The Four Stages of Life
Having come across Mark Manson’s video on the Four Stages of Life, I had to share his thoughts.
Mark summaries four different periods of our life that we enter and exit which determine our values at that stage.
Stage 1: Mimickery: We learn how to talk through mimicking what other people say and this continues until early adulthood. We want approval and validation of others but in doing so give up our own desires.
Stage 2: Exploration: This stage is about learning about what we want, what makes us different. There is an intense desire to differentiate, express and experience our individuality, to define some kind of identity for ourselves. But in order to do this we give up stability.
Stage 3: Commitment: Having explored we then commit to a career, a person, a place to live. We commit to what’s important to us and we have to devote energy to it and in turn give up fun. At this stage you know who you are, what you stand for and what you care about and optimise for it.
Stage 4: Legacy: Once you have achieved something through commitment, you want to preserve the importance of what you’ve done with your life. You’ve made your mark and you want to make sure it continues to matter.
Why do we care about this?
It helps you accept yourself – where your motivations and values come from.
It frees you to be unapologetic about where you are. If you want to explore, go own it, don’t apologise for it. Not everyone is going to understand but that’s where you are in life right now. If at Stage 3 give it your all, commit everything to what matters to you.
It makes us more understanding of each other – we are at different stages at different times and we can slip back to previous stages (if you get a divorce, or lose your job) and this is why some people’s choices don’t make sense to us.
Stages are fluid and evolve throughout our life. We don’t go in a straight line, more of a loop-de-loop.
We are all going through tensions and struggles. We do what we do because we think there the right things. What feels right at one stage will feel wrong in another stage.
