Allison Graham (credit: https://allisongraham.com/)
Life milestones like marriage, home ownership, children and more are causing stress for people of all ages.
“I think there’s always been social pressure related to the milestones in our lives. The challenges are intensified because of the nature of social media,” Public Speaker and Executive Coach Allison Graham said. “The expectations for the younger generation from the parents are ‘I want more for you than I had for myself,’ and so this just intensifies the pressure bench, creates unrealistic expectations for where one needs to be.”
With social media broadcasting peers highlights, it’s easy to feel behind in your life goals.
“A lot of my clients are 55 to 60 and they have spent their entire lives, decades, trying to reach these unrealistic expectations and failing and judging themselves accordingly, and then getting stuck and not really truly meeting their potential,” Graham continued. “My hope is that if we can start getting people to be more objective about what is realistic, what is the thing that I wanna do and go all in on so that I could become really, really good at it. And put in the time, put in the reps, then we can start to alleviate some of that pressure and help people actually get to where they want to go.”
(Credit: Pexels)
The main milestones that cause stress are financial status and finding an emotional connection (partner, husband, wife, etc.), according to Graham, and life coach Jennifer Slay.
But there are ways to change your mindset and start living for you, rather than trying to measure and compare your accomplishments to others.
“I think it’s about zooming out to the bigger picture because if you have a marriage to the wrong person because you thought you needed to do it by, you know, get married by 26, if you zoom out and you look at your overall life story, that will do more damage and set you back further than getting married at 30 or 31 and not having the wrong person in your life,” Graham added. “Don’t just take somebody’s advice verbatim, if somebody gives you advice just because they say it, doesn’t mean you need to own that or that it’s right for you. So you take it and then you put it in your own soup mix of advice that you’ve gathered over the years and figure out what aligns with you.”
To hear more about changing your mindset when it comes to milestones, check out: https://almost-107.simplecast.com/episodes/how-to-battle-stress-surrounding-milestones
