Adulthood: Survival For The Smartest

Let’s face it – growing up is tough. Right from psychosocial change, self-actualization, career development and curbing ‘hey’ texts from men without beards – damn! Regardless, if we can transition into bigger sizes of shoes and clothes we can leave behind the ignorance and recklessness that come with childhood…Or so I thought.

Transitioning from childhood into adulthood has demanded wit and continues to badger for additional knowledge. Consequently, high up my to-do list this year (and forever Amen!) sits Reading More Books. My greatest blockade has been having to carry a bigger bag to accommodate a book. But heeey… high-five to e-books! So if you’ve seen me fixated on my phone for hours in a random café, no, I wasn’t on Tinder!

So far, I  have read 4 books and must say I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart and Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers by Lois P. Frankel, have been amaaazing reads! Both are very different books but a resonating theme is the aspect of transitioning from childhood to adulthood.

Kevin Hart’s book depicts how opting to be an adult with childish and ignorant ways can cost you success. The story unmasks Kev beyond his success, showing his silly mistakes, moments of utter immaturity and is obviously hella funny!

By the way, did you know that when Kevin Hart drinks he has a peeing problem? Once he peed in his closet, another time in Eniko’s (his current wife) handbag, and another in his chauffeur’s hat causing his resignation?

Dr. Lois Frankel covers a professional perspective on the transition. She describes how socialization and beliefs influence one’s climb up the corporate ladder. It gets interesting when she calls out childish acts practiced by some of her clients such as treating male colleagues like their father, going to work dressed like a hobo and crying and snorting in meetings. *My mum is working towards being a corporate coach – good luck mum.  Dr. Frankel’s general perspective is that transitioning into adulthood is a mandatory and strategic venture.

I had a lot of aha moments while reading the two books. Severally, I caught myself questioning if I was adult enough. So, I went up Mount Horeb, carrying a pot of scented sticks and a fleece blanket to evaluate myself. Okay, not really.

A few quiet walks later, I had closure with my transition and how different it was for people I knew. Several of my findings were preceded by big questions: What is adulthood anyway? Where exactly is the line between adulthood and childhood?

What is adulthood anyway?

Imposed adulthood is how I transitioned from childhood. Being the first born, I have been responsible for each breath my younger sister takes. I also went out to boarding school at the age of 8. For as long as I can remember, I oversaw activities in school either as a school captain or as a tutor.

This one time in 2004, teachers in my school left for a crisis meeting with the district commissioner and I was tasked with distributing examination papers and supervising the students to complete the exam. Of course the exam was highly copied and 30 minutes into it, some students could be seen outside skipping rope. So much for making a 12 year old an examination invigilator.

There’s also the aspect of being raised by a single parent; you grow up real fast. The parent already has enough of yoke to bear as a provider so you have to figure your way around life and its hustles from a very early stage.

Optional adulthood is how a couple of my friends transitioned from childhood. They came of age and decided to take on new roles and responsibilities. I have found optional adulthood to be tough. It’s a choice, and sometimes Decision Lane is dark, lonely and full of tears. We have seen the weight of taking Decision Lane weighing in on many who have gone ahead to opt out permanently through suicide. Others have opted out semi-permanently by going skydiving. While  imposed adulthood is baptism by fire, optional adulthood is all about one’s capability to see their reality, accept and elevate it.

So where exactly is the line between childhood and adulthood?

At one point of my life I’d attend close to 4 parties, back to back. Meet a friend at one party and follow them to another party, meet another friend there and follow them to the next…on and on. The next point, I was  juggling school and three jobs because I wanted to get ahead.In between those two points, the line between childhood and adulthood has been confusing, blurry and even classic.

Building on my experience, adults:

Keep an overflow of reserves

I’ve been a proper doormat. Friends would come to my house and stay a week. They’d cook, invite others and cook for them and even host parties. I enjoyed it because being loved and involved with everyone mattered to me those days. It was not long before I felt frustrated and mentally exhausted.

On a separate occasion, a friend invited me to a party and asked me to bring her one of my dresses. I was later dis-invited to the party but asked to deliver my dress to her. Of course that friendship ended instantly and so did many others that proved to be parasitic.

Today, I appreciate the value of keeping an overflow of reserves. I can only give when/what I have. The first thing I do every day is replenish my spirit through prayer. I then work out my priorities for the day by looking through my vision board. I leave for work shortly after and on the way, I either read, write or listen to a TED talk/podcast. In the evening, I’m usually brain dead so I listen to music. It’s not a schedule that’s cast on stone, but it works. It enables me to extend my love, my time, my energy, resources and services from a well-informed, healthy and secure place.

See – the people around you will always need something from you one way or another. When you’re always running on empty while meeting the needs of others, you’ll start weighing unnecessary expectations on others, feeling like they owe you a similar level of stretching. When they cannot show up for you or stretch, you become resentful.

I say no often. I use it as a complete sentence without defending or justifying the no. It’s also proved to be an effective way of preserving my reserves.

Live in independence and liberty

Carol was my classmate in high school. She was highly opinionated and book smart. Surprisingly, Carol’s plans, desires and ambitions were a democracy. She opened them up to the entire world for debate. This one time she really went up the performance cluster and some of our classmates accused her of practicing induced smartness because she took Omega 3 fish oil tablets. She stopped taking the pills. Well, that was high school so a lot of adolescence and hormones were at play. But today, there are a lot of people around us who cannot make a decision without passing it out to the world to approve of its value.

Opening up your plans for a debate can be beneficial especially if you are talking to people who have gone before you along the same path you’re about to take. Their two cents stand to offer a sense of direction. But what happens when you share your big dreams with small minded people? Chances of pursuing those dreams thin faster than a malnourished plant.

Although, if you shave off your eyebrows and draw them back with a red pencil, please open this up for debate. The rest of us have a thing or two to express.

Navigate the debt crisis.

In between having proper food, shelter and clothing, the chance of the savings account growing becomes thinner by the day. In fact, by 15th of every month many are Odi dancing into poverty. This however should not be an excuse to live beyond means or live on debt.

Saving rates in Kenya, as published by World Bank, have remained relatively low between 2000 and 2013. Today, Branch a money lending service is one of the top five the most downloaded Android apps in Kenya. This is according to a report  published in February 2018. Maybe people are getting good debt to grow their businesses. But you can bet your last penny that someone is borrowing out to sustain a boujee lifestyle.

In fact, recent findings revealed that one in every two millennials living in Kenya are pointing an accusing finger at debt as the impediment to investing and saving. It’s okay to like fancy, big things. But remember: bigger isn’t always better. (I know what you’re thinking, and yes I’m judging you).

Just kidding. But seriously:

With money, you want a 70-30 balance of savings and expenditure, respectively. Increasing financial literacy and budgeting is a reliable way of manoeuvring the high costs of living.

Skip vanity, escape poverty. A creative I admire Adrian McDonald recently wrote: Don’t die to be seen,often times the world isn’t even looking.

Understand and implement emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence impacts many different aspects of our daily life, such as the way we behave and the way we interact with others. In an attempt to understand EQ deeply, I came across studies which stated that EQ is a byproduct of parental influence and attachment styles.

Turns out emotional involvement of parents really does matter and affects the outcome of their child’s emotional competence and regulation. If they do not invest enough of their time and commitment into pouring emotionally into their child, the child will struggle to learn how to regulate their emotions and interact with others appropriately.

Another important factor in the emotional development of children is how warm caregivers are. Children see how their parents display emotions and interact with other people, and they imitate what they see their parents do to regulate emotions.

Furthermore, when parents react with criticism or dismiss the sadness or anger of a child it communicates that their emotions are not valid or appropriate, which can cause children to be even more prone to those negative emotions and less able to cope with stress.

I went deeper and read about attachment styles in adults. Defined in the attachment theory, attachment styles are established in early childhood attachments and continues to function for relationships in adulthood.Our style of attachment influences how each of us reacts to our needs and how we go about getting them met.

Attachment styles are not inborn but are driven by how parents interact with their infant from birth. Parents therefore must treat their children in ways that foster secure attachment in order for the children to grow into emotionally stable adolescents and adults.

Emotional intelligence calls for one to recognise their emotions, needs and concerns seeing how they affect their thoughts and behaviours. It also needs one to know their strength, weaknesses, insecurities and then leverage that to control impulsive feeling and behaviours.

Eventually Dr. Frankel would not have clients crying and yelling at board meetings.

Love with their minds.

As I submerge deeper into adulthood, I am realizing that love is a decision. It’s a judgement.

When the mind decides and approves, the heart will catch up. This will help even weed out people who joyride on other people’s nature to love and give their all. As you’ll see on the letter I wrote to the basic lover earlier on my blog, most times when the heart goes first you’ll sit back later and realize that you pulled all the weight on your own.

Often people have told me a lot of things but acted in a different way. The mind helps us decipher actions and use them to judge how valid words are.  It’s also important to empower your mind by listening to it. In this way, you’ll gradually be able to rely on it for stable decisions.

As I wind up, this story has been interesting to write. Pieces from different reads have come together beautifully into a narrative. I’m definitely motivated to read more now. Any recommendations for my next read?

Before I leave you:Did you know?

There is a fetish called adult baby syndrome or Paraphilic infantilism which involves role-playing coupled with behaviors such as drinking from a bottle or wearing diapers (diaper fetishism).

Are there some things that you have dropped as an adult, that you strongly believed in during childhood? Any struggles you had during your transition and consequential hacks utilized for survival? Please share.