It is normal to spend your twenty’s in some state of identity crisis. Our twenties are filled with decisions that seem completely life-changing.

From deciding on which university to go to, which major to choose, or whether to take that big job offer overseas or not, it often feels like these choices will define our entire life.

It is therefore unsurprising that we spend a lot of time of our youth self-questioning, asking ourselves “Is this the right career choice?”, “does this career reflect who I am?”, “What do I want?, or “Where should I go?”.

While some level of self-questioning is healthy and normal, it can lead to the fear of making the ‘wrong’ choice. In which case, rather than taking action, young people instead end up in a state of inertia, deciding to avoid the question altogether and instead focus on enjoying life.

However, rather than leading to a carefree life, opting out of confronting these questions, can instead lead to a personal crisis.

This is phenomenon is what psychologist Meg Jay describes in her book ‘The Defining Decade’. Based on her clinical experience with hundreds of twenty-something clients, Meg Jay illustrates how your twenties are one of the most crucial decades in shaping your future life, career, and relationships.  

So, how can you enjoy your twenties while also setting yourself up for the next stage of life?

There is no way to know exactly what the right path to take is.

Your twenties are the time in your life where you are most able to gather different experiences and experiment with who you are.

And these experiences do not necessarily need to be perfectly planned or have a predictable income.

But your choices should be taken with the overall betterment of your whole life in mind.

The key behind this concept is the idea of building identity capital.

What is Identity Capital?

Identity capital is the experiences and assets that you have collected over your life. These can be tangible things such as degrees, certificates, and job titles, or intangible things like your personality, your connections, and how you present to others.

Identity capital is your own personal asset. It is your investment in yourself that sets you apart from others.

Meg Jay writes that “most important, identity capital is what we bring to the adult marketplace. It is the currency we use to metaphorically purchase jobs and relationships and other things we want”.

Effectively, identity capital is the currency that you can use to differentiate yourself through your own unique life experiences.

Identity capital is an investment in yourself and this is an investment that will continue to accumulate over your life.

How to build identity capital

Identity capital is an investment in yourself that is built step by step. This investment will then continue to accumulate over your life.

And your twenties are the prime decade for building identity capital.

In order to do this, you do not need to know all the answers about who you are or what you really want. All you need to do is take small steps in one direction, any direction, as long as you are moving forward.

This way, even if you are experiencing an identity crisis, you are still building something while you are on your way to finding out who you are.

It is impossible to find out who you are without making a move in any direction.

Therefore, the first step in building identity capital is to try new experiences, explore, but to make commitments on the way.

This, in turn, constructs a stronger identity than floating aimlessly and hoping that the answers will just come to you.

Moreover, through making commitments and taking these small steps you are establishing a foundation that helps to ground your identity.

Living your twenties like they don’t matter, means risking turning thirty and having nothing solid to look back or build on.

Not only do you risk losing a decade, but by not acting you risk losing one of the pivotal decades of your life, where small steps can have massive impacts on your life.

Therefore, while it might not be easy in your twenties to say exactly who you want to be, you can look at the future you want for yourself, when you’re eighty, fifty, or forty, and work backwards from there.

How to use your experiences to shape the life you want

What does this look like in reality?

In your twenties, it is common that you might need to take jobs that you are overqualified for, or which are poorly paid and done in the name of gaining experience.

For example, as a fresh marketing graduate out of university, you may find yourself having to decide between working as a barista in a high-end coffee house or completing an HR internship at a large corporation.

What matters when choosing is not the immediate outside perception of that job, but whether it serves your future.

There are many people who do jobs that they hate. This becomes especially pointless if the job does not even serve the idea of the future you want to have.

The secret to choosing between jobs or even to travel abroad for a while in your twenties is to choose the experience that generates the most identity capital for you.

In the case of the marketing student, this could actually be moving to New Zealand for a year and working as a barista preparing the best flat whites for caffeine-addicted customers.

These are the types of experiences that build identity capital.

Then, when you finally decide to apply to your dream job as a marketing associate at Oatly, these experiences will set you apart.

Interviews suddenly become a lot more interesting for both parties when they can ask about your time abroad, rather than a dry recitation of your CV.

The beauty of identity capital is that it does not have to be a forced, thought-out thing. But it’s also not about aimlessly floating around waiting for the perfect idea of what you want to do with your life to just come to you.

You build identity capital by taking small steps in one direction. Just by starting something, you set sail on building a part of yourself that will form part of your life experiences (your capital).

These experiences then shape who you are and you can use them to “buy in” to the life that you want to have.