5 Signs You Are Becoming A More Mature Adult

[BeeNee]

When you are say, below the age of 25, I am a firm believer in living in your freedom. Freedom from heavy responsibilities, freedom to explore wildly, freedom to take your life in a million different directions, freedom for some level of immaturity. I think everyone should experience that a bit because whether you sort of want to or not, adulthood and life are going to creep up on you and you're going to be at a crossroads where you will need to decide to accept the new challenge and mature, or remain in an immature state. At that crossroads, there are some tale tell signs that you're making the transition.

1. You start to take your health a bit more seriously

I love pizza and ice cream and the all out desperation of creative Ramen survival meals all day too, but at some point, something just clicks that says, this probably isn't the best for me and I should probably not only work out and eat right, but visit the doctor and dentist every once in a while. When you start to mature, you start to realize that you aren't invincible and you can in fact both get hurt, and get sick. Attending to your health becomes priority as you think about having kids, about dealing with medical issues that perhaps you've just been trying to walk off for far too long, and about living a healthy life free of preventable issues/medications. It also means, you start looking for jobs with actual health benefits so that if or when something happens to you, you aren't caught off guard with having no conceivable way to take care of yourself.

2. Saving becomes a thing

Yup, you realize money doesn't pour from Mom and Dad's pockets or the sky anymore and you are going to need to save up for whatever it is you both want and need out of this world whether that be a new car, a house, a vacation, school, or the beginnings of savings plans for your retirement or a college fund for your kid. As you mature, you begin to realize it's less about the now, now, now, and more about protecting and providing for your future. Paycheck to paycheck living becomes unappetizing because you know or don't want to know, how hard that can be especially when something goes wrong.

3. You disengage from bad relationships

There is such a thing as the wrong crowd. The wrong crowd seeks to tear you down, hold you back, squash your dreams, promote your addictions, discourage your successes, and wreak otherwise havoc on your life. As you mature, life becomes more about hanging out with people who not only want to do well for themselves, but encourage you to follow suit. It's not about having 500 friends you don't even know the first and last names of, but rather a few handfuls or less of people who really know you, and you them, and who are positive influences on your life.

4. You actively pursue your dreams

It's great to have a ton of dreams, but they mean nothing if no efforts are put into actually accomplishing them. As you mature, a dream, or dreams, become life goals with plans attached to them to help you accomplish them. It becomes less about the if, and more about the when, and these are the steps you know you need to take to get there, and you go and take them.

5. You don't run from responsibility

The student loans, the relationships and friendships you're in, finding a job that sustains your lifestyle...these are things that a maturing adult starts to make a priority in life, not just because they sort of kind of have to, but because doing these things provides you with a life where you aren't constantly living in fear of phone calls, or the mail, or how you're going to make it through the next day. A maturing adult will start, if they haven't already, treating people in your life with value, care, and respect, and not just another person you intended before you even met them to ghost or to flake on people you call friends. There is an understanding that you want to be someone who others look up to or respect for the way they act and handle their business, and not as someone people point to as a cautionary tale of what not to do.

[Idonthaveausername]

These are legitimate points. Most people don't understand what being an adult is end entails. I'd say this is a decent checklist.

I especially like that comment about paycheck to paycheck living going horribly wrong if you don't save money. My car broke down a couple months ago and cost $800 to fix. Luckily one of my coworkers helped me, so I didn't have to fork over all that cash, but you don't want to be broke every month if you're the only source of income for yourself. It's not fun to have to decide between buying shampoo to wash your hair with or milk to eat your cereal. And the real adults here who know the difference between want and necessity know which one I chose. Of you have to think about it, you're probably not an adult.

Sadly not all of us have the freedom to be children. I had to become financially independent before I could allow myself to have fun. I didn't even drink alcohol before I turned 21 because I needed to keep a level head. Now I have the freedom and responsibility to go out with my friends whenever I want, to drink or do whatever I want, and to make sure I get back home safely. Most people my age (and some of my friends) aren't in this position yet.

That #adulting thing makes me laugh. If you are so spoiled that you need positive reinforcement for being an adult, something went wrong with you somewhere along the way

[MrShinyPants]

I don't want to become mature, I want to stay how I am and no one can make me. Lol jokes aside, also owning up to responsibility and failures is a sign and not blaming others for mistakes you chose and understanding where others are coming from and listening to all sides of the stories before forming an opinion etc..

[bcromartie]

These are actually signs that you have simply reached adulthood not that you're maturing.

Like in example 1 you are talking about basic planning ahead in relation to yourself, this however isn't the same as going the next step which is taking real action relative to yourself [for the good of others]. Taking care of yourself is basic; when you start realizing that your health actually impacts the lives of others and that is the greater good reason to take care of yourself against your own wishes then you're maturing.

Same with 2, saving is basic planning ahead but when you start realizing that asset management is the basis of charity and the ability to be an effective citizen in society who makes a positive difference requires you to accumulate clout then you've gone that step beyond yourself. Maturity is when you start talking about the bigger picture not just you.

3 is not maturing at all. It is the direct opposite; it's actually just coming to your senses which naturally occurs for most individuals. It's basic development. If you want to mature you start realizing what drives you to these behaviors and then working on them and either making peace with them and learning how to live with yourself or finding a way to undo those behaviors. This is the one time when maturity (at least in this list) becomes internal. You realize that it isn't "them", it never was, and it was always "you". All sabotage is self-sabotage when you are given the choice and pursue it so there is no external culprit.

4 is just bad. While I do agree that maturation brings about a call to action that call to action isn't based off of "passion" or "dreams". Almost all of it based off the opposite. For instance you talk about saving money; who is passionate about that? Or taking care of your basic health? Or maintaining a strong timetable and actually getting things done that are mundane? Maturity involves less fun and more grit. The things you must see through rarely have anything to do with your dreams.

Again, that's basic, running a sustainable system is not terribly mature. Debts and income are guaranteed to be problems and learning how to navigate them is an eventuality for most. "Real" maturity is actually active citizenship. What that means changes around the world but it is a very involved thing and has much deeper implications than not ghosting your little girlfriends for a Brad Pitt look alike. Many never do this by the way.

Maturity isn't guaranteed.

[BeeNee]

These things are not automatic. Saving, exercising, having mature relationships... these things require active effort on the part of the person as well as decisions making, and a willingness to actually do them. Hence the maturity part. One may physically age and "mature" in that sense, but that does not 'make them' do these things in order to sustain themselves or their futures or the futures of others in their lives.

A mature person in this sense, is someone who knows how to make decisions in life using rationality instead of what we tend to do in our youth, which is acting largely based on the whim of our emotions. We'd rather blow our entire paycheck on a trip to Hawaii, rather then pay the rent. Extreme example, but the mature adult would be able to say, that's a bad idea if responsibilities larger then what they simply want to do, come first. Again, you have to be mature enough as a person to realize these things, and it comes in stages, it takes time, you develop these skills.

[BeeNee]

All that you speak of, can only come if step one is achieved, taking that first foray into the land of maturity. One must acknowledge that these things need to be done for the good of thyself, and others. Now that person can then get to the real potential work beyond that, which is thinking beyond themselves to things like charity and taking on the role of planning for others like family or a relationship as well. Once the ground work has been laid, they can actively pursue steps beyond the basic, but if the basics never come, they ignore, they shirk responsibility, they can never hope to get here to this point. They will be the 50 year old with no dreams, no passions, no savings, no meaningful relationships, potentially poor health, and on down the line...

[bcromartie]

As you age your brain and reasoning functions develop. While the things you listed aren't automatic they tend to be eventual; for instance realizing you're not invincible, or rather developing enough reasoning to actually grasp mortality, is so common that it tapdances the line between guaranteed development through normal human course and "a choice". That's the same with all of these. As you pay bills you realize that income management is important and planning ahead is too; this doesn't mean sitting down with an investment councilor at 20 for most people realizing that if they save for retirement now they will be millionaires before they know it (maturity) but instead just saving for a rainy day finally (eventuality).

[bcromartie]

Rationality isn't even really half of what it takes to mature because that IS automatic. Your brain will finish growing at about 25 for both sexes, females slightly faster, so coming of age isn't really maturation in the philosophical sense. It's more or less just another phase in development similar to how toddlers learn to walk, teens learn to swear, young adults finally can drink themselves drunk and older adults finally get the idea of basic household management. You're ahead of your time if you do any of these things in a previous developmental stage but otherwise you're right on track. That's why maturity is so few and far between; hindsight makes you blind in this case. "I am smarter than I was then." due to the demands on your person is NOT maturity. It's adaptation. You didn't pay bills when you blew through your cash and now you do so guess what? You realize that saving matters!

It's not "deep" in the sense that you learn and understand how Charity as a force works.

[bcromartie]

And all that I spoke of isn't even guaranteed. Ever. The reason why they are elements of maturity is because they aren't required to get through life at all. Hell most people don't start investing for retirement no matter how easy it is until about twenty years prior and don't come out on top (https://www. fool. com/investing/general/2015/10/03/the-average-americans-retirement-savings-by-ageand. aspx ) so being mature about money is NOT eventual though learning to manage basic expenses so you don't starve to death is.

The same is true with health. You reference basically a low-ranking self-preservation. You take care of yourself for yourself and maybe an immediate other. You don't note that your self-care effects millions of other people whether it be through tax payments, your job and it's effect on others or your community standing. The intangibles are the mature element, not the tangibles, hence why you have (dare I say) movements that simply encourage unhealthiness:

[bcromartie]

Fat Acceptance is not, no matter how you want to talk about "Body Positive", health positive. It just isn't. You being an unhealthy person is just unacceptable. Same with smoking, drinking alcohol, working to excess and other popular activities that we sort of sweep under the rug or worse vehemently defend. And maturity isn't even about results; it isn't about going to the gym everyday to work out incorrectly despite having medical journals all around you telling you what works and what doesn't at all because you took some magazine with pretty pictures over real research, no what it is about is the realization that it isn't just for aesthetics or immediate health effects. The reason why people have no discipline when on health kicks is SPECIFICALLY because they are in it for what you described, short-term preservation; the ability to convert a concept into a lifestyle requires a maturity that again most people never have to develop.

So these are signs of adaptation not maturity.

[bcromartie]

And don't get me started on Charity. It isn't just mindless giving. -_-;;

[BeeNee]

You can overanalyze this until the end of days, and you quite literally have, but there is a reason we consider some adults immature and others mature. As I've said, you don't simply acquire most of this list simply by aging. If that were true, we would have no distinction, and the state of maturity would be fact like having to have gone through puberty... that just happens whether you want it to or not. No, maturity is something you have to work at, that has to develop, and that you have to accept and be willing in a sense to go along with in order for the growth to happen.

[BeeNee]

You don't just get that at 25 or any other age, which is why there are people at 20 who own their own homes, are married, and have a kid and a savings plan already. That doesn't all just happen out of thin air because that person has aged into it. I'm sure you could go on for days more on this topic, but I've defined maturity the way I see fit, and so have you. So if you believe you way is right, go right ahead, but your definitions and analysis have yet to change my mind on the subject.

[bcromartie]

I've said, in many words with a thorough explanation something that can be summarized in one simple sentence:

"Basic life skills are not a sign of maturity."

All you've listed are just basic life skills.

[BeeNee]

... and that is your opinion, thanks.

[bcromartie]

I'm more concerned that you consider this more than basic life skills... And people actually agree.

[BeeNee]

I'm more concerned that you are actually considering this..."a concern."

[bcromartie]

The mindset of The People is always a concern.

There's no greater concern when considering social values.

[BeeNee]

I'm sure in the list of the world's most crippling problems, everyone will surely agree that how someone personally decides to define maturity, is number one. You are welcome to your opinion, as I've said, and I, to my own. Visitors to this take are welcome to come to their own conclusions on the subject.

[bcromartie]

You're missing the large picture. If maturity is nothing but taking care of yourself and avoiding trouble then all of the world's major problems are caused in part by fear of interaction and self preservation.

A community built on the principles of your take for instance, I ran through my mind, and it is functional but suffers major issues regarding suicidal components. It turns out that this is true in real life:

The expectation of self care has created an environment of shame surrounding any form of social aid. In turn while you wrote this off as something minor it's actually the seed to all problems. Your personal opinions shape your interactions and your interactions shape others and the world is born anew.

There is no greater concern in the world's problems than the attitude of The People because that dictates how we even see the world's problems.

Poverty will never end if we all agree it's a necessary eventuality.

[BeeNee]

Lot's of opinions there. Perhaps you should write a take.

[bcromartie]

I'd rather not.

That's your job.

[BeeNee]

I've clearly already written a mytake, however you have a difference of opinion and a lot to say on the subject, so I merely suggest you write one of your own. No need to get testy about it; it's merely a suggestion. Anyway, have a good one. :)

[Prof_Don]

I agree with all of it, especially number 1!

I used to drink to get bombed drunk, 2-3x a week! Used to be a social tobacoo smoker when drinking. Ate whatever I wanted!

Now I care so much more about my actual health. I used to workout in college for looks as much as health, now I focus more on overall health. How is one supposed to achieve their goals and dreams, if one's body isn't prepared?

[BeeNee]

Absolutely agree with that! I think a lot of people underestimate the power and the value of being of both a healthy mind and a healthy body.

[btbc92]

Very much true indeed with the points. I have started this way before 19 years old. Kids need's to learn this while they are still young.

[Bvroon]

This is a wonderful list, and very valid. Now how do I get my 19 year old step son to START growing up?

[Luci92]

Very good points. I think I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

[Anonymous]

I'm over 25 but even though I am doing steps 1-5, I still live life to the fullest and explore wildly and enjoy myself. You can still do those things once you hit 25, as long you are performing steps 1-5 too.

[Muhammad1999]

Well according to this , im 17 and more mature than i thought.

[BeeNee]

Good for you. I say 25 only because that is the time when most have finished college, and the safety net/parental care money line is cut, but it's a process that happens for most over time.

[bente2]

According to this I'm an adult..

[TuMeManques]

I'm not very mature 🙈🙈🙈

[Saoirse_Nua]

I like that take - So very true

[Anonymous]

5) hmmm... kinda like liberals? lol

[OrdinaryGentleman]

Liberals don't run from responsibility?

[sailorjupiter]

agreed

[RainbowFanGirl]

I still have some growing up to do.

[Jan1ssary_]

U got good points, nice one.

[Anonymous]

Ya I was doing all those thing at 10 years old

[AhGojira]

You must be crazy...

[Adigelunar]

ı thnk so