TED | 持续点击排名第一的TED视频《20岁，光阴不再来》

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梅格·杰伊 博士还出版了与这篇演讲同名的畅销书 The Defining Decade

这是一本不卖鸡汤、不撒鸡血的严肃科学著作。书中内容是TED国际公开课点击排名第一，最受全球TED年轻人欢迎的人生规划课。

它被《纽约时报》《今日美国》《洛杉矶时报》誉为“最实用派”的人生规划。

它是全球TED年轻人泪目评论，“给我20-29岁人生郁闷期的最系统解答”，视频传入TED官网后，短短5天的分享量达到60万次。原书名The Defining Decade，台湾繁体版《20几岁，你的人生是不是卡住了》，简体中文版译为《20岁，光阴不再来》。 是一本如何把你的20-29岁“发挥最大功效”的一本国际化科学干货。

书中内容是Meg博士通过数十年临床研究20-29岁族群，站在临床心理学家、社会学家、神经学家、生育学家角度得出的严肃事实：你的20-29岁是极简单却极具变化的时期之一。这10年时光决定了你的事业、爱情、幸福甚至整个世界。教你如何把你的20-29岁发挥最大功效。

下载本书籍方法：关注微信公众号后回复“二十岁”三个字。

英文演讲稿：

Why 30 Is Not The New 20

When I was in my 20s, I saw my very first psychotherapy client.(心理诊疗的客户)

I was a PHD student in clinical psychology(临床心理学) at Berkeley, she was a 26-year-old women named Alex. Now Alex walked into her first session, wearing jeans and a big slouchy top(宽大松垮的上衣).

And she dropped onto the couch in my office, kicked off her flats,一屁股坐到沙发上，踢掉平底鞋and told me she was there to talk about guy problems.

Now when I heard this, I was so relieved;

My classmate got an arsonist纵火犯 for her first client.

And I got a 20something who wanna talk about boys. This, I thought I could handle.

But I didn’t handle it.

With the funny stories that Alex would bring to session, it was easy for me just to nod my head 点头应和while we kicked the can down the road缓兵之计.

“Thirty’s the new twenty,” Alex would say.

And as far as I could tell, she was right.

Work happened later, marriage happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later.

Twentysomethings like Alex and I had nothing but time.

But before long, my supervisor pushed me to push Alex about her love life（感情生活）.

I pushed back.（我拒绝了）I said, “Sure, she’s dating down, she’s sleeping with a knucklehead, but it’s not like she’s going to marry the guy.”

And then my supervisor said, “Not yet, but she might marry the next one.”

Besides, the best time to work on Alex’s marriage is before she has one.

That ‘s what psychologists call an Aha moment.（顿悟时刻）

That was the moment I realized, 30 is not the new 20.

Yes people settle down later than they used to, but that didn’t make Alex’s 20s a developmental downtime（发展搁浅期）,that made Alex’s 2os a developmental sweet spot（发展关键时期）,

And we were sitting there blowing（挥霍） it.

That was when I realized that this sort of benign neglect (善意的忽视) was a real problem, and

it had real consequences, not just for Alex and her love life, but for the careers and the families and the futures of twenty somethings everywhere.

There are 50 million twenty somethings in the United States right now.

We’re talking about 15% of the population, or a 100% if you consider that no one’s getting through adulthood without going through their 20s first.

Raise your hand if you’re in your 20s, I really wanna see some twenty somethings here. Oh,yah,Y’all’s awesome.If you work with 20somethigs, you love a 20 something, you’re losing sleep over 20 somethings, I want to see---I wanna see, Ok, awesome, twentysomethings really matter. So I Specialize in twentysomethings because I believe that every single one of those 50 million twentysomethings deserves to know what psychologists, sociologists, neurologists and fertility specialist(生育专家) already know: Claiming your 20s is one of the simplest, yet most transformative, things you can do for work, for love, for your happiness, maybe even for the world.This is not my opinion. These are the facts.

We know that 80% of life’s most defining moments take place by age 35. That means that 8 out of 10 of the decisions and experiences and Aha moments that make your life what it is will have happened by your mid 30s.

People who are over 40, don’t panic. This crow is going to be fine, I think.

We know that the first 10 years of a career has an exponential impact on how much money you’re going to earn.

We know that more than half of the Americans are married or are living with or dating their future partner by 30.

We know that the brain caps off its second and last growth spurt in your 20s as it rewires itself for adulthood which means whatever it is you wanna change about yourself, now is the time to change it.

We know that personality changes more during your 20s than at any other time in life.

And we know that female fertility peaks at age 28 and things get tricky after age 35

So your 20s are the time to educate yourself, about your body and your options.

So when we think about child development, we all know that the first 5 years are a critical period for language and attachment in the brain. It’s a time when your ordinary, day-to-day life has an inordinate impact on who you will become. But what we hear less about is that there’s such a thing as adult development, and our 20s are that critical period of adult development. But this is not what 20somethings are hearing. Newspapers talk about the changing timetable of adulthood. Researchers call the 20s an extended adolescence(青春期的延长期).

Journalists coin silly nicknames for twentysomethings like twixters and kidults（成年孩子）.

As a culture, we have trivialized what is actually the defining decades of adulthood.

Leonard Bernstein said that to achieve great things, you need a plan and not quite enough time

Isn’t that true?

So what do you think happens when you pat a twentysomething on the head and you say “ you have 10 extra years to start your life”?

Nothing happens.

You have robbed that person of his urgency and ambition and absolutely nothing happens.

And then every day, smart, interesting 20somethings like you and like your sons and daughters come to my office and say things like this:“I know my boyfriend is no good for me, but this relationship doesn’t count; I’m just killing time”

Or they say, “everybody days as long as I get started on a career by the time I’m 30, I’ll be fine.”

But then it starts to sound like this:

“ My 20s is almost over, but I have nothing to show for myself.”

“I had a better resume the day after I graduated from college”

And then it starts to sound like this:

“ Dating in my 20s was like a musical chairs（像玩抢椅子）. Everybody was running around and having fun, but then sometime around 30 it was like the music turned off and everybody started sitting down. I didn’t want to be the only one left standing up, so sometimes I think I married my husband because he was the closest chair to me at 30.”

Where are the 20somethings here? Do not do that!

Now that sounds a little flip危言耸听, that make no mistake, the stakes are very high风险很高.

When a lot has been put to your thirties（悄悄告诉你，词句Ted 翻译有误）, there is enormous thirtysomething pressure, to jump-start a career, pick a city, partner up and have two or three kids in a much shorter period of time. Many of these things are incompatible and as research is just starting to show, simply harder or more stressful to do all at once in our 30s.

The post-millennial midlife crisis（千禧之年后的中年危机）isn’t buying a red sports car.

It’s realizing you can’t get that career you now want.

It’s realizing you cannot get that child you now want,

Or you cannot get your child a sibling.

Too many 30somethiongs or 40somethins look at themselves, and at me, sitting across the room（坐在房间另一端）, and say about their 20s, “What was I doing?” “what was I thinking?”

I wanna change what 20somethings are doing and changing.

Here’s a story about how that can go. It’s a story about a woman named Emma.

At 25, Ema came to my office, because she was, in her words, having an identity crisis. She said she thought she might like to work in art or entertainment, but she hasn’t decided yet, so she’d spent the last few years waiting tables instead. Because it was cheaper, she lived with a boy friend who displayed his temper more than his ambition. And as hard as her early 20s were, her early life had been even harder. She often cried in our sessions but then collected herself by saying that, “You cannot pick your family, but you can pick your friends.”  Well, one day, Emma comes in and she hangs her head in her lap（把头埋在膝盖里）,and she sobbed for most of the hour. She just bought a new address book, and she’d spent the morning filling her many contacts, then she’d been left staring at that empty blank that comes after the words: In case of emergency, please call_____.She was nearly hysterical when she looked at me and said, “ Who is gonna be there for me if I got in a car wreck, who is gonna take care of me if I had cancer?”

Now in that moment, it took everything I had not to say, “I will.” But what Emma needed was not some therapist who really really cared. Emma needed a better life, and I knew this was her chance.

I had learned too much since I first worked with Alex to just sit there while Emma’s defining decade went parading by, so over the next few weeks and months, I told Emma three things that every twentysomething, male or female, deserves to hear.

First, I told Emma to forget about having an identity crisis, and get some identity capital.

By get identity capital, I mean to do something that adds value to who you are. Do something that’s an investment in who you might want to be next. I didn’t the future of Emma’s career, and no one knows the future of work, but I do know this, identity capital begets identity capital. So now is the time for that cross-country job, that internship, that startup you wanna try. I am not discounting twentysomething exploration here, but I am discounting exploration that’s not supposed to count, which by the way is not exploration. That’s procrastination. I told Emma to explore work and make it count.

Second, I told Emma that the urban tribe is overrated.(不要坐井观天)

Best friends are great for giving rides to the airport, but 20somethings who huddle together with likeminded peers limit who they know, what they know, how they speak, and where they work. That new piece of capital, that new person to date,

New things come from what are called our weak ties, our friends of friends of friends.

So yes, half of the twentysomethings are un-or under-employed. But half aren’t, and weak ties are how you get you group.

Half of new jobs are never posted, so reach out to yourself out to your neighbour’s boss is how you get that un-posted job. It’s not cheating; it’s the science of how information spreads.

Last but not least, Emma believes you can’t pick your family but you can pick your friends.

Now this was true for her growing up, but as a twentysomething soon, Emma would pick her family when she partnered with someone and created a family of her own.

I told Emma the time to start picking your family is now.  

Now you may be thinking that 30 is actually a better time to settle down than 20 or even 25, and I agree with you.

But grabbing whoever you’re living with or sleeping with when everyone on Facebook starts walking down the aisle is not progress.

The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one, and that means being as intentional with love as you are with work. Picking your family is about consciously choosing who and what you want rather than just making it work or killing time with whoever happens to be choosing you.

So what happened to Emma? Well we went through that address book and she found an old roommate’s cousin who worked in an art museum in another state. That weak tie helped her get a job there. That job gave her a reason to leave that live-in boyfriend.

Now five years later, she’s a special events planner for museums. She’s married to a man she mindfully chose. She loves her new family; she loves her new job. She sent me a card that said, “Now the emergency contact blanks don’t seem big enough.”

Now Emma’s story made it sound easy, but that what I love about working with 20somethings. They are so easy to help.

20somethings are like airplanes just leaving LAX, bound for somewhere west. Right after takeoff , a slight change in course is the difference between landing in Alaska or Fiji. Likewise, at 21 or 25 or even 29, one good conversation, one good break, one good TED talk, can have an enormous effect across years or even generations to come. So here’s an idea worth spreading to every 20something you know. It’s as simple as what I learnt to say to Alex. It’s what now I have the privilege of saying to twentysomethings like Emma every single day: 30 is not the new 20, so claim your adulthood, get some identity capital, use your weak ties, pick your family. Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do.

You’re deciding your life right now.

Thank you.

以上英语来自公众号 “芊蔚私塾”！

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