133. Feeling lost after university and career anxiety

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, Wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here. Back for another episode, perhaps the most quintessential twenty something episode we have done in a while. Today, we're going to talk about the sensation of feeling lost after university and struggling to figure out kind of what we're doing with our lives. A lot of that career confusion. College university, for those of us who have the opportunity to go, feels like a bit of a really safe bubble, a bit of a magical whirlwind, like we're getting a bit of a teaser for adulthood, and it's exciting, and we have so much freedom, and there's this very singular goal that we're working towards. We're working towards graduation, and whatever comes after that kind of feels like a really big, ominous cloud, something that we can both ignore but are also very increasingly aware of. That ways, that decision paralysis, that sense of what is going to come next, weighs really heavily on our mind. I think the closer that it gets if you are experiencing some of that anticipatory anxiety around where do I go to next, or perhaps you're in that period right now facing the post graduation blues, I really empathize with you. I think it's not an easy transition. But it's also not one that we see speak about enough. I think we expect people to leave university, leave college and have some grand idea or some path forward, and very rarely, I think, does that happen. Very rarely do we have the answers to all of those questions that we are going to face post graduation, like what do I actually want to do with my life? What is going to make me feel fulfilled? What are my goals? What is my vision? Am I happy right now? What am I going to do when I start losing my friends? So many things that kind of pile up, and I think that that's something that we really need to talk about. That experience is one that we haven't spoken about on the show, despite it being really important. The one thing that our twenties promise us, and I say this all the time, is choice and change. No matter where you are in the world, who you are the plans might envision, this decade is going to throw you a lot of curve balls, some of which we can predict and some that we can't. I think that's all part of the game, part of the fun of being in this transitional period of life. But it's also why we kind of colloquially hear about our twenties being called the panic years, the panic of having to find yourself amongst discovering the things that society expects from you, such as our career, the types of relationships we want, the type of person that we want to be. Graduating university and having to discover who you are beyond the structure of schooling is one of those curve balls, even if we anticipate it, because what it does is it presents accumulation of a lot of life stresses and changes that naturally leave us feeling very overwhelmed, perhaps even a little bit aimless. It kind of feels like the first chapter of adulthood is actually beginning while that former chapter is closing, one that we are probably very nostalgic for one that we possibly really enjoyed. So it's actually coined its very own phrase, known as post graduation blues or depression. And it's not a clinical term, I will state that as of yet at least, But the fact that we have a term for an experience a lot of us go through kind of goes to show how universality is. To feel anxious, to feel uncomfortable, to feel stuck, even depressed or lost after university and perhaps you needed that reminder that you are not the only one. And it's a combination, in my opinion, of four factors in particular that leave us in this emotional kind of a mental state of stagnation. Oftentimes we just think about the confusion associated with needing to fully act as an adult and make choices when it comes to finding a but it's also firstly losing friends postgraduation and no longer having that natural, convenient friend group formed around you based on the fact that you're all at a similar stage in life and in the same place. You really do begin to notice some of those friendships of convenience. It's something we're all going to experience. The scattering of friends across the country, even across the globe, and so it feels like, suddenly, out of the blue, you're quite isolated. After years of having your friends live just around the corner or down the block, it feels really lonely to not have that support system. I promise that that is completely normal. I felt it immensely after I graduated, as one of the people who you know, did move away from where I went to university. I did lose friends, and that's something that I don't feel comfortable saying. But the thing that I've noticed is that you're not going to lose the people you truly want to hang on to, the ones that you have a very deep connection with. If anything, I think it's an important transitional moment because you shared some of those relationships that perhaps were not as meaningful as you imagined, and post graduation, graduating university is when you gain that perspective. There is like one way that I really like to stay in touch with my friends, and it's with this app called a gape. Okay, this is not sponsored. I'm just a really huge fan of their work. So it's essentially where you send a question once a day or whenever you would like that spur conversation about what's going on in your daily life, stories, funny moments, deeper topics, and you and your friend or even your partner each get to answer throughout the day and see the other person's respet. Honestly, when I discovered this app, it was such a game changer. But also things like planning facetimes and trips to see each other. Making an event out of it is so meaningful. In that post graduation period. You'll also make new friends for this new chapter. I really do guarantee it work. Friends and travel friends and those kind of people that you just meet one day and suddenly it feels like you've known them forever. Those people are coming into your life, they are on their way, They are already out there, you just haven't met them yet. So I would say I understand that it's really stressful seeing perhaps your friend group kind of splinter, but it does find its way back to you. You do find a way through it. The second factor contributing to this stress is financial anxiety. A lot of us, myself included, finish college university with some kind of debt or financial insecurity, whereby we really feel the pressure to start earning money immediately to pay off our loans to pay our bills, to just pay for an adult lifestyle. In fact, it's really interesting because that sense of impending financial doom associated with a lot of student loan debt really does negatively impact our mental health in our sense of coping. There was a study done that around sixty two percent of Americans. It was conducted in the US. They reported that they experienced some sense of stress, anxiety pressure associated with needing to make money straight out of university to pay back their debt. I think the stress of also maybe not having a full time job lined up is also incredibly just anxiety inducing. I remember, speaking from experience, checking how much debt I was in the day after I graduated, literally the day after I graduated, and being speechless, and I'm going to be completely honest, I still have not paid all of that off some four years later. Financial anxiety and this sort of massive life stressor that we're experiencing where we're always worrying about money and we're always worried about how we're going to kind of get on our feet as adults. It makes us feel like we need to make decisions really quickly. We need to get a real adult job, a high paying adult job right out of the gate, and even if you are lucky enough to graduate with no debt, I think being a college student versus being a graduate comes with a different level of expenses, but also a different expectation that you should kind of be on your way to building some sort of career or saving for a home or some kind of long term financial plan. And that financial anxiety causes a lot of stress for many of us. It can lead to a lot of sleepless nights. It can also make us feel like we really need to start accomplishing all the things we want right now at once in this moment, like we kind of have to make all of our moves at once. But honestly, good things take time, and they take diligence, and they take consistency and sometimes just a little bit of luck. If it's not working out right now, if you are not working your dream job or succeeding in everything that you wish you were doing, if you're not where you want to be at the moment, just remember a lot can change in a few years. Speaking from experience and kind of the best paths, the best journeys are ones that are not seamless, that they're not easy. I also think there's a really inherent sense of competition and comparison during this transitional period, especially around the post college job hunt. I remember applying for graduate jobs when I was about to leave university and a getting rejected from a lot of them, and b just realizing that there are a lot of competent people out there. How in the world are we all going to find jobs? Will I actually be able to work somewhere or do something where I'm satisfied. And that was also combined with the absolute terror of working a nine to five, which just felt so unnatural to me given the previous freedom I had when I was studying and working casual or seasonal jobs. It's a huge adjustment to enter into an eight hour work week, five days a week. There's this kind of lifestyle change where it feels like your life now needs to fit in around your job, and it's really exhausting. I always say to people who are struggling with that to just give it six months, give your body and your mind six months to adapt and find its rhythm, because that first little period is going to be a struggle, and you may even question whether this is really the life for you, which I think is an important question to ask, to not be afraid of, and I think it's one that more and more of us are questioning each year. Is the nine to five really the optimal way of living and working because it doesn't feel inherently fulfilling, and it can feel really, really terrifying. And that really brings me to my next point, which has to do with choice overload. We talk about this concept a lot on the podcast because I think it's one of the defining theories of our twenties. But for a refresh. In psychology, choice overload refers to having too many choices or options such that it actually causes decision or analysis paralysis. It actually makes us makes it harder for us to pick between them, which is intuitive, but they've done studies on this with actual postgraduate students whereby the more options they perceived having available to them, the more likely they were to struggle with feeling satisfied choosing just one because they were a lot more fearful of the what if. What if I make the wrong choice and regret it? That can make us feel very lost having to choose between so many different possible pathways, and humans we just like to have fewer choices because it means fewer scenarios to weigh up, fewer cost benefit analysis to conduct. But in our twenties, we are presented with a lot of different forks in the road or the path. Do you start the corporate job, do you go traveling for a while, Do you do some postgraduate education, or do you keep working your retail or your hospitality job until you find something you love. Do you pursue your big creative dream. Each of these scenarios comes with pros and cons. They have their benefits, but they also have their downsides, and deciding between them can feel like we're kind of closing more doors for ourselves than we're opening. And I think one of the worst realizations or fears we can have is what if we are limiting ourselves too young, too soon. It's a fear of missing out, not just on a social scale, but a fear of missing out on life. I honestly think personally, this is a massive fallacy, the fallacy that we can't have it all, We can't live all those different lives that we want to live. I think you can have it all, but you can't have it all at once at the same time. I spoke about this on our Milestone Anxiety episode, but I think it still does ring true. I'd like to think of my twenties like a series of chapters or seasons, kind of like your favorite TV show, where each season see is the character changing or in some new environment or relationship, having some new experience. Season one is twenty to twenty two. It's kind of our founding years. It's our coming of age. Season season two twenty three to twenty four. We're getting on our feet. Maybe we have our first job. We've moved to a new city or into a new apartment or a sharehouse. There's new characters, there's new environments. Season three is twenty five to twenty six, Season four obviously twenty seven to twenty eight, and season five the finale, twenty nine to thirty. Your twenties are not just one long chapter, one big chunk of years. You have, at least, depending on how you see it, five seasons in this decade, Five two year seasons that you can choose to feel with whatever you envision. You can start jobs and quit jobs. You can fall in love and out of love, cut your hair, let it grow back again, travel, return home. You can spend a year doing nothing but pursuing some deep creative passion, because you have nine other years during this decade to figure it out. And also, it doesn't end there, you know, It's not like your thirties or a death sentence or the end of the road. I think the biggest myth that we tell ourselves postgraduation is that the most exciting chapter in our lives has come to an end. And I can solidly tell you that that is not the case. Nostalgia will keep you stuck feeling that way, Nostalgia for the uni days, for the good times. But this is really the beginning. I just cannot stress enough. This is the beginning of something amazing, and you are going to experience so many surprises that life is going to hand your way that perhaps you right now state of post graduation blues, just can't really foresee. And I think that short sightedness often comes from a place of transitional anxiety. So transitional anxiety is kind it's a form of anxiety, obviously a form of stress and worry that primarily comes from a significant life change. Humans, we are creatures of comfort. We don't like huge events that upend our sense of stability. Security or emotional homeostasis, kind of that sense of internal calmness and consistency. Graduating university. Although it feels very positive, it is a moment of celebration, it is a massive accomplishment, it is also still a source of stress because we are transitioning from one chapter of our life to the next one in which we are going to encounter novel and new situations that we haven't necessarily practiced for because we've never been exposed to them, one where we really can't predict what's going to happen next. And if you think about it, graduating, especially from college or university, is really you exiting almost two decades of a very familiar, structured way of living and operating. For most of us, we go from primary school to high school to college. That is the last fifteen years of your life in the schooling system, working behaving in a very similar way, doing this same kind of task, just at a gradually increasing intensity. Kind of all you've ever known since you were a child, is this one way of doing things in pursuit of this large goal that seems really far away until you graduate, until it's happening right now, and then it's over. You stop studying for perhaps the first time in your life, and all of your goals that you've had for so long suddenly are accomplished, and it shifts to something bigger and something intangible. You are no longer working towards that one thing that you have been striving for since you entered the education system, and that can be a catalyst for a lack of purpose. And purpose is something that we all need. It's a deep psychological need to feel fulfilled and to feel meaningful. I think it also comes with a lot of joy as well, and a huge sense of relief. Fifteen years is a massive marathon of effort and hours, and you are probably exhausted by the time you get to the end. But it's also the end to a structure and a daily routine that we're familiar with. In that environment, it's also very easy to define success. You know, there is a correlation between effort and results. You study harder, you get a's, you succeed, you're praised. Post university, adult life does not operate in the same AI way, So it is confusing to be in this new system where sometimes you aren't rewarded for effort. Sometimes you can work really hard towards your dreams and it's not correlated with success. So we have that combined shock to the system where A we've never known anything different and we're having to figure that out, and B we've achieved the thing that we've been working for and towards for decades. So now what what next? What next? It's a really common conundrum. But here's the secret. No one has a clue, and everyone who looks like they do has just faked it really well until they figured it out. Honestly, myself included, I think I'm still faking it most days. And you are highly capable, you are adaptable, you have faced change and challenges before. This is just the next quest, the next opportunity to kind of test your character and grow as millions have done before you and come out the other side. It's also important, especially when it comes to career confusion or not knowing what you actually want to do in your life, to decenter work from your sense of identity. The way you choose to make money is only one facet to who you are. Your career is only one small element of your self concept, and once we take that off a pedestal, we are able to enjoy life for all of its nuances and small joys, rather than feeling this pressure to be one hundred percent satisfied with our jobs, or feel lost when that one component of our life is perhaps not going so well or we're still confused. Think of your life and your identity as a series of buckets that include your relationships, your friends, your family, your partners, your hobbies, the things that make you feel intent and excited, what you like doing beyond work, your goals, the broader things in life that you want to work towards, your physical and mental health, your values, how you want to behave, who you want to be, your passions. You know that's more than hobbies, more than values. What are the things that you can spend hours talking about? You know, what kind of Wikipedia page would you know? Back to front? What's an issue that you find meaningful? You need to fill all of those buckets equally. You need to pour your time and your energy and your effort into all those things to feel fulfilled. And I think I see people get into trouble when they don't diversify who they are. They see themselves as just their careers, and they neglect their relationships, they neglect their health, they neglect their passions because we are increasingly living in a world, in a society where you professional success is a determinant of your self worth. And yet we did not evolve to be those kinds of creatures. We evolved to live multi dimensional lives. And I would say, amongst all of those buckets that make up your identity, what you do for work is probably the least important if those other facets of yourself remain full and alive. It's like that thing that people always say, you know, you're never going to wish that you'd spend more time in the office, And when things like sickness, or when your relationships are falling apart, or when there's something happening in your family, work always goes on the back burner. Right. It's not the most important thing for who you are. And you know, it's okay if you don't know what you want to do. It's okay if you're feeling a little bit lost. This is a significant transition, perhaps one of the biggest ones that will make before retirement. So be kind to yourself. And what I really want to talk about next is some tips I have for addressing that feeling of being a little bit aimless, feeling a little bit unhappy, confused postgraduation, and also how to manage some of that career confusion. It's all fine and good for me to sit here and reassure you that you'll be fine, But I also think that a lot of us benefit from some practical steps towards where we're going, some practical steps forward. So we are going to talk about all of that and more after this short break. Feeling lost does not come with an easy exit plan. I think if that was the case, we wouldn't be feeling that way in the first place, right, Like, that's the irony. If we could just snap our fingers and suddenly find our calling, we would all be doing that. On that point point, I don't actually think there is such a thing as a calling or one thing on this planet that we were each made to do only one thing. Instead, I think we all have certain aptitudes, things that we excel at, and discovering what those are is what allows us to discover a whole number of things that we would be good at, perhaps equally that we would love doing equally. That aptitude, combined with our passion, what kind of lights our soul, what provides us with a sense of drive and mission and meaning is kind of the formula to minimizing that sense of career confusion and having a sense forward, having a sense of a power forward. I guess. So what you need to find is that combination of aptitude and passion, and that won't always be obvious, but here's how you can identify it. Identifying aptitude is the easiest step, So let's start there. Here's kind of a few questions I often refer to, and I want you to mentally answer them, and I want you to answer them honestly. What kind of tasks are you most excited to do in your daily life but also in your professional life? When do you feel like you are in a flow state? So a flow state is a mental state where we are entirely focused on a single activity and time passes quite quickly without us knowing. Do you like to plan or are you okay to be led and let others plan. What kind of skills come naturally to you? Is it talking to people and feeling like they always open up, Maybe being able to really easily rationalize ideas, to form really good arguments. Maybe you're creative. Do you have a really esthetic brain? I have one friend, Sarah. Shout out to Sarah, I fucking love her. But Sarah has this really aesthetic eye and I do not. She can really easily make things incredibly beautiful, and she sees potential for beauty in very everyday things and really brings that beauty out. You know, I look at her and I look at me, and I'm like, Okay, that's something that we're different at. She has this very unique aptitude and skill for doing those things. There are just some abilities which psychologists theorize just come more naturally to some people rather than others, And maybe that's based on our temperament, our perspective, how our brains process information. But instead of trying to do the things that you are not good at and beating yourself up because you are not like someone else in some department, focus on the things that you bring to the table, even if they are not as deeply acknowledged or even if people aren't as ready to praise them. Those skills are always needed. Every single skill that someone has has a place. So discovering your PA is another thing. But I have some questions for that as well. And I think also the thing of passion is that sometimes it can be subconscious. So that's why when I say these questions, I want you to think about them really deeply and without bias. Answer authentically, without thinking about what you think someone else would want you to say. What would you do in your spare time if you had no time constraints? What did you love doing as a child. What did you always aspire to be as a child, and do you still harbor that dream? What are the compliments that people give you that you often overlook? What do people come to you for? Is it advice or is it for something really practical, something intuitive, even fixing clothes, or for travel advice or asking you to take pictures of them? What is intuitive for you that others can also see? And finally, I know it is such a cliche question, but what would you do if money was no option? You know, what would you do if money was no option? Obviously money is a factor in a lot of the decisions that we make, but pretend it isn't for a second, and answer without prejudice here, without thinking about what's impractical, or what your family wants or what society expects. What is the thing that you could spend hours doing that would make you feel most fulfilled. I think the one thing that stops us from doing what we love more than anything else is the fear of it not working out or the fear of failure. And that comes from a lot of secondary fears, a fear of embarrassment, a fear of disappointing people, a fear of rejection or injuring our self esteem. But here's the mentality I always adopt. If you don't do the thing that you are afraid of, if you don't take the risk or at least give it a try, the only person and that you are letting down is yourself. That is the case, The only person you are letting down is yourself. The only person who will have to deal without what if that regret is you. And there is nothing that can't be undone except for the choices that you didn't make, even if it's a small risk, something that you do on the weekends or in your spare time. The pursuit of your dreams, however small, is never a waste, and I don't think it will ever be something that you wish you didn't do, the same goes for so many other opportunities and jobs. The mistake we make there that really hurts our sense of self and general happiness during this decade is feeling like we are locked into the first career or decision we make straight out of university. Maybe you need the reminder that you can always change. What is right for you right now may not be right for you in a few years, but do not forget your agency, that your decisions make changes, that your decisions allow you to choose differently. You are not going to be the same person every year of your life. You know what's the statistic The average person tends to go through three to seven careers or jobs before they retire. So don't be afraid to participate in a bit of trial and error when it comes to the work you want to do, especially at a time in your life where I think youth affords you a lot of privileges. The ability to make mistakes and recover, the ability to change without so many people holding you responsible for their own wellbeing, the ability to turn around and choose entirely differently. You don't need to justify those choices to anyone. It's your life. You are allowed to make mistakes and choose differently. I think that's important to remember. Additionally, if you're feeling a little bit lost after graduating, as I very much did. Here's some further pieces of advice. Instead of thinking and trying to envision what success looks like for you professionally, or what your five year plan should be, because I think we all know those plans never work out how we think they will. I want you to imagine one day in your life five years from now in as much detail as possible. And we've done this exercise on the podcast before, but I think it is important to do this regularly. What would a day in your life where you are immensely happy look like in five years? You know, where are you living, Where do you wake up in the morning, What does your room look like? What are you having for breakfast? Where are you off to afterwards? Who are you talking to throughout the day, What kind of things are on your schedule? What do you do after work? Who are you having dinner with, what are you celebrating? What are you looking forward to? Those small details, when we picture them, they are the source of what will actually make us happy. What you picture is what you truly value and what you value in the ordinary and the everyday life of your future self and the other beauty of this exercise is that there are a million different paths and choices, little divots in the journey that can get you to that dream day, that can get you to that dream life in five years. Some of them are intentional and some of them are accidental. That is important to remember. You cannot control for everything that is going to happen in your life, both the good and the bad. So when we exit university and we feel like we need to immediately make this five year plan and stick to everything, it doesn't always leave us room to be flexible and room to kind of accept the surprises that life throws us. Secondly, trying not to get lost in the nostalgia of the good old days. Nostalgia is a beautiful emotion and important one that brings a sense of life, purpose of good times of but when we spend too much time wanting to return to the past, we don't focus on how we can make our current life and future life even greater and even better. Longing for the past, for your carefree college days, for your friends, for all the memories, for all the parties, and feeling like you'll never get those back, you'll never experience that again, can fuel dissatisfaction and can also manifest in a lot of stagnation, but also nostalgic depression, a yearning for some time or something gone, and psychologists actually consider this a mental health condition. For a long time, you know, from like the sixteen hundreds to the eighteen hundreds, nostalgia was literally a mental health condition. And we all know that person from high school or university who has not been able to move on from the memories that they made during that period of time. It's almost like peter Pan syndrome, wanting to be forever stuck in those very young, carefree moments, not wanting to grow up. Remember, you can't always trust your memories. Sometimes when we look back at the past, we are doing so through a filter of what we call rosy retrospection, and it's this tendency to ignore unpleasant details in the past and only focus on the good, causing us to feel like what we're currently experiencing doesn't have the same feeling. In those moments where you think the best years of your life are behind you, remind yourself that in five years time, you're going to be thinking the same way about where you are now. It's like when we look back at old photos of ourselves, where we know at the time we probably thought we looked terrible or ugly or some kind of way, but when we look at them now, we're like, Wow, we were so beautiful. I looked great. I totally did not take advantage of how hot I was. The same will go for this new chapter, even the new challenges, even the nostalgia. You'll one day see that as part of the journey that is bringing you to your future self. Also, this is a bit of a tangent and kind of unrelated, but just get off LinkedIn. Please. If you are on LinkedIn, if you're someone who has a tendency to engage inn upward social comparison where you're always judging yourself against the accomplishments of others, that platform is only going to intensify your feeling of insecurity. You don't need to see what anyone else is doing to know that you're doing what's right for you. You don't need to see that old classmate or coworker or your high school valedictorian. Your life and your goals and your path has incredible meaning without needing the validation of comparing it to another person's journey. You know, people's progress is always going to be different. And remember with any big life transition, you know, you just graduated university. You have graduated university. That is a signal, unificant accomplishment. But there will be stress. There will be moments of utter confusion and panic and feeling that like adrenaline, rush to figure it all out. Right now, you know, it's three am in the morning, and suddenly you get the urge to look at whether you qualify for a master's degree or you start applying for new jobs. Slow down, you have time. Every person you idolize, every person you admire or look up to, has experienced the same thing, has had those feelings. It has taken them years, and they have found themselves and they're continuing to discover themselves as you are. And as a final reminder for my post UNI people out there feeling super aimless. Every emotional state, every feeling that you have is temporary. This feeling is temporary. You will push through and build new community and find new people, a new meaning, and you will, I think, kind of be grateful for the struggle and what it gave you. You've learned. You know, I really do believe that having survived my panic ears. The things I'm most grateful for are the things that I didn't get because they brought me to a better place. Not can that sounds so like spiritual, they brought me to a better place, but no, honestly, like there are some parts of your journey that you really just can't account for, and you kind of just have to trust, like the wave of the tides and the moves of the winds and everything that's happening around you that you can't anticipate, all the little surprises and opportunities that you cannot anticipate, And that's kind of the beauty of this chapter. The beauty of this period is that you can do anything. You can do anything that you want with your time. You are young, you are carefree. There are so many seasons of life you let to live, so do not lose sight of that. I sincerely hope that you have enjoyed this episode. If there is someone in your life who needs to hear this, a friend, a coworker, a sister, anyone at all, please feel free to share it with them. You have no idea if it will help them out. So thank you as always for tagging along for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to give it a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Wherever you are listening right now, follow us at that Psychology podcast if you have an episode suggestion, if you have something that you want to contribute to this conversation. I love reading when people have different opinions to me, or when there's something that maybe I miss that we can include in another episode. So I appreciate you listening along today. I appreciate your attention. Thank you so much, and as always, we will be back next week with another episode