62. Navigating a quarter life crisis and feeling lost

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Speaker 1: Hello, 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. Near listeners, old listeners, thanks for tuning in. It's so great to have you back for another episode of the Psychology of Your Twenties. Today, by popular demand, we're going to be discussing the psychology of a quarter life crisis. I'm sure we've all heard of a midlife crisis that typically happens in our late forties early fifties. You know, the archetype of men buying convertibles and leaving their wives or their partners, women dying their hair or purple, or getting a poodle I don't know, marrying younger people, quitting their jobs, all of those well known tropes and stereotypes. I feel like this is a pretty highly recognized and satirized concept. But what about the quarter life crisis that usually happens in our twenties. It doesn't seem like many people are talking about that as much. Maybe you're hearing it for the first time today, but I assure you it is very much a real thing. It's an important thing to discuss. So the term quarter life crisis, it's relatively new across the field of psychology and self help and wellness, but essentially what it explains is a period of panic, of uncertainty and meltdown of sorts where we start asking ourselves these really big existential questions we may not have thought about before. The outcome of that is somewhat of a crisis moment where we feel completely shocked and lost and looking to make some big changes, more of them than not. It's centered on those three big things Korea, love, context, or location. I know that sounds like four, but career, love, context or location is three. We begin to feel worried about what we're doing in our lives, whether our relationships fulfill us, whether our lives fulfill us, and if we're in the right place. So how can psychology explain this occurrence, this period of intense instability and uncertainty and questioning, this period of intense fear? How can how can it explain the subsequent kind of inexplicable urge to change up our lives, to quit our jobs, move to a new city, break up with our long term partner, shave our heads, completely transform ourselves. This is something I am so interested in, especially as I can feel my own quarter life crisis kind of looming. In fact, I feel like I'm already very much in it in some ways. And I'm sure many of you are in the same boat as I am, and as many of us are, especially as our late twenties and thirties approach and we're surveying our surroundings and freaking out a little bit. So I think it's really important to kind of tackle some of those unanswerable questions in a way. You know, where is my place in the world, what is my purpose? What the actual heck am I doing with my life? Well, whilst I might not be able to answer those questions for you today, what we will be doing is starting from the beginning. What is a quarter life crisis? What does the experience indicate about our growth and our journey? Why do we tend to panic as we enter the tail end of our tynes? And finally, perhaps the most important element of this episode is how do we use this experience as a springboard for our growth and self actualization and greater happiness. So so much amazing content to cover, so much learning to come, I hope, so bucklin for this week's deep dive into the quarter life crisis. Okay, so we need to start from square one and get our basics downpat. What is a quarter life crisis? When we talk about a quarter life crisis, we're thinking primarily about that period in our lives when we hit our twenties. For most of us, it's at this stage that we really start looking at our lives and probably thinking have a good eighty or so years on this planet. We are a quarter of the way through that. Hence the word quarter and the reality of the finality of life can really just hit us square on that Here we are at twenty three, twenty five years of age, whatever age we're at, and we are a quarter of a way through our lives. And what do we have to show for that? What are we even doing? Firstly, something to get straight? This experience is absolutely normal, and I think I would be more concerned if someone didn't have this experience because it's a pivotal moment of redirection, of clarity and growth that is essential for our development. A quarter life crisis, it's not a clinical term. You're not going to find it in the DSM or get an a diagnosis. It's actually a very subjective, highly individual kind of existential crisis of sorts that is often seen in people in a certain phase of life who've started asking themselves some pretty big questions that they've never asked themselves before. And this results in some really deep and scary soul searching around some of those critical components of our life, our careers, our relationships, our financial situation, our ambitions, massive massive things to tackle all at one time. And if you're finding yourself in this period of stress, of doubt, of anxiety, kind of wanting to borrow down or run away, you're certainly not alone. I found this LinkedIn study. I think it was done last year or maybe the year before, but it found that seventy two percent of the young people they surveyed had experienced some form of a quarter life crisis, with thirty three percent of them currently kind of in the throes of said quarter life crisis. It's such a common experience, seventy two and the average age of this crisis is about twenty six to twenty seven and it lasts about eleven months. But it can happen at any age at any time around this period. This estimation or figure of twenty six to twenty seven, though it makes sense, doesn't it. It's at this age that our thirties are looming the next major chapter of adulthood. We feel like we have enough life experience to be an adult, but don't exactly feel that way. Sometimes we find ourselves starting completely from scratch, completely from scratch, you know, ending long term relationships with people we thought we would marry, suddenly finding ourselves really dissatisfied without professional lives, wishing we'd made a different choice, and just feeling all around super lost. And whilst that internal struggle is happening, what's going on around us. You know, we're seeing people that we know slowly get married, have children, live their passion, get promoted, and you know, seem like they have everything together, whilst we, at least from personal experience, are still making mistakes, and that can really exacerbate already those internal feelings of dissatisfaction. I had this experience the other day actually, whereby most of my friends have these lovely partners, the people they've essentially decided to spend their lives with, and I'm still here with my bad date stories, you know, another failed talking stage, or terrible but funny hookups, making the same mistakes, doing the same thing that I've done since I was eighteen or nineteen, whilst everyone around me seems to have grown up, you know, seems to have gotten everything together. I think another thing to consider is that our twenties are this weird vacuum between our teenage years and what we see is proper adulthood, you know, our thirties and our forties, and there are all of these opposing kind of decisions and opposites to consider. We have these societal expectations that we should be getting settled, we should settle down, but our brains are still developing and we're still exploring what we would like to be. We feel like we need to have a grasp over things like our finances and our careers. But at the same time, we're seeing all of these other things around us change. We're having all of these deep conversations and questions of ourselves and externally in the real world, you know, there's massive inflation, there's unemployment, climate change, unaffordable housing, lower incomes compared to the expectations that were set by the generation before us by our parents. Those expectations of having it together, of having a house, of knowing what you want to do with your life, they're no longer realistic. I've been having this conversation and this discussion with my friends more and more where our childhood visions of our lives are just no longer realistic, Like it's just not happening. Where not going to be millionaires anytime soon. At least, we start to abandon some of our big aspirations. Normally that's creative endeavors, like our musical or artistic ambitions. We forget about, you know, the white picket fence or a home on the beach, or being a world traveler, because that now costs like millions of dollars. It costs a lot of money. And that realization that what we wanted as children isn't exactly as achievable as it seemed it's such a bitter, hard pill to swallow, and it can be a massive trigger for what will become a quarter life crisis. You know, sometimes where we are right now isn't where we want to be. It's not where we imagined we would be at this age. You thought things would turn out differently and they're not. You know, when I was fifteen sixteen, I thought I was going to be really successful by now, like really successful, you know, maybe even married or at least with someone I love. I thought i'd be a homeowner. I definitely thought i'd be making more money, maybe traveling, and I thought that I would know what I wanted to do with my life. And in some ways that's true, right, Like I get to make this podcast, That's what I want to do in my life, right, Like I really enjoy doing this. But everything is still quite confusing, and there are all these different thoughts and feelings floating around in my head. You know, I wanted this incredible life for myself of jet setting and maybe writing a novel or going to Europe with my soulmate. That's a bit like ridiculous to me now that I'm in my mid twenties. But that's just how life turns out, you know, don't get don't get me wrong here, like, please do misconstrue my words, Like I absolutely love my life and I wouldn't have it like any other way. Like I love my life. I've had these incredible experiences and growth these past years, and those periods were in you know, so much more than I could have a mad and as a child. But as the years go by and I kind of find myself lapsing into stagnation and feeling comfortable and what I have, I realize I haven't achieved some of those dreams, and I panic. I panic a little bit more. I worry if I'm doing this right. It's such a quintessential experience of our twenties to be questioning our path forward and our path to this point right like. And then that's you know, there's that existential knowledge that lingers that we're so aware of in our twenties as we gain more self awareness and more appreciation of the world, that this is, you know, our only shot. You don't get another shot at life, and here we are a quarter of the way through, and you know, I really better make that count and I better be sure of my decisions. It's so much pressure, it can be quite stifling to come across that realization. And that's a really common train or pattern of thought for those of us who are going through a quarter life crisis right now. It's a pattern of thought that many psychologists or therapists tend to hear. They tend to get these visits from people in their twenties who all of a sudden wake up one day with that realization that the decisions they make count and they start questioning the ones that they've made. You know, am I in the right place for me? Am I doing what I want? You know, life is moving so fast, and I feel like I have to really change something about my life otherwise I'm not going to be happy. In this way, a quarter life crisis is very much like an existential crisis, which is, I guess, a whole other episode. It's really similar to this. You know, a quarter life crisis is the exis stential crisis of our twenties. In psychology, this kind of crisis it occurs when we begin to question things like meaning and purpose and the purpose of our life, of our existence, the realities of death, to some fun casual topics. And obviously the answer to these questions is not easy to come by, like we don't really have the answer to them, and they require a lot of deep contemplative thinking about our values, what brings us joy, the impact we want to have on the world, many of which are questions that are shared between a quarter life crisis and an existential crisis, and it's almost a rite of passage, right that we all go through this in our twenties in order to exit out on to the other side of real adulthood. I don't know, maybe not real adulthood, but some more mature kind of adulthood where we feel like we have our lives together. At the center of a quarter life crisis is really a struggle for meaning, meaning in life. The meaning of life is impossible to define. It's really difficult because it's a highly personal decision, it's a highly personal experience. But researchers they've kind of defined it as the feeling that our lives are significant, that they're purposeful, that they're coherent. In other words, that we have a direction that makes sense to us and gives us a feeling of worth. And when we're in our twenties, we're so young to have figured that out, because we've really only just come into our mature selves. And the struggle for a purpose, for a meaningful job, the need to make that contribution, it can be paralyzing. And when we can't make sense of that, we can't make sense of the understanding that this is a normal experience. The typical symptoms and experiences and reactions of dread and stress and anxiety and meltdown feeling unfulfilled. They follow along pretty quickly after that. The need for purpose, I think, is one of the defining characteristics of human beings. We crave purpose, we really do, and we suffer some pretty serious psychological difficulties when we don't have it. Purpose is like a fundamental component of living and living a fulfilling life, and it's so important that it's even measured on most tests of well being and most ways of assessing our mental health. They'll ask you, do you feel like you have purpose? There are a number of psychological explanations for why it's so important, but the one that I find perhaps the most fascinating was featured in Psychology Today, which is this online site, and I found I stumbled across it when I was researching this episode, and it made so much sense to me. It made so much sense. When we feel like we have direction or something to work towards, this makes us less vulnerable to something called psychological discord, and that is this recognizable sense of unease we get when our attention isn't occupied by external things and when we don't have something that drives us. It results in boredom, but following on from that also anxiety and depression and a crisis. By having a purpose and an intentional purpose, you know, something we actually really care about and something to focus on, we in some ways protect ourselves from these feelings, these feelings of anxiety and distress, and it gives us a channel for our energy and the energy that is contained in every one of us, and it gives us a channel for our ambition. It's also essential for personal development and societal development as well. So when we begin to question whether we're contributing and whether our lives have meaning, that's why it can be so abrasive, because it goes against that core fundamental need, that's psychological need to have something to do that feels important to you. And that's essentially the core of a quarter life crisis. Right if you're at this point, this crossroads in your life right now, where you're looking at the things you've been doing, what you've been working towards your career, maybe and just thinking like this is not I want I'm not happy, this is not who I want to be. It's probably because that doesn't align to your purpose. It's probably because you know, when you decided what you wanted to do, you are seventeen sixteen years of age, and you're not that person anymore. You're not that person, and things get so confusing as we get more responsibilities and feel like we need to be an adult as we enter into our mid and late twenties. So I want to talk about how this crisis can manifest but also ultimately why it's firstly really normal and secondly incredibly incredibly important. Our next partner has a product I use literally every day. I started taking AGE one because I've been on a bit of a health journey. I wanted to take better care of my immune sister and my gut health. And with one delicious scoop of AG one, you're essentially absorbing seventy five high quality vitamins, minerals, probiotics, all that good stuff. And it's really great for your nervous system and your immune system. It's just one simple micro habit that you can incorporate into your daily life with big benefits. It's super lifestyle friendly and athletic. Greens is also a climate neutral certified company, which we absolutely love on the show. Right now, it is time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with a convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop in a cup of water every day. That's it. 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You know you're planning your career, job searching you've got your first job out of UNI, or trying to choose your major. You're graduating, you know, maybe you've even been through a few jobs and you're trying to figure out what it is about your life that you want to focus on. I think one of the scary realizations of our twenties if we choose to take the full time work route, is that we're going to spend most of our lives inside an office. That's really terrifying. And for some that's a dream, right, but for others it's really not what they want. This is a massive one planning our careers in this day and age. Our identity is so closely tied to our career and our professional lives. This begins even in our childhood and our adolescence with an emphasis on questions about, you know, what do you want to be? What do you want to do? Rather than asking young people what makes you happy? Why do you want to do that with your life? So when we go through a quarter life crisis and we begin contemplating our meaning and our purpose, we don't actually know how to answer those questions because we've been taught to be goal oriented rather than value orientated, instead of thinking about what makes us happy, and instead of contemplating the life we imagine, we're kind of forced into this limited thinking about what do I want to achieve, what do I want my job title to be? And that's not really a way to create a meaningful life because it's quite transparent, it's quite shallow. So when we get to the point where we do get to have some agency and really think about what it is that's going to make us happy, if we've never asked ourselves those questions before, particularly when we think about how we're going to make money and our careers, it can be really overwhelming. We might also find ourselves living away from our family for the first time. Maybe you're living alone or in a new city away from your family unit, and that really challenge how we see ourselves. And that kind of move into independence is one of the first early hallmarks of being an adult, and it's really hard to find where we stand and to figure out our identity beyond what we were offered as a child. The other thing is navigating relationships. You know, our relationships, particularly the romantic relationships that we have, but equally our friendships. One of the most important determinants in our life. They're so crucial cannot be overlooked. So making those choices about what's going to make us happy, but more importantly, who's going to make us happy? Is actually a really big question and a really big Stressor maybe you're finding yourself in a relationship right now that you've been in for some time, could be a high school sweetheart, could be someone you started dating and uni and you're thinking, is this what I want my life to be? Do I want to be with that person? On a grander scale, you know, do I want to be friends with these people? Is this the person I want to be? It can be such a challenging question, right and sadly I can't give you the answer to that. I wish I could. I wish I could ease your struggle. But part of the quarter life crisis is that something that you have to figure out for yourself. You're also making, like I said, long term personal and professional decisions. You know, they might not always have anything to do with your job or your romantic partner, or where you live or you know, your connection with your family. It doesn't always have to do with that, but kind of these broader decisions about the life you want, you know, including things like financial investments and financial decisions and questions about your life values like do I really want to work in an office? Is that really the life I want for myself? Or do I maybe want to travel? You know, that's there's pros and cons to both, and it's an equation and a decision that we have to make. But it can also be a real catalyst for going through this crisis period. So the Harvard Business Review very fancy, but they did this report and they found that a quarter life crisis, the one that you typically occurs in our twenties, it normally presents in four phases. So first of all, if you're going through this and you feel like you're going through this, you really can relate to some of these experiences. I think this is an important thing to break down, right, like what's the trajectory, what's the path through this crisis period? That can sometimes bring us a lot of comfort. So firstly, often if you're going through this, people are going to feel a sense of being trapped in some form of commitment, either in your personal or your professional life. This is synonymous with the feeling of almost claustrophobia and a sense that you cannot, you know, kind of escape the constraints of life. Like you're stuck. You're trapped, You're stuck in your full time job, you're stuck in your relationship. And this sense of being trapped is often accompanied by depression and panic, feeling lost and stuck. The anxiety we were speaking of before. This is the beginning of the crisis. You're looking around and you're feeling like, I don't like where I am. This is not where I wanted to be. I feel like I'm trapped in this situation. Following this, there's often some kind of action and a desire to break away and change things. I don't know if you've experienced this, but when I went through kind of a bit of a quarter life crisis a year or so ago, right when I started this podcast, actually the first thing I wanted to do was like, chop off all of my hair, chop it all off, quit my job, get in my car, travel around with no direction, no plan, just freedom, and hopefully find my purpose in life and the way forward. It's kind of now that I know, now that I know that this is actually really indicative of some kind of crisis or meltdown. That's occurring. I can see that really clearly. I felt stuck and I wanted to escape. It's our breaking point where we eventually get tired of feeling so shit about our lives and confused and desired to make some kind of a change. And if we don't do this, we kind of risk living with this sense of unease and unhappiness for the rest of our lives. So it's an important step that action, that breakaway. It's crucial, and this leap of faith or this breakaway from our current reality, it's not always a pretty feeling. It's not always a pretty picture. It's defined in many ways by a really deep separation and loneliness. As we leave places and relationship, its a really deep comfort and really deep convenience. For example, you know, leaving a job that you've had for years, or a long term relationship or a place that you've lived since childhood, it's going to be really hard and it's going to be really uncomfortable and sometimes painful because it's all new and unknown, and with that comes, you know, essentially isolation. But sometimes feeling alone and unsure of ourselves is actually a really important part of the growth during this period of isolation. During this period of confusion, we get the opportunity to really reflect on our life and what our purpose actually is and begin to try maybe it's you know, a new activity or a new place, new friends, new social groups, new career opportunities, and come out on the other side of the crisis feeling more sure of who we are, having had the time to sit with ourselves and sit with a really uncomfortable feeling and question our values and hopefully come to an answer. Although it's an uncomfortable experience, it's also really important and it can be a springboard for some really essential growth and to flourish in your next chapter of life and this amazing new chapter. And this is kind of linked to the last thing I really want to talk about today. I think a quarter life crisis gets a bad rap. Yes, it's sometimes awful. Yes it is characterized by incredible mental discomfort. And if you're experiencing it right now, I really do feel for you, like I don't envy you at all. I know how it feels, and I can promise you'll get through it, but I can't promise it will be easy, but it will be essential essential for your growth. Questioning your purpose in life and the overall meaning in life. It's obviously are going to be a walk in the park. But sometimes we go through hard things for good reasons, and this is one of those examples. It's the perfect time to do some of that deep thinking and contemplation that I think, in my opinion, is something that we all have to do at some stage. What would happen if we really never questioned our path in life? What if we never questioned our dreams or our place in the world. If you never pushed yourself to be uncomfortable like you would remain stagnant. And sometimes when we fight back against these feelings, our brain has a way of breaking through for us. Like our brain works in some crazy, unconscious, subliminal ways. And when you start to notice that tension and you're trying to suppress it, you're trying to be like no, like I'm happy, I'm happy. I'll just keep pushing forward. Something is going to change. The thing that will often change is our mindset and our attitude, and our brain will break forward and create this crisis for us, and it really forces us to rethink our desires and our ten our intentions in life. It forces us to question what we actually want, and importantly to change our pathway or our direction in a decade in life in which that's actually an expected part of our journey, right, Like, that's why it happens at this age, because this is the time to do it. Like we you know, most of us don't have kids or a mortgage or financial responsibilities. We can actually make these decisions. So if you are unhappy right now, if you don't want to do your job, if you don't want to work nine to five, if you don't want to live where you're living, and your brain has pushed to to a point of crisis, it's actually a great opportunity to change things. Like, in many ways, you can say yes to a lot of the opportunities that will come your way, especially if your quarter life crisis has been I think triggered by some kind of dissatisfaction with your with your career and feeling like the path you're on isn't going to satisfy your purpose. It's an important catalyst to reconsider those dreams we had as a child, the ones I was talking about before, and be like, would I be happier if I was doing that? Am I happy? Not doing that? Is this the life that I want for myself. But if you suppress those feelings, let this be a warning. If you ignore the dissatisfaction, not only are you never going to change, but those feelings aren't really going to go away, and you're going to find yourself at a point where you're probably quite unhappy and you're quite stagnant. So embrace it. I think this links to one of the second benefits of a quarter life crisis is that it opens and a lot of new opportunities for you, so many new opportunities. When we are forced to reevaluate our life, we see things in a way we've never imagined them before. Suddenly that path for the ambitions that were always really clear to us and not clear anymore. And this might seem scary, but often when we're so sure of our dreams, when we're so stubborn about them, it can make us pretty blind to the other options and opportunities that are out there. You know, when I was sixteen, all I wanted to be was a politician, and I was so sure of this, so passionate about achieving it. For so many years, that's all I saw was this path forward to do the right degree, go to the right UNI, you know, get a few internships, network with people, get a government job, move up. I really saw nothing else, and because of that, I was really blind to other opportunities. So when that fell apart, when I was forced to question it, when after years I realized that that's not what I wanted, it was incredibly difficult to wake up to other opportunities because I was just so focused on this one opportunity And that meant that when I finally did, I realize this wasn't for me. Yeah, it was really scary, but I was reintroduced into this world of opportunities that I'd neglected for years. And there were so many other doors that opened for me when I didn't keep closing them myself. And you know, like now I do something that I love, Like I get to make this show and talk about the things that really are really important to me, and I get to talk about psychology all the time. If I hadn't had that crisis a few years ago, I probably I definitely wouldn't be doing this, and i'd probably be miserable. Like I'd like to think about that person, that poor girl, and that's all she wanted, and I'm like gosh, if I had stuck to that, I don't think I would be as happy as I am now. So like I said before, sometimes hard things happen for good reasons. It also reveals what's important to it, what's important to us, and what's important to you. After that kind of storm pass and the sky has become a lot leer, I guess so do our intentions and our purpose because the clutter disappears. The Only way through this crisis is to really examine your life and clear out what doesn't matter and what does. Sometimes that means ending our relationships, moving away from your hometown, quitting your job, beginning your hobbies, pursuing your opportunities because we tend to stop prioritizing the things that don't align with our meaning when we go through this period of deep contemplation. There's this like cliche that I think is often repeated a lot when we talk about this, and I hate to be cliche, but I am going to repeat it again here. Hitting rock bottom is such a great springboard up. I know, I know it's so cliche, but like the saying always goes right, you know, the only way is up if we never hit rock bottom, right, we never get pushed to the point of questioning our lives because we remain where it's, you know, just comfortable enough to feel safe and secure, but not happy. And when we hit a crisis point where we have to reevaluate everything because it's falling apart, you're kind of forced into a place of reflection and you gain a new perspective and you're given this magical, magical opportunity of a fresh start. You gain humility, You see that life is not black and white, and you begin to like go of the things that you can't control, because when you're in like a crisis, when you're in like fight or flight mode, like those unimportant things like how people perceive you or what you're wearing, or whether people think I'm smart enough, or whether I'm doing the right internships or getting the right jobs, and all these things like they really don't matter because you're in crisis mode, you're in a meltdown. The only things that matter to you are the things that are really important, and in that way, you get to identify them clearer. Finally, I think a quarter life crisis strengthens your core values. I know I talk a lot about values on the show because I think they are really important to establish in our twenties and to take some time to think about what are the five things that are most important to you? Is it honesty? Is it humility? Is it creativity? Independence? And often we go through life, especially early adulthood, really following the values that we're instilled to us by our parents and by our families and our communities. These values are really easy to partake in because they don't require any effort and they've all we've ever known. But often a trigger for a quarter life crisis is that these values no longer fit, and they no longer fit how we perceive the world, so we're forced to either abandon them and create new ones, or strengthen elements of them that we do believe in. I think religion is a good example here. You know, a lot of us, I would say, grew up in some kind of religious society or with some kind of religious background or religious knowledge, and often that revolves around a god or some kind of traditional belief of good and bad. And those values are often instilled in us by our parents, who are raising us the best they can, giving us the knowledge that their parents gave them. But you actually really need to consider whether you believe in those things and whether you believe in the values that we're instilled to you as a child. You know, using that religion example, you might no longer believe in God if you test that feeling and you test that relationship and you test that belief. But what you find you do believe in is something bigger or that you know love is at the core of everything, And that brings us comfort because we know we believe in that. It's not just something that our parents have told us. We know we can trust that belief because we created it for ourself, and sometimes it means going through a crisis and a meltdown and a period of real deep confusion to figure that out. So if there is one takeaway from this episode, it's at this experience, this crisis in our lives that a lot of us find ourselves going through in our twenties and our journey and all of those terrifying questions we tend to ask ourselves about our values and our purpose. Yeah, it's really going to be quite scary, right, Like, I'm not going to deny that, And if you're someone who's experiencing that right now, like it's hard, it's really hard, but it's also freaking fantastic because without this experience, we never get to grow or actually decide for ourselves in this moment what we actually want and what we're here to do. So I hope this was helpful. It was a bit of a pep talk for me as well. Like I said, I think I'm definitely going through something like this right now and really kind of questioning like is this what I want? Like is this who I want to be? And it's really really terrifying because I don't know the answer, Like you probably don't know what either. I don't know why I'm asking you. I guess I'm asking myself right Like, I want to put myself through this and through these questions because I know that when I get to the other side, I will be more sure of myself and I'll be more sure of what's going to make me happy. So I hope that is the case for you as well. And I want to thank you for listening. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. If you enjoyed it, if you feel cool to do so, please feel free to subscribe, follow, leave a five star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts wherever you are listening. I really appreciate it. You really help the show grow, and it's just crazy to me that like I get to do this, Like that's just crazy. So I really want to thank everyone who has been listening these past few months, this like past a year and a half. It's just like crazy. I don't know, this is kind of a tangent, but I'm feeling very grateful at the moment, So I really appreciate the support, and I appreciate that you enjoyed this show. It's just such a magical feeling. And we will be back next week for a Christmas episode, holiday season episode. I know I had to do it. I'm so excited and so excited, and thank you again for listening. Have a lovely, lovely day.