To get a better understanding of the possible struggles, Reddit userRaeraegoawayyasked everyone on the platform to share the “sad realities” of being a grown-up that they believe people entering adulthood should be aware of.
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You can do everything right and it can still go wrong.
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The stupid s**t you do to your body adds up. Headphones at max volume? Enjoy your tinnitus. Being a goofball and head banging as hard as you can to Metallica in the 90s? Wake-up with neck pain. Showing off how much you can lift or carry and not lifting with your knees? Have fun with the back spasms after you move too quickly the wrong way.Take it easy on your body.
To learn how to cultivate resilience in the face of modern challenges, we spoke with Joyce Marter, a licensed psychotherapist, successful entrepreneur, author, and avid advocate of mental health. With over two decades of experience helping individuals, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies, Marter shared her insights on resilience-building techniques:“Practice mindfulness strategies such as breath work, meditation, yoga, or unplugging from technology and connecting with nature,” she toldBored Panda. “Mindfulness helps us detach from our egos (our minds) and connect with our essence (our spirit, soul, or authentic self), which helps us to drop the defensiveness and cultivate acceptance and resilience—the ability to move through challenges, bounce back and persevere.““Healthy detachment is a mindfulness practice where we cultivate healthy separation from our emotions, the negative emotions of others, expectation and outcome so that we can respond consciously instead of reacting emotionally. Having a growth mindset fosters resilience because we view challenges as opportunities for growth and development.”
To learn how to cultivate resilience in the face of modern challenges, we spoke with Joyce Marter, a licensed psychotherapist, successful entrepreneur, author, and avid advocate of mental health. With over two decades of experience helping individuals, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies, Marter shared her insights on resilience-building techniques:
“Practice mindfulness strategies such as breath work, meditation, yoga, or unplugging from technology and connecting with nature,” she toldBored Panda. “Mindfulness helps us detach from our egos (our minds) and connect with our essence (our spirit, soul, or authentic self), which helps us to drop the defensiveness and cultivate acceptance and resilience—the ability to move through challenges, bounce back and persevere.”
“Healthy detachment is a mindfulness practice where we cultivate healthy separation from our emotions, the negative emotions of others, expectation and outcome so that we can respond consciously instead of reacting emotionally. Having a growth mindset fosters resilience because we view challenges as opportunities for growth and development.”
Being an adult is living with regrets.It’s not only ok to look back and wish you did things different, it’s proof of growth.
In my experience, the older you get the less people care. Until finally nobody cares. If you don’t put in the effort to reach out to people, nobody else will.
Marter, author ofThe Financial Mindset Fix: A Mental Fitness Program for an Abundant Life, suggested these everyday tips and habits to keep your mental well-being in check:
1)Establish a Morning Wellness Routine. “Instead of reaching for your phone and checking your social media, emails, or the news, establish a wellness routine each morning,” the psychotherapist advised. “Take at least 10-15 minutes to stretch, meditate, do a short yoga practice, journal, pray or set your intentions for the day. This will help your mind and body ease into the day and set you up for success.”
2)Practice Good Self-Care. “Be your own good parent and take care of yourself as you would somebody whom you love very much,” Marter said. “Ensure proper nutrition, hydration, rest, exercise, and leisure activities. Sleep, diet, and exercise are key in promoting mental health. Ask your doctor to check your vitamin D levels and thyroid functioning, as these often affect our mental wellbeing.”
That in the end, you need to be your own best friend and cheer squad. Only you can lift yourself up out of life’s inevitable potholes.
That once you live on your own, It cost money every second of your life. Even if you stay in and hide in your bed, The bills are rolling like the counter on a gas station pump.
One sad reality is that life often doesn’t go as planned. Flexibility and resilience become essential skills for navigating adulthood.
4)Become Your Own Best Advocate. “Embrace your worth and live authentically in alignment with who you are at the core,” Joyce Marter continued. “Communicate assertively, demonstrating respect for self and others, and set healthy boundaries at home and work. Negotiate to improve your financial health.“5)Access Support. “Nurture your support network like a garden—plant seeds for new relationships, nurture the ones that you cherish, and weed out toxic relationships. Ask for the specific help you need from a person in your network who is capable of providing it. Seek counseling or therapy as a routine and preventative form of healthcare, like going to the dentist or the doctor,” the psychotherapist said.
4)Become Your Own Best Advocate. “Embrace your worth and live authentically in alignment with who you are at the core,” Joyce Marter continued. “Communicate assertively, demonstrating respect for self and others, and set healthy boundaries at home and work. Negotiate to improve your financial health.”
5)Access Support. “Nurture your support network like a garden—plant seeds for new relationships, nurture the ones that you cherish, and weed out toxic relationships. Ask for the specific help you need from a person in your network who is capable of providing it. Seek counseling or therapy as a routine and preventative form of healthcare, like going to the dentist or the doctor,” the psychotherapist said.
You have all the freedom to stay up as late as you want and eat candy for dinner. But you’ll feel horrible if you do..Also, dishes. So many f*****g dishes all the time.
Not everything is black and white , most things are shades of grey.
Life is more about how you react to things and less about what happens to you.Good and bad things will happen in life. What matters is how you react to it.
Everyone is very f*****g dumb.
According tosome estimates, just 4.3 percent of people have no health problems. Additionally,1 in every 8people in the world live with a mental disorder. At a certain point, our burden can become too heavy to handle on our own.Marter highlighted the following as common signs that we might benefit from seeing a therapist, counselor, or other external support:Physical, cognitive, and emotional signs of stress;Difficulty sleeping;Changes in weight or appetite;Symptoms of burnout, such as feeling overwhelmed, fatigued, apathetic, irritable, frustrated, or unmotivated;Low self-esteem;Panic attacks;Thoughts about self-harm or harming others;Substance misuse;Disordered eating behaviors;Decreased functioning at home or work;Social isolation or withdrawal;Interpersonal conflicts at home or work.However, it’s important to remember that “we shouldn’t wait to see a therapist or counselor until we are suffering,” Marter said. “We wouldn’t wait to see a dentist until our teeth start falling out. See a counselor proactively and preventatively for a wellness checkup, just like you would go to the dentist or the doctor for an annual screening.”
According tosome estimates, just 4.3 percent of people have no health problems. Additionally,1 in every 8people in the world live with a mental disorder. At a certain point, our burden can become too heavy to handle on our own.
Marter highlighted the following as common signs that we might benefit from seeing a therapist, counselor, or other external support:
However, it’s important to remember that “we shouldn’t wait to see a therapist or counselor until we are suffering,” Marter said. “We wouldn’t wait to see a dentist until our teeth start falling out. See a counselor proactively and preventatively for a wellness checkup, just like you would go to the dentist or the doctor for an annual screening.”
While you’re growing up, your parents are growing older.
Adulting is mostly just being tired and doing laundry.
Time hits the FFW button after high school… it feels like January was last month sometimes. Next thing you know is been 10 years.
You can prepare yourself as much as you want, life will always throw you a curve ball. Especially as an adult.
Life isn’t fair.You can work harder, be better qualified, but still get passed over for promotion. You can be the perfect partner, but they can choose to drop you anytime.
You’re not guaranteed anything. Not love, not happiness. I think most people grow up taking for granted that these things WILL happen. Reality is a lot more complex. If you’re lucky what most of us do get looks something more like a comfortable compromise. And a lot of us end up going through life with less.
The number of possible life paths you have decreases as you get older. Sometimes it actually is too late to start.
People at work can be just as, if not more childish than those at school. Some folk just wait for the opportunity to stab you in the back or belittle you publicly.
50 years I’m on this planet and I’m sitting here pondering what I can tell you that is a sad reality of being an adult. Nothing really springs to mind other than the daily grind of going to work. Do better in school and you can increase your prospects of having a job that you actually enjoy.
You have to stop eating processed foods.
How lonely it feels. I’m 20, so i’m still in the transitioning period of becoming an adult, and sometimes it’s so lonely because this is where everyone’s life starts to go at different paces & in different directions. You start growing as a person & sometimes that means growing apart from friends you thought you’d be with forever.
You can do pretty much anything you want, which is great, but you have to deal with the consequences, which isn’t great.You can stay in bed all day and not work, but you will probably be broke. You can have a big party with your friends, but you have to pay for all the stuff and you have to clean up afterwards.Basically, you have huge possibilities and opportunities, but it is all down to you.
People will dislike you and sabotage you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Oftentimes you have only three choices - tolerate it, leave, or go to war.Leaving is usually the best option.
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None of us have a clue what we’re doing or what’s going to happen or what we should actually do.
Nothing happens unless you make it happen! A blessing and a curse.
Remember when you were a kid and summer loomed large on the horizon? It took a while to get there but once you did, it was three months of glorious freedom, adventure, and comfortable boredom. When you’re an adult. You don’t get that anymore. You can look forward to your one or two five day vacations a year, or even just a measly three-day weekend, knowing that you’re going to pay the price when you get back to your job and have to catch up on everything that you missed. It’s an endless, plodding existence in cubicle-land. But maybe your office will have a decent vending machine or something.
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Life is only better if you’re proactive about it. 80% of the time, people who are happy or unhappy are that way because of the decisions they make. You are responsible for your own happiness, and that’s a good thing.Parents are no longer signing you up for sports or taking you on vacations. You gotta plan that s**t yourself. But now you get to choose what you do and when. Also, it’s your responsibility to enjoy your rest. It’s all in the mindset.
The way the world should work and the way that it actually does are sometimes very different things. Don’t confuse them.For me, this was especially true in the workplace. Being good at what you do and willing to work hard sometimes isn’t what matters.That said, people skills can be learned and improved upon.
No one is coming to help. You’d better pay attention and make good decisions.
Relationships now require effort to maintain. You need to dedicate energy and time to making plans and meeting friends. It’s worth it!
LIfe is a 1 player game. 1 Life…no checkpoints…Your experience stays with you. Treat people well, and they will remember you. Treat people badly, and they will never aid you again.
You often don’t have time to do things you once enjoyed. You either have too many responsibilities like kids, extra shifts or generally working late, errands, grocery shopping, or coming home and just being too tired.You have to try your best not to “grind” and burn yourself out. Find a comfortable medium and try to find time for yourself. .
When you’re young, you identify as a person who hasn’t figured out life yet, but but one day you’ll be a functioning mature adult who has all their st together.That doesn’t ever leave you. You always feel confused in a big world. You still identify as a clueless young person, except you’re body isn’t young anymore. It’s old and failing. And you don’t identify with these young people, because they’re strange. The young people you identify with don’t exist anymore, which is lonely and isolating. The old people who had their st together when you were young also don’t exist, which is also lonely and isolating. Time speeds up, and each year goes faster than the last. You’re in a freight train accelerating towards a cliff and scary fast speeds, but you’re still waiting for your life to begin, and you’re starting to realize that you might have missed that chance a long time ago.
Free time becomes a luxury.
Sleeping is a luxury. Sleep well especially at afternoon and also at night when your parents tell you too sleep, just sleep.
You don’t have to have nap time but you want nap time and you can’t have nap time.
That a lot of other adults, even ones that are younger than you, will try to out-adult you or make you feel like you aren’t an adult or basically inferior.Whether you have a career or a job, the amount of years you work there is usually how old (or intelligent) your superiors will treat you, and that’s if you are lucky. (Ex. you work somewhere 2 years you get treated like a 2 year old, you work somewhere 30 years, you get treated like a grown up at a nursery home.)Most other adults will try to judge your character and value based on where you work, how much you work, and/or how much spending power you have. They will put a lot of emphasis on this. They will only care if you are good person or not and your “inner beauty” or lack of it if they can use you and want to use you.Not only can you not do whatever you want (there are a number of barriers like public sentiment, the law, the government, money, criminals, etc), but you are restricted on what you can do, and you can’t even do what you need to do sometimes. On top of that, a lot of burdens and responsibilities are placed on your shoulders suddenly.To your town/city, county, state, country, continent, and the world, you only matter as a number. You don’t even make up a whole fraction of a percentage. On that scale, you might as well not even exists, and no, they don’t care about you. They do, however, care about your money and how it’s divided up and allocated. So, outside of your small circle, the only thing about you that matters is how much money you are receiving, spending, being stolen, and being collected.
You’ll really understand that your choices matter for you and your ability to clearly decide will either fill you with a sense of power or dread.
Society kind of stops giving a s**t about you. When you’re young they see you as a kid with potential, and most people will go out of their way to guide you and encourage you, and then at a certain age it kind of just stops. No one cares to know anymore about what your future goals or aspirations are etc. Especially if you’re a man and average to below average looking you become kind of invisible.
The good: You can eat as much ice-cream as you want.The bad: You can eat as much ice-cream as you want.No, seriously. You think that you get all the freedom in the world when you become an adult, but you are trading ALL your free time just for the means to survive…
You will spend your life working to buy time… what time?…. Time you aren’t actively working to buy more time….
The opportunities you receive will always be based on your perceived value, not what you feel you are owed or entitled to.
Those churches are still around for a reason. The real hope and the real joy is there. It doesn’t come in the form of regulations and tax breaks. It comes in the freest form of mind to heal the soul and empower the brain to make society good for all around you.Some call it religion, God, many other names for God, etc. but what it really is, is a form of self love and preservation.No government or lover or family or friend can make laws enough to give you that inner peace. That Zen.You’ve got to find your own spirituality and your own faith, put it to a purpose, and THEN you will be happy.Simple gifts of random kindness throughout the day is all you need to do.
People nowadays have absolutely no feelings at all. They want the “scoop” on their cellphone to post on social media.
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