for someone else, as if we can’t be radical about self-care for our own sake. Brene Brown a famous social science researcher reminds us that your body is keeping score of insults to it, and it can’t lose. So, now that you’re paying attention to the stress signals you’re receiving, the fourth step is to get help, get help, and get more help, get help before you’re in crisis and think you need it. If you’ve amassed the so called trappings of success and you need help to maintain all of it, then get the help you need. This will allow you to have the freedom to let yourself be, and have time to do things that fill your spirit with joy, lightness, and fun. For example, you might need a village to help raise that first baby, then build your village, you might need a relationship coach or counselor to help you navigate the rocky early years of a new marriage, you may need a mentor at your job while you navigate upward mobility, or if you’re feeling stuck at a dead-end, life-sucking job you might need a life coach to help you discover new possibilities. I urge you, don’t say to yourself I’m stuck and could use help and not make the investment in you. You willingly help others without judgement, you must do the same for yourself without judgement.

You’re 30’s are a decade where you can really hold the reins of your life. You don’t have to take mandatory classes you hate anymore. You get to to selectively invest in what you need so that you can have enough space to allow more joy and meaning in your everyday life. So, let’s commit to radical self-care, especially in your thirties.