10,000 hours of intentional focused practice is said to be the threshold of mastery. So let me ask you this: Have you mastered adulthood?
Until we put in 10,000 hours of mastery in the art of adulthood, we are still acting from the mind of the immature child living in an adult body. It takes active practice to be an adult.
But even before you can practice adulting, what does it even mean to be an adult? How does one adult?
Our world doesn’t teach us to be adults. We are expected to know how to behave as adults without having any kind of teaching around it. We are taught how to become productive cogs in the machine, but when it comes to being an adult, there is literally no education for most people.
Parents are tasked with the responsibility of helping children grow into adults, but that already assumes parents are adults. Just because the law designates someone an adult by age and makes them legally responsible for their own life, doesn’t actually mean they have the maturity of an adult mind.
On top of that, having a present, wise, and loving parent who will teach you adulthood is a rare phenomenon to say the least.
How does one adult?
Ask yourself if you feel like an adult, and be brutally honest with yourself.
I would say less than 3% of the world can honestly answer with a confident yes.
First and foremost, let’s understand what it means to be an adult.
Before going forward, I would also encourage you to take the time to answer these questions for yourself.
What does it mean to be an adult?
What are the beliefs instilled in you around being an adult?
Unless you have actively contemplated the first question, all you have around adulting is a set of beliefs handed down by family and imposed explicitly and implicitly by culture. The way you see adults behaving also contributes to your definition of being an adult.
Actively contemplating the question results in the unexpected realization that there is no real definition of what it means to be a mature adult.
At the most basic level it is defined by responsibility.
And that is where it becomes clear that most people are not real adults.
Because most people do not take responsibility for themselves, their minds, their emotions, their behaviors, habits, beliefs, perceptions, interpretations, and reactions.
Our’s is a world of victimhood and blame.
Where do we point the finger?
The first instinct for most is to find who else is to blame.
The self-effacing, low self-worth gang will go in the opposite direction of pointing the finger at themselves, even when they are not actually responsible.
The association of responsibility and guilt/blame is a strong one in our world.
And so naturally being an adult is not something people willingly embrace, because it means consciously acknowledging that you can now be blamed and “held responsible for your actions”.
A world of compassion is a whole different reality. Responsibility takes on a whole different meaning at this level of consciousness.
This is where we use our power to respond to a situation — response-ability.
Rather than drop into the guilt ping-pong game, the motivation is to re-establish harmony. Responsibility, from this lens, is a recognition of our interconnectedness and realizing that maintaining harmony and keeping life flowing smoothly whenever chaos breeds is vital for personal and collective health.
Imagine a world where people see adulthood as the responsibility of maintaining harmony and flow. Imagine that being an adult is not about the burden of responsibility — being a burden on others and bearing the burden of others — rather, being an adult is about support — supporting others and being supported, because we realize that the health of the collective is ensured by the health of each individual.
So, let’s revisit the question, do you act as an adult?
How do you see the world now? Do you see it as a world of adults? Or a world of children in adult bodies acting out and reacting out constantly.
There are such few truly mature energy holders who can create a harmonious space and also contribute to the larger whole in the same way.
This is what a true leader does. This is what a real “organization” is about.
It is organized. Not just superficially, it is organized even at a deep energetic level by the vision and integrity of the leader(s) of the organization. Which is why most corporations are highly disorganized — they have children playing the tyrant and the imbecile in the high chair.
An “organization” is deeply and inherently in a flow state. Yes, an entire corporation can be in a flow state when there is a leader who organizes the energy and takes responsibility to keep it harmonious.
This is not some fantasy or an impossible dream. It is very realistic and has been done by several respectable leaders throughout the world. All it takes is a responsible leader, and there are many people capable of realizing this state. Yes, it is a state of consciousness.
Which also means it is not permanent. It is a constant practice.
A leader can drop out and tune into another state, where they are no longer a leader. And anyone can drop in and tune into the state of leadership.
I did not write “anyone” and “everyone” can be a leader. It takes a certain personality and character to become a leader. And anyone who has that configuration can activate that state with the proper training, intent, and awareness.
It’s not a matter of discipline, at least not the way most of the world understands discipline. This is more about integrity. You can be as disciplined as you like, but if you lack integrity — which many disciplined people do — you will drop out of alignment and no longer be in the leader state. The discipline required for a leader is with regards to their integrity.
Integrity is something people rarely talk about, much less practice actively.
Integrity requires self-knowledge.
Integrity requires prioritization.
Integrity demands self-transcendence.
Adults realize that they live for more than themselves.
This perhaps is the greatest defining factor for an adult.
In that respect, the process of parenting does mature many into some level of adulthood. Yet, many if not most parents are also rather self-absorbed and deeply conditioned to impose their values and beliefs onto the child rather than let them flourish and thrive in their essence while maintaining a harmonious environment.
A parent is a leader. Or at least they are meant to play that role. They are meant to lead the family unit. Similarly, the leader of the organization is playing the role of a parent, guiding it and letting it flourish rather than making it about their own ego.
So really, how does one adult?
We learn about morality from school and religion to some extent, and that is the closest thing we get to adulthood training — if we had the privilege of accessing higher education and were interested in it, and if we bought into some religious beliefs and practiced living a moral life.
I hope by now it’s clear that morality has very little to do with adulthood. At least preached morality. If morality was given to us to teach us to think for ourselves and apply the appropriate morals in a given situation, that would have been truly valuable. Rather, we are discouraged from thinking for ourselves and told to blindly follow the literal behavior prescribed to us.
I have not written this post to tell you what it is to be an adult. My intention is to invite you to contemplate about being an adult and inspire you to act more as an adult in every moment.
Adulting is a unique experience for each individual, it is not a template meant to be copied. Adulting is about fully playing your role in the world, which means you have to figure out what it is for you.
Adulting is one of the fundamental aspects of my teaching as a spiritual mentor for individuals and corporations that aspire to become organizations.
Adulthood is a wide and vast topic and this is just the beginning of the conversation. If you are interested in getting involved, I invite you to join our free online community of individuals who are actively maturing into powerful, playful, and loving adults — Panda Land.
10000 Hours
I started by writing about the 10,000 hour rule of mastering an art.
It’s not just about doing something for 10,000 hours, it’s about intentional focused practice. When it comes to adulthood, there are many aspects that need to be practiced for extensive periods for us to break our immature habits and naturally act as adults.
The accumulation of these practices, totaling 10,000 hours, is roughly when we will be behaving like mature adults. That means if you are practicing being an adult, intentionally, 40 hours a week, meaning every second you are at your 9-5 job, it will take you about 5 years to naturally act as a mature adult.
Obviously, that won’t happen because you will be absorbed in doing your job rather than deliberately practicing being an adult. My point is that it would take that much intentional effort to naturally act as a fully mature adult.
Thankfully, there are other ways too. What and how you practice makes a huge difference. You can break out of the immense and intense gravitational field of immature childishness with advanced practices that have been deliberately developed to help you mature into adulthood.
Practicing these intentionally, with personalized guidance from a spiritual master, along with a group of people who are also practicing, while discussing their challenges and supporting each other — all put together creates a powerful container for radical growth while having fun.
I have been hosting these sacred spaces for over 4 years to help people realize their innate powerful loving playful mature adult, the results have been profoundly inspiring and it is an honor to guide and witness individuals who embrace their divine gifts. I invite you into The Panda Academy where we practice spiritual mastery to live from our mature adult self and become the fullest expression of our awesomeness.