Robbie Swale was 27 when his life began falling apart. His relationship, which started six years earlier in university, had ended, and his time in York, where he had lived with his girlfriend, had reached its natural expiration date. At work, the glamorous career in the arts he entered after uni – which was always what he wanted to do with his life – no longer appealed to him. ‘Something broke in the way that I saw the world,’ he says. ‘And suddenly it was obvious that all those things had to change.’
Looking back, Swale sees the break-up from his university sweetheart as the ‘catalyst’ for his crisis. He imagined that his relationship was for life – he and his girlfriend would marry, as many of their friends were doing at the time, and that was that, ‘although I wasn’t really doing anything about that,’ he says. When the relationship ended, his future looked a whole lot less certain. ‘It felt like it all happened at once,’ he adds.
Although he may not have realised it at the time, Swale, now 38, recognises he was experiencing something many now refer to as a ‘quarter-life crisis’. While most people are more familiar with the term ‘mid-life crisis’, referring to an existential crisis between someone’s late 30s and 50s, a quarter-life crisis typically occurs in someone’s 20s and 30s. In 2017, thousands of people around the world aged between 25 and 33, 75% of participants reported having experienced one.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that quarter-life crises are becoming more common. Chloë Garland, life coach and founder of a coaching company she created for people experiencing them, believes there are four elements of modern life that are contributing to that: the excessive options available to young people today, hyper-comparison to others as a result of , a pursuit of perfection, and the tyranny of time to reflect. Together, she says, these four factors can prompt a ‘decision-making crisis’. ‘Young people can’t make decisions anymore because there are just too many options, too much time, too much pressure and too much comparison,’ she says.
Today, Swale is in a happy marriage and working in a career as a business coach. But it took him years of struggle and experimentation – without any objective advice from someone uninvolved in his life i.e. a coach. After disentangling himself from his ex-girlfriend, he moved back in with his parents about 2.5 hours drive away in North Yorkshire. He compares the way his life went at that time to the moment in a caterpillar’s life when it builds a cocoon and, in Swale’s words, everything turns to mush. ‘It really felt like all the ties had been cut to my previous life at that point,’ he says.
In his mid twenties, both his job and his friendships, many of which had been connected to his girlfriend, were rocky. In the end, he left the arts industry and worked in a variety of different jobs. He learned to lean into his uncertainty and ultimately found the courage to go in a new direction. ‘It was separation from my previous life in all the good ways,” he says.
Tom Youngs is another man, now 35, who describes having experienced something like a ‘quarter-life crisis’. He grew up with two parents working in the medical industry. He wanted to work in the medical industry too, and harboured ambitions of becoming a surgeon, but on the advice of his father decided to study dentistry at university, pursuing a master’s degree before starting his career and securing a job less than two years later. Along the way, he had become obsessive about dentistry, he says. But soon after, he experienced an epiphany. ‘This can’t be my life,’ he recalls thinking at the time. ‘This can’t be it.’
While any element of someone’s life can lead to a quarter-life crisis, the most common initiator is the , says Garland. What followed for Youngs was a game of ‘mental football’, as he describes it. On the one hand, he had already spent 10 years of his life obsessing over his profession to reach that point. On the other, he thought: that was 10 years. What about the next 60? After telling his parents that he was thinking of quitting, he realised that he needed an objective perspective.
Garland believes that, although it’s impossible to measure, men can face more pressure than women in their careers. ‘There’s still a big pressure for men to provide, to achieve success, to have it all figured out and to be strong,’ she says. Instead of directing their lives based on ‘intrinsic values’, they tend to shape them based on their perceptions of other people’s expectations. This can lead them into moments of crisis that seem impossible to escape.
Discovering those ‘intrinsic values’ can be difficult. And that’s where coaches, who more and more quarter-lifers are turning to, can help. Instead of delving into past traumas like therapy, Garland says, coaching focuses on the future, helping people to find the answers for themselves. That’s why most coaches will begin their programmes with a ‘discovery’ period. This focuses on helping the client better understand their motivations and desires, so that they can figure out what they like about their existing lives and what they don’t.
One exercise that Garland recommends to her clients during this period involves asking seven ‘whys’. The person must first name one of their primary motivations – to earn more money, for example – and then ask ‘why?’ He must then ask himself the question six more times, each time in response to the new answer. Eventually, each person reaches a point where they cannot explain why they care about something. They just do. ‘And that’s when you know that you’ve hit upon an intrinsic value,’ Garland says.
Garland then leads her clients through two more phases: the ‘creative’ phase and the ‘experimental’ phase. The first is designed to help them come up with as many possible options for their future as possible. The second is the ‘road test’, where her clients try out the options they’ve come up with. This might involve visiting another city for a trial period or finding a job in another industry. The clients then return to Garland to assess their experiences and, hopefully, leave with a few ideas they feel excited about.
Working with a coach like Garland doesn’t come cheap. A full programme usually lasts about six months (excluding any ‘testing’ periods) and involves meeting the coach every two-to-four weeks. A typical programme can cost anywhere between £900 and £2,000 (Garland charges according to means.)
During his own reflection period, Tom Youngs, the dentist, discovered an interest in technology. His sessions quickly turned to planning for a future working in the industry, and he soon found himself working at an exciting tech startup with some networking help from his coach. After taking a couple of gap years, Youngs, now 35, manages his own business helping people to develop their personal brands online. He admits that he never would have reached this point without the help of his coach.
‘This is the very first time that I’ve felt like I’ve landed where I was destined to,’ he says. ‘That’s where the ultimate value in speaking to someone objective is. I actually can’t even fathom what my life would look like without it.’