Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 417. The pressure to be extraordinary in our 20s About this episode In our 20s, we can feel intense pressure to be extraordinary, to stand head and shoulders above the pack, to thrive across all aspects of our life. But when we put pressure on ourselves to be extraordinary, we can fall victim to social comparison, lose sight of what we really want, and experience long-term feelings of inadequacy. In this episode, unpack where the pressure to be extraordinary comes from, and reframe our thinking towards a healthier, more balanced approach.
We explore:
• How social media creates an ‘artificial average’, making us feel inadequate
• Why being gifted as a child can lead to burnout as an adult
• The myth of linear success, and why taking a scenic route is just as worthy
• Why learned helplessness can make us stop trying at all
• How we can expand our definition of being ‘extraordinary’ into many areas
• Why our relationships, not our work achievements, are the biggest predictor of long-term happiness
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Our favourite sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/nov/05/under-pressure-why-athletes-choke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KkKuTCFvzI
https://paulasanderson.com/2020/12/04/30-under-30-and-the-pressure-to-be-extraordinary/
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:39 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our 20s, and what they mean for our psychology.
2:57 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode. Today, we are talking about a very insidious part of our 20s, the pressure to be extraordinary, the pressure to be the best, to be the one to kind, to be the star. This idea that if we don't make it big now in our 20s, we will never have what it takes. This feeling follows us around everywhere, and I personally think
3:36 Jemma Sbeg? it destroys a lot of our organic love for so many things, and it destroys our ability to be truly curious and truly passionate during a time in our lives when that is like our number one asset. I cannot be the only one who feels this implicit sense that we are all in this race.
3:58 Jemma Sbeg? We are all losing at the exact same time. We're all in the race. None of us, none of us are winning. What, there are like ten or twelve people in this world, ten or twelve amazing twenty somethings. Who are Olympians, who are business owners, who are authors, who are experts, they're winning, but we are not. And the question always seems to be like, why can't that be me? Why didn't I make it? Why don't I have the motivation to be this extraordinary person? Does that mean that I am less than? It is so exhausting and I think we really need to dissect where that comes from, from a psychological standpoint. Um, what it does to our ambition. I also want to talk about the role of viral fame, how that has changed.
4:44 Jemma Sbeg? Our interpretation of what it means to be extraordinary, the gifted child phenomena. All of these things, but mainly the personal cost of this pressure to be extraordinary that just seemingly follows us around everywhere. And why our current version of what is extraordinary is probably deeply, deeply flawed and deeply, deeply wrong. So without further ado, I feel like this is the pep talk I need right now. This is an important episode for me as well. Um, let's get into it. What does it mean to be extraordinary in modern society right now? I think there are a few major themes that spring to mind, the biggest being fame, money, status items.
5:30 Jemma Sbeg? Being busy, being the best, accomplishing as much as possible in a very short time. It is all very visible, isn't it? And it's all very dependent on external validation. It's all very hyper competitive. The appeal of external validation and meeting those external. Expectations for what success looks like is very understandable at this time in our lives, at this stage in our twenties. In our twenties, there are so many unknowns in front of us. Like, there is so much that we don't understand. It is only natural that we fixate on this very narrow vision
6:12 Jemma Sbeg? of what extraordinary is, that we know guarantees us approval, because that makes us feel steady. Striving to be exceptional can provide a kind of emotional security, but also a social security that we don't often, we don't really get from anything else. Like, this is the blueprint. If we follow it, well, all these people who have found the success seem happy, so we must be happy as well. We will be happy if we find that validation also. The social validation in particular that comes with visible success from your friends and family praising you, right up to viral internet fame,
6:52 Jemma Sbeg? is very seductive, but it also limits our version of what a successful life looks like to only something that can be seen and praised. You never see people bragging about the quality of their time off, the devotion to their hobbies. You never see people bragging about how deeply they've gotten to know themselves, or how much rest they get. There's no prize for being the best kind of friend, or for surviving hard emotional things. We have one version of success, either you are that, either you are fame, luxury, money, or you're not successful. That is what society says. I think this has in part been, and I know has been intensified by social media in two ways.
7:37 Jemma Sbeg? Firstly, the rise of viral fame that can take somebody from like seemingly ordinary to extraordinary in the span of hours and like change your life, your status, your bank account balance overnight. This is the first time in human history that this could be somebody's pipeline, that this could be somebody's life. And that makes extraordinary, or being extraordinary, feel so much more accessible. Genuinely, like fame, even like twenty years ago, thirty years ago, fame used to be like a slow burn. It used to be exclusive, and it used to be reserved for people who were really dedicated to a craft, or who were perhaps became like sensational stars overnight.
8:21 Jemma Sbeg? I actually read a study the other day that interviewed like I don't know, I think like teenagers, like thousands of teenagers. Who are like, and actually even younger children, like ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen year old kids. On what their dream job would be, and the majority of them said like YouTuber, online gamer or influencer. This, like, the viral fame makes it feel so much more enriched for so many more people. To be this extraordinary person and that ups the pressure. The second way I think social media has intensified the need to be extraordinary is that unlike our parents' generation who could.
9:02 Jemma Sbeg? Probably only really compare themselves to the people that they know or mutual friends or. I don't know, people their age who like made it bigger and who were like in the paper, who were like public figures. You and I, like, we now have the entire online world to compare ourselves to. We are flooded with opportunities to see how we measure up against our peers, literally everybody. People our own age who appear to be killing it from like all over the world. Like, I don't, you would not have to search very far to find somebody your age from your part of the world.
9:41 Jemma Sbeg? Who looks like you, doing things that are just insanely cool and amazing. And they are one in a million, but we see a million of them a day. We don't see like the normal lives, we don't see the tough bits unless they want us to see it, we don't see. We only see like the people who have broken through a very tricky algorithm to reach our screen or to reach like our. Public knowledge or like our public, yeah, the public arena. And this creates a cognitive fallacy, that if these are the only people we see online, everybody else must. Like, it must be accessible. These people were just like us before they got here.
10:26 Jemma Sbeg? And everybody could have this, so why don't we? In a more professional context as well, I think LinkedIn has done that for even more traditional career paths as well. Obviously, not everybody wants to be an influencer or a YouTuber, but LinkedIn does that for finance, for consulting, for law, for accounting. There was a two thousand and sixteen study that assessed a sample of seventeen hundred university students and measured the correlation between LinkedIn usage and depression and social anxiety. And they found that participants who used LinkedIn at least once per week were much more likely to have these like indicators of poor mental health.
11:08 Jemma Sbeg? And that's the problem with constantly striving to be extraordinary at this age. Extraordinary feels exceedingly normal because of how cases of extraordinary people are everywhere and rise to the surface and dominate what we see because it's exciting. It's exciting and alluring to see somebody make it. And this, of course, breeds a very deep, insidious form of social comparison. I should say this, social comparison in itself is not a bad thing. I actually think it's a useful thing. It's completely normal to look around you and to look at others for like information about how, what you should be doing and how you think and how you feel and how you should behave.
11:52 Jemma Sbeg? It provides an incredible evolutionary advantage in a highly complex and interconnected modern social world. Knowing what is the norm is often good for social standing. But there are obvious problems that come with constantly looking at other people to validate our lives and our choices, especially when what we see of them may be incorrect or probably is the incomplete picture. I came across this article um written by this woman. I cannot remember her name, but she was on the thirty under thirty list in two thousand and eighteen. If you don't know what the Forbes thirty under thirty list is, it's like basically a list of thirty people aged thirty and under who have done
12:36 Jemma Sbeg? like really impressive things and it's like a real thing to get on this list. And this woman, this author of this article, talks about how the award.
12:47 Jemma Sbeg? It doesn't account for the whole picture of people's lives. It doesn't, like, it doesn't look at the facts of their achievements. It doesn't think about, it doesn't weigh up who was, who was self-made versus who had family support. It doesn't weigh up their failures. She points to when Forbes, uh, there was like a really famous article a couple of years back about like Kylie Jenner being like the first self-made billionaire woman on one of its covers. And in this article, this woman talks about how like this list, that's an example of how they fetishize achievement, but they erase the role of privilege
13:26 Jemma Sbeg? and access, like they only spotlight the individual, not the system, not all the stuff that went right for them, not all the luck they have. Or even not what, like, they never talk about what went wrong or anything that isn't glamorous. I'm like, I'm totally blanking on her name. I'm gonna leave a link below. It is such a good article. It's on Vox if you wanna read it. And again, this woman who wrote this article was a Forbes thirty under thirty, like a Woody, like she belongs to this extremely tiny group, just thirty people under thirty every year who are deemed to be extraordinary. And if she is calling out the lack of transparency with young people
14:04 Jemma Sbeg? and the true stories of people who achieve these huge milestones and how it's not all that it seems, like, I think we should listen and I think we should acknowledge that the, I don't know, the idols that we have, the visions or the views or the pictures of success we have are probably not correct. I think part of the pressure to be extraordinary also comes down to hustle culture. Very obvious hustle culture, this idea that we should always be on, always be burning the midnight oil, or always should be optimizing our free time is, is everywhere. Like, they villainize free time. Time spent relaxing is times you should be spent, like, that should be spent working
14:47 Jemma Sbeg? and pushing ourselves harder. And there's this whole narrative of like, pressure is privilege. I've been seeing more and more videos on TikTok and Instagram that are like, I can't complain when there's work to, like, when there's work to do, like, I can't complain that my plate is full when I wanted to eat. I can't complain about the pressure that I wanted. Like, that's this whole mentality of like, if you're not suffering and working hard, you're, you're not deserving. Even the things that are purely done for enjoyment these days. Need to be maximized. Literally maximizing is the trend, like hobby maxing, looks maxing, life maxing, outside maxing, flow state maxing. Like I could go on.
15:30 Jemma Sbeg? Everything needs to be maximized. It's created this lingering sense that we have to be fantastic at all our hobbies. We always have to be gearing towards monetizing them. We need to strive to be extraordinarily beautiful, happy, fun, rested, successful, friendly. We have to have everything in order to like just be normal. Or especially, I think the idea is like in order to be satisfied. Again, partly because of how visible our lives are now. Everything needs to be for an audience. Everything needs to be, and you need to have the most of
16:14 Jemma Sbeg? the things, the most of everything that you can get. Everything needs to be balanced to perfection. And I think they really like they start us young when it comes to this pressure. Obviously, I'm blaming social media. I think that this comes down to a lot more complex ideas than just that. I have to say, if if you are a gifted child or an overachiever, as a teenager, this next bit of this episode is for you. Because the straight A student to burnt out twenty something pipeline is so real. I think the pressure to be extraordinary in our twenties begins with the obsession with excessively smart, talented, wonderkin
16:58 Jemma Sbeg? like type people when we were children, like the accelerator programs, the child savant, the bragging rights like our parents received. Everybody wanted a gifted child. And it actually ends up being a little bit of a curse. Of course, like, it's only natural that our society praises and wants to celebrate intelligence and wants to celebrate.
17:24 Jemma Sbeg? You know, being talented, but boxing a child into that identity so young. And during such a formative time for their self-concept. Does psychological damage long term. Because it delivers the expectation that you can never deviate from this identity as the star. For the rest of your life, you will have to continue to be the best. Like, your trajectory is set. You were, you were a gifted child, you better be a gifted adult. And if you deviate, that's because you messed up. You've squandered your potential. You didn't work hard enough.
18:04 Jemma Sbeg? But adult life, like, isn't the same as our lives as children or even as teenagers. There's a much bigger playing field. We have so many other options open to us that weren't there before. There's a whole new set of challenges to balance. That means that when we're exposed to people or environments or situations that are challenging. Or where we aren't the smartest person in the room, or we aren't the most talented person in the room after being. Told to believe that we always would be from a young age, it can be really, really jarring.
18:45 Jemma Sbeg? Frustration can set in when we can't master new skills with ease. We might believe that we're not clever anymore. That we peaked in high school. We suffer from imposter syndrome. There isn't often an entire identity collapse. That comes, that I think afflicts every person who was praised for being. Smart, creative, the best as a child, who then as an adult. You know, is still smart, amazing and talented, but cannot operate at the same level that they could when they had. Didn't have bills, didn't have complex relationships, didn't have global wars to worry about.
19:24 Jemma Sbeg? I think we may wonder where our feeling of being special will come from now. Like, now that we're out of that system, how do we set ourselves apart? And so we set ourselves unrealistically high standards to achieve something that will make us feel worthy. And then we still don't feel satisfied when we get there. The truth is, a two thousand and twenty five study found that former gifted children often struggle more than non-gifted children after graduation, because their only coping mechanism is working harder. And they struggle in environments where there there just aren't those same clear metrics for them to achieve against and for them to feel validated by.
20:08 Jemma Sbeg? Like, that's the truth. That's probably what a lot of you guys are going through right now. And the other thing that gets confusing, and I kind of just mentioned it, is that after high school, after university, like, the idea of linear success is revealed very quickly to be a myth. When we were in high school, when we were in college, everything is kind of this step up. Like, we achieve this, and then we achieve this, and then we climb this, and then we get to the top. And when we graduate, we climb the career ladder, and every two years, we're rewarded with a promotion, and we're rewarded with a raise until we get to the top of the ladder, and then we are predictably, naturally, our happiest, because we have done it. And we have the success story we always wanted to be.
20:50 Jemma Sbeg? But like, that progression is not true anymore, if it ever was true. Instead, we live in a very uncertain time for all of our careers, for all of our lives. Rapidly evolving technology, A I, financial crisis, a volatile job market means that our age group isn't going to have that same sense of upward mobility and progress that a lot of other generations have. There was this woman called Eliza Philby. She wrote the book Inheritocracy. And she's the one who estimated that Gen Z will have five careers and work for fifteen different employers in their lifetime.
21:35 Jemma Sbeg? Whereas in the past, that typically would sit around the one to two mark. When we change jobs, when we shift industries, as is necessary for us at the moment. It can make us feel like we are falling down the ladder. And that we're not exceptional because taking a break, taking a detour, any kind of deviation is basically like we're out of the running because, you know, compared to somebody else who didn't deviate, like we are now behind. And that, that is a really stressful situation to be in. Again, the pressure that puts on us, it's a deeply, it's deeply anxiety inducing. It's also incredibly unproductive and actually counterintuitive.
22:16 Jemma Sbeg? As much as I do agree, pressure may be a privilege for some. When a certain version of success is the be all and end all of life, and you are not achieving or anywhere close to achieving that success, it actually ends up making our goals feel less achievable and reduces our motivation. This is what I want to talk about next, you know? We know where the pressure to be extraordinary comes from. We know that we're kind of set up to fail in many ways. Now, what does it actually do to our motivational systems and our mental health? When our only version of what would make us happy or what would constitute a good life
22:59 Jemma Sbeg? is this outdated model of like the brilliant young individual. We're going to talk about that and so much more after this short break.
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26:33 Jemma Sbeg? So the pressure to be extraordinary does a few things. The most important being it just creates a chronic sense of inadequacy. It also kills our motivation. It stops us from experimenting. It stops us from like sometimes doing anything at all. Let's break those down one by one. The problem with being extraordinary is that it never lasts. Even if you do achieve everything you want, it's a mirage. You know, once you have met the expectations that you set for yourself or somebody else set for you, like the bar is always going to be raised because that is like the pure definition of extraordinary, like it pushes boundaries.
27:15 Jemma Sbeg? It's it being extraordinary is about being constantly challenged and it runs off this hyper competitive narrative in society. I'm sure many of us have had this experience whereby we achieve one thing, we are so happy about it for about a minute and then we are already looking towards the next thing and the next. This feeling has a name in psychology. It's called achievement adaptation. It's very similar to hedonic adaptation. Basically, it is the tendency to overestimate how great big achievements are going to make you feel long term and to essentially become desensitized to your own efforts and accomplishments
28:00 Jemma Sbeg? such that all good feelings lose their impact over time. So basically it's like an addiction, like you need more and more to feel happy. Every bar that you rise to meet will be raised and you will feel like you are not doing enough to get there. Some of the most like conventionally successful people you know, struggle with this, this inability to look around and be like, hey, like I'm where I always wanted to be. I'm really proud of that. I'm so proud of how far I've come. Taylor Swift is a great example, literally the most famous person in the world. I don't know if you've watched her documentary, I'm sure many of you have. But it, the one from a few years ago, I think it was called like Miss Americana.
28:42 Jemma Sbeg? There is this scene in that documentary that I think about all of the time, like constantly. It's the scene where she's like waiting to hear about Grammy nominations and she's like, just written her album Lover. This woman has already won at that point, I think, a dozen Grammys. And her publicist is like, no, you didn't, you didn't win any. Uh, you didn't even get nominated actually. And you can see she's just like crushed. She's crushed. And I distinctly remember her being like, well, I just have to be better. I have to make a better album. I have to push myself more. And it doesn't look like at that time, that was an enjoyable thing for her. Like obviously now, and she did, she did obviously meet that new level, but.
29:25 Jemma Sbeg? Being exceptional can become a bit of a curse because your worth is dependent on your ability to outperform yourself. I think when we begin to recognize this loop, that nothing is ever enough. We will never be as good as a version of us that. Doesn't exist or a version of other people that doesn't exist. I think that actually kills our motivation in a way because we're kind of like, why bother? Like, why do I, why bother trying so hard if every time I do achieve something, the goalposts shift? If I'm never gonna be that person. I think this logic comes into play, which is like, you know, it's better not to try at all.
30:07 Jemma Sbeg? You know, I'd rather feel unexceptional because I didn't try than unexceptional because I did. And like, that has revealed my inadequacy. This is called learned helplessness or a version of learned helplessness called self-handicapping. So this term was coined in like the sixties, self-handicapping, learned helplessness. Coin in the sixties by these two researchers who basically realized. Sometimes people get so adjusted and so used to being dissatisfied every time they do try, that they just stop trying. Like they just realized that they're never gonna be this extraordinary person. So they don't even try to be ordinary in a way.
30:50 Jemma Sbeg? When they were testing this theory on humans, Selgman, who was one of the researchers, he would subject participants to really loud unpleasant noises using a lever that would not stop the sound. So basically, there was a lever, they were told, I can't remember exactly, but essentially they were told that the lever would stop the sound and they were sitting in this room and the sound was really annoying, really frustrating. In the first round, um, the people were pulling, pulling, pulling the lever, it wasn't working. In the second round, the lever was working. But by this stage, they just kind of learnt to adjust to the circumstances and they'd
31:33 Jemma Sbeg? stop believing that they could do anything to change it. So none of them pulled the leather or like a very few of them did, even though like if they had tried again, it would have, it would have worked and the sound would have gone away. They just learnt and, and really leaned in, leaned in to this sense of, of helplessness that like nothing is gonna change for me. The biggest result of this is a chronic state of apathy. When we experience prolonged exposure to not meeting our expectations, to uncomfortable situations, that we feel like we can't avoid, we can't alleviate, we're never gonna be what we wanna be, we effectively learn to accept the situation we are in as a given.
32:17 Jemma Sbeg? We become stuck, we become convinced that because we can't be the most exceptional, we are doomed to, to mean nothing at all. It is a very black and white form of thinking. It can also mean that when we do get opportunities or we are put in luck's path, all the expectation about what that could mean for us makes us choke. This is classic performance anxiety that I think is directly derived from the pressure to be extraordinary. Whereby pressure gets to a point where it's no longer motivating. It is debilitating and it means that even when you have all the opportunities you could ask for, you cannot act on them.
32:59 Jemma Sbeg? Because you are so nervous about screwing the moment. This has traditionally been observed, obviously, in athletes who at like the final moment. They are doing something that they have done since they were children, they choke. For example, there is evidence of this happening time and time again. Research has shown that in the last thirty seconds of tight basketball games. N B N play, N B A players, sorry, are, I think, five point eight percent less likely to score from a free throw line than at any other time in the game or during their history. They're also more likely to perform worse in front of a big home crowd.
33:43 Jemma Sbeg? We're at risk of doing the same. Yes, we may not be playing basketball, but in job interviews, exams, during big meetings for big opportunities. When we start gaining momentum with something we're really passionate about, we get so anxious about not doing it correctly. Or about the possibility that something's gonna go wrong, that we just, we do nothing and we feel incapable. The best way we can actually counteract this is to bring back the fun to it. Basically, when you say to yourself, like, this is meant to be fun. This isn't meant to be that serious. I'm just here to enjoy myself. I'm here to learn. I'm here to play. This is actually one of the best things you can do for this kind of pressure and this performance anxiety.
34:26 Jemma Sbeg? Because you actually trigger your nervous system to calm down and to stop viewing your current situation as a threat. Genuinely, they have done studies on this. People who counteract pressure by asking themselves, how can I enjoy this more? How can I play around with this more? How can I make a game out of this? Do better. They do better. A playful mindset is like magic because it lets you loosen your grip a little bit. And that's really what's killing a lot of this ambition and dreams is that we're so stressed. We're clinging on, clinging on to it so tightly that we're like choking it. We need to be able to let things naturally move and flow.
35:09 Jemma Sbeg? With that in mind, I think it is time that we talk about some other important mindset shifts that can lessen the pressure to be extraordinary and let you start flourishing with that, the need to be the greatest. And that, the first one is the mindset of like, how can I have fun here? Another is this mantra of being like, even the ordinary can be extraordinary if I do it with care. If I do it with authenticity, if I do it with focus. Being on Forbes thirty under thirty, being a CEO, being famous, getting headlines, all great. But you can be the best at anything you like that is completely small and minute.
35:52 Jemma Sbeg? You can be the best cook in your friendship group. You can be the best at hosting your games nights. You can be the best at making canva graphics in your workplace. You can be the best at finding, I don't know, like remarkable Facebook marketplace deals. I have a friend like that. I genuinely think she could win a world championship. You also don't have to be the best at anything to be extraordinary. This is again,
36:17 Jemma Sbeg? like where we need to remake our definition of extraordinary altogether. Like, we need to revise that. Being extraordinary to this current world looks one certain way. And I don't know about you, but it gets rather boring. Like, it's kind of boring. Being extraordinary to you, though, might be very interesting. It might look like collecting a vast number of experiences, meeting lots of people, taking time off when you know you need it. The ability to travel whenever you want to. Hopping off the so-called career ladder, doing something that you're passionate about, taking care of yourself.
36:57 Jemma Sbeg? It may be having a lot of interesting side quests. It may be being the person who can always connect others. Gaining experiences in every single way possible, not just the career way. Like, there are so many other versions of extraordinary that I think are more extraordinary than what our current definition is. Like, the current definition of like what makes extraordinary, again, is kind of plain, like making a lot of money, being very successful in a traditional way. I think at this point, it's kind of like, well.
37:32 Jemma Sbeg? I don't, I don't know, not that everybody can do it, but so many people are there. And they don't seem particularly happy. Some of them don't seem like particularly fulfilled or nice people. And they don't seem like they have very fulfilling lives. The version of extraordinary that we're kind of willing to explore, just like. Objectively looks more interesting and probably will lead you to experience a lot more that is like quite nourishing. I also think like our careers, speaking specifically of careers, you know, are not, they're a journey, not a race. And they're especially not worth being a race if you hate what you're doing the entire time.
38:11 Jemma Sbeg? And again, what people won't tell you is that people who are stereotypically exceptional, especially early on. Like that in itself can be its own version of golden handcuffs. And not just in like the gifted child being pigeonholed way, but in a really complex way. People who find success early on, it's not all that it's cracked up to be. They often speak about this lack of flexibility they now have. They speak about the curse of a reputation, even a good reputation. They will always be the youngest lawyer. They will always be the teenage C E O. They will always be the athlete. The star from that one show that they made when they were twenty five, the person who did that one thing.
38:55 Jemma Sbeg? Once when they were young and because they were young, it was significant. That means that people question them more when they go to try new things. They see them more, or they see them only as what they used to be, and that makes it. Hard for them to kind of challenge assumptions. It also gives them less room to experiment. Experimentation in itself is extraordinary and I think actually gives you more choice down the line. Because you've explored the what ifs, you've had more diverse experiences. And more opportunities for learning than someone who found success in the first thing they ever did. Probably like they probably don't have that.
39:38 Jemma Sbeg? Not to bag on them, obviously, like they're very impressive people. I personally know people who are like Forbes thirty under thirty. I think they're fantastic and they're very nice. But you actually do have a freedom they don't have. You have reputational freedom to be whatever you wanna be. When you want to be it, not just when you're twenty and not just at something that's gonna follow you around for the rest of your life. Again, being extraordinary may be aspirational. It is no guarantee of happiness. And there's a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people who are probably on your vision boards. Or who come to my mind and would come to your mind when we are asked to describe an exceptional or extraordinary person.
40:18 Jemma Sbeg? Who are deeply, deeply miserable and who cannot have fun, cannot fail, cannot explore. The way that you can as a novice. I also think there's a lot more that matters for our happiness and health than being the best. Let's talk about it some more after this short break.
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41:13 Speaker 07 This stress check, AKA friendly reminder that your hobbies matter, is brought to you by State Farm. Because you deserve to lose yourself in the stuff that brings you joy. Here's mine, painting my tabletop battle miniatures. Yeah, seriously. After a long day, I grab a brush, pop in some music and just get into it. And there's no wrong way to do it. It helps me clear my head, slow down, and just breathe. But it works. Big stress, mini warriors, total reset. No pressure, just paint, creativity, and a little reminder of what makes me happy. Some people bake, some people garden. Me, I paint warriors with interesting tech. And guess what? It works. You don't have to be good at your hobby. You just have to enjoy it.
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44:08 Jemma Sbeg? There's a lot more that matters for our happiness and health than being the best. And the biggest one that comes to my mind is our relationships. They never get the spotlight that professional success does. That same psychotherapist who talked about learned helplessness, Martin Selkman. Um, he also invented the field of positive psychology, if you want another fun fact. He has conducted extensive research that shows that the strength of our relationships, whether that is with friends, family, a partner, that is the single most reliable measure of wellbeing.
44:48 Jemma Sbeg? More so than fame for sure, more so than money for sure, more so than achievement, more so than accomplishment, all these things that we think are hallmarks and will determine a good life. None of it, all of it pales in comparison to close relationships. Close relationships, more than money, more than fame, are what keep people fulfilled and happy throughout their lives. Again, sometimes we need this grounding reminder. If you're solely focused on being impressive or being seen in a certain way, then it means you don't spend time with your friends, you don't focus on
45:23 Jemma Sbeg? being somebody who can love and be loved. Like, those things are gonna carry you so much further and the people who sacrifice that do miss out in a way that you may not be. The final reminder, the final mindset shift I have for you today is to remember fulfillment and your dreams and executing your purpose has no deadline. There is no expiration date. This is the curse I think a lot of us struggle with in our twenties. If I am not all that I wanna be by a certain age, well, it's never gonna happen. I simply don't believe that's true. And I don't see any evidence for that being true either. I can give you like a very cliche list.
46:06 Jemma Sbeg? You guys have probably seen of all those people, Oprah, Harrison Ford, Vera Wang, like Morgan Freeman, who have become successes at forty, fifty, sixty, but. I just think in everyday life, there are so many stories, if you start looking for them, of people who have found success at ages that are never highlighted, or that we would never expect success to come to us at. I'm gonna give you an example, and it's a really weird one, but I was in Amsterdam the other day. And I went to this strange museum called the Mouse Mansion. And whilst we were there, I'm gonna be real, it's a children's museum.
46:48 Jemma Sbeg? But my friend Rosie was like, you have to go, it's really endearing, we go. We do a tour, we like paint these little doors for the mice. And this woman, shout out to Eleanor, the host, um, was telling us the story of, that this, this museum is like one, now one of the most famous museums in Amsterdam. And I was like, who made this museum? Like, who, where did this come from? And she was like, it, it was this woman in her like forties or fifties who had had her kids, had a career. And she just like was having this vision of these mice stories and she wanted, she wanted to make children's books about mice and she wanted to make this mice mouse mansion.
47:33 Jemma Sbeg? And she did it. And she found this like level of success and like fame. And she's created all this joy for other people, like at an age that like, I don't think society wants you to find particularly extraordinary. Like finding success in our forties and fifties like this woman did, like the Mouse Mansion creator did, is not highlighted as much. But I genuinely think that like, it is impressive at any age and it's probably sweeter at that age because you've had all this time for self-exploration, you've had all this time to explore and to make relationships and make memories that maybe you wouldn't have gotten if you were visibly successful.
48:19 Jemma Sbeg? And that all comes back to you in dividends later on. So I think that that's kind of what I want to end the episode on. The pressure to be extraordinary is immense. All of us have felt it in some form or another. Whether that is when you were at university, whether you were at high school and it was to perform academically or to find internships. Whether it is now to be somebody who is considering viral fame, somebody who posts, somebody who starts a business, somebody who starts an A I tech company. It's like never ending, it's aggressively in our faces. It's not all that it's cracked up to be. The pressure to be extraordinary actually sucks the joy out of life.
49:02 Jemma Sbeg? And I think finding ways to counteract it. And to be like, actually, my objective is to have fun. My objective is to have experiences. My objective is to have great relationships. Is probably gonna make you happier than the people we see highlighted as these exceptional people. Who at forty, fifty, sixty are now having the realizations of like, who the frick am I that you were able to have at twenty? Because you didn't have mega success and you hadn't found yourself before you even knew yourself. So I don't know. That's been what I've been thinking about a lot recently. And I think it's a real sign that we need to reinvestigate.
49:47 Jemma Sbeg? What is successful and what is extraordinary in our society? Because I think our current version of it isn't all that it's cracked up to be and doesn't seem to be particularly enjoyable for the people who find it. So that's where I'm gonna leave the episode. If you have made it this far and if you are listening on Spotify, what is something in your life right now? That you think you should be having more fun doing rather than stressing out as much as you probably are about? Career, hobby, relationship? What is something that you think that you and that you wanna focus on enjoying more than you are performing at? Mine is my hobbies.
50:30 Jemma Sbeg? That that's an easy one. I feel such a dis- like, I constantly feel like I need to monetize or make public everything that I do because like being in my twenties and living as a twenty something is like my that my brand and I'm really trying to be better at just enjoying them for me and seeing where they flow personally. And for me, not where they flow like for others and and for an audience. So that's my answer. Leave yours below. As always, thank you to our researcher Lucy Davidson. She helped us out with this episode. She's great. We have full episodes, including this one, video episodes on Netflix. That is correct. Probably in your country at this point, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, the US.
51:12 Jemma Sbeg? It's I don't know any of the others. I'm uh Germany, maybe. I actually don't know. I think it's in Germany, but yeah, go and check it out. If you're in like, if actually, if you were in Germany. That's your that is actually your objective. Leave a comment because I don't have German Netflix, so I don't know if it's there. So you can do some research for us. Substack, Instagram, all of those things are also in the episode description as well as some of our favorite resources. If you wanna do a bit more investigating on the pressure to be extraordinary yourself, but I do just hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it's made you feel better about your own path. And until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.
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53:26 Speaker 04 Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience before the moment. A Lincoln Original Series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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