The 11 Laws of Maturity

No one likes to see a grown up child.

A human being who is societally seen as an adult but still conducts themselves as if they were 10 years old. And not in the positive “still maintaining that childhood spirit” sense, but in the sense they adopt no personal responsibility and their life is about as organised as the average woman's handbag.

So in the next few minutes let’s explore the 11 laws of maturity gathered from the wisdom of the modern philosopher Mark Manson, so we can all cultivate a bit more of it.

1.) Don’t try

The best gravestone to have ever been made is Charles Bukowskis’. 

Not because of the fact he’s dead but because of what he had inscribed on his tombstone. 

“Don’t try.”

Charles Bukowski was an American born poet and writer who lived a begrudging life of boring jobs until he made it as a writer. 

And his philosophy of “don’t try” encapsulates something termed the backwards law of life. 

Have you ever noticed the more you try to achieve something, the less you’re able to get it?

But paradoxically, when you let go of your attempts to make something happen, it naturally occurs?

For example:

• The more you try to be certain about something the more uncertain you feel 
• The more secure you try to make yourself feel, the more the feeling of insecurity gnaws away at you

But:

• The more you embrace the nature of uncertainty, the more certain you feel
• The more you express the vulnerability to embrace your insecurities, the less insecure you feel 

When you care less about something, you do better at it. 

When you’re least worried about success is when you become most successful. When you stop caring what other people think about you and embrace your insecurities is when you become most charismatic. When you embrace your suffering you’re able to build confidence in the face of life’s challenges. 

So this highlights our first law of maturity; we cannot escaping caring about things in life, so we must choose carefully what we care about and understand, anything we care too much about will likely cause us suffering as we’ll be holding on too tightly to a desired outcome.

2.) Forget about happiness

Unfortunately we live in a society which shoves one big lie down our throat:

You should always be happy and being anything less than happy is a failure on your part. Look at everyone else on your social media feed all happy and smiley! Why can’t you just be more like them?

But aiming to feel good all the time is contrary to our nature. The truth is, us humans aren't optimised for happiness. We're optimised for survival. Meaning your brain didn't evolve for you to stand in front of a mirror and chant positive affirmations to yourself, it evolved to help you stop picking your nose when a herd of saber-toothed tigers sprint towards you and instead run for your life.

Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change. 

And negative emotions are simply a call to action. 

Maturity begins when we choose to see our pain and misery not as a bug of human evolution but as a feature. Something very necessary and fundamental to the reality of being human. 

Because to rob ourselves of the feedback our emotions provide would result in us making the same mistakes again and again. It’s only by listening to the feedback of our difficult emotions that we can accept them and use them as information to guide ourselves towards positive behaviour change.

“One of the marks of adult maturity is a balanced relationship between the emotions and rational control systems, which allows for emotional responses without permitting them to overwhelm reason.” - Allan Frank

Society also paints a picture, through social media, that its possible to rid our lives of all problems. And anyone who doesn't have a problem free life is failing. After all, Mr fitness influencer seems to have no problems based on his 60second YouTube short where he shows off his mansion and perfect family life, whilst we're sat in our dressing gown at 4pm eating a bowl of cornflakes still wondering why it didn't work out with that girl we dated at 18.

So maturity begins when we accept the fact that a life without problems is impossible. And we must choose our problems wisely.

When confronted with a decision, ask “does this add good problems to my life?”. For you understand nothing comes for free because nothing exists without the promise of issues. 

Even those high flying individuals who we might envy in society, the millionaires, playboys or the extremely talented don’t not experience problems. The millionaire still has to wrestle with old friends who want a pay out, the playboy fights continuous demands on his time and the extremely talented entrepreneur combats an insatiable ambition everyday he wakes up. No one’s life is devoid of problems. It’s just the quality of their problems merely get upgraded. 

3.) You are not special

We all had different childhoods, which means we were all praised in different ways. 

Perhaps our parents showered us with “clever boy!” and “you’re so smart!” or with an inner scorn which left our accomplishments go unrecognised. 

Whatever the case, the third law of maturity is to realise, despite your pre-bedtime fantasies of your destined success and grandiosity, you’re actually very average.

And that’s fine. 

Most people fall into the slippery slope of self-deluded narcissism or victimhood by believing:

“My problems are so special! I’m the only person on earth who experiences them and who has ever experienced them.”

But the truth is, everything you face on a daily basis has been faced again and again by billions of people. 

So there’s no such thing as a personal problem. There’s just human problems. 

That doesn’t mean what you’re facing isn’t significant and you don’t have a right to feel hurt. 

It just means you’re not special, nor are you being singled out by a mysterious universal force which has its eyes set only on you and wants to see you squirm.

4.) The value of suffering

As Albert Camus taught us in his masterpiece The Plague, sometimes life just shrugs its shoulders and decides to throw us into a steaming turd pit of doom. 

Suffering is the most fundamental reality of human beings. A reality we can’t escape. 

But seeing as we can’t escape it, the way to game the system is to simply choose what you suffer for. Because it is the way in which we suffer that provides our lives with meaning, even though it doesn’t feel like it when we’re up against it. 

As Freud said: “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” 

So to cultivate our maturity we mustn’t ask “what do we want to enjoy” but “what pain are we willing to sustain?”

Because our character is defined by what we choose to struggle for. 

5.) You are responsible for everything that happens to you

Law number 5 of maturity states what you pay attention to and choose to care about is being chosen in every single moment of your life, it’s just most of the time you don’t realise it. 

Adopting responsibility for your life will singlehandedly allow you to cultivate more maturity because of one reason, it allows you to improve. 

Responsibility is what allows you to say:

“Yes, sometimes I’m irresponsible with money, yes sometimes I exaggerate my own successes, yes I rely too much on others to support me and I could be more self-reliant."

But responsibility is also what allows us to conclude:

“But despite my shortcomings, I can work to improve them.”

Immaturity can be characterised by a lack of ownership of one’s life. 

The best way to conceptualise this is through the stoic locus of control. 

In life, the stoics awaken us to realise, there are 3 types of control.

• Things we have complete control over (such as our attitudes, thoughts and decisions)
• Things we have some control over (such as our material possessions and the degree to whether other people like us)
• Things we have no control over (such as other people’s thoughts, opinions, the weather and death)

We’d do best to focus our energy on the first category, those things we have complete control over, and to forget worrying about the last 2. 

Here’s a quick distinction between fault and responsibility. 

Fault is past tense, responsibility is present tense. 

You’re responsible for reading this letter, agreeing with the concepts or not. It’s my fault for writing it. Perhaps badly if you disagree with what I’m saying. But you are responsible for coming to your own conclusions. You are responsible for continuing to read this, or not. :)

6.) You’re wrong about everything

A philosophical aspect of maturity involves embracing the Socrates principle, whereby we choose to realise our wisdom comes from the fact we don’t know a lot. 

In some situations we might be the person who knows the most, and others are just less wrong, but more often than not if you’re able to accept you’re wrong, and that you can just as easily be wrong about those things you think you’re right about, you’re liberated to hear what the other side has to say so you can learn. 

Such insights gives us the grace to uphold the principle; strong opinions held loosely. Because we’re unlikely going to rid ourselves of the passion certain topics ignite within us, but we can tip toe around our opinions once they’re made so we don’t grasp tightly onto something we know is false.

We might defend our views with energy, but if someone proposes a valid counter-argument, we’re willing to gracefully accept the other perspective. Not as a defeat, but as a victory which steers us closer towards attaining wisdom. 

Through this lens we can understand a lot of our views as people stem from our identities. Which is a funny business that makes us avoidant. 

If you think you’re a nice person, you’ll avoid situations which depict you as nasty. If you think you’re a great chef, you’ll avoid scenarios which show your inadequacies.

Maturity stems from a particular type of belief in ourselves. The belief that, despite how great others say we are at a particular thing, we actually feel quite average at it. And this allows us to grow. 

For example, when someone says “you know what? I’m not actually good at relationships.” She gifts herself the ability to change, instead of staying in toxic relationships just to prove something to herself. 

Lastly, what this law of maturity also encapsulates is if we ever feel convinced its “us against the world” we can put our money on the reality being “us versus us.”

In other words, if you feel a problem is due to either yourself or others, it’s probably you.

7.) Failure is the way forward

Law 7 of maturity is an encapsulation of this principle:

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.

We’ve heard it all before, failure is good for you! You need to fail! 

But what separates the mature from the immature is the former, despite the 15,000 times they’ve had this cliche thrown in their face, accept it. 

The mature understand, if someone is better than them at something, it’s because that person has failed more, and vice versa. 

Failure isn’t fun. It’s not as rosy and bubbly as the constant "positivity" we see other people living on social media.

Seeing your first business crumble before your eyes.

Messing up that new communication technique you wanted to practice with your girlfriend.

Trying to order coffee in that language you’re learning only to notice the waiter has brought out a plate of bread instead.

These things aren't exactly our ideal way of spending a Wednesday afternoon.

But if we don’t fail, it’s not that we just don’t grow, it’s that we can’t grow. 

So when confronted with learning something new, embracing a new value or setting off on a new venture, maturity stems from our acceptance that we’re going to get somethings wrong. But that’s ok, because that’s how we’ll grow. 

To face failure all we need is a growth mindset and one question kept close at hand:

• A growth mindset is where we believe we can change our abilities and they’re not fixed 
• The question of growth is not to ask “how much time do I need to spend on this thing before I can become good at it?” But to ask “how many reps of failure do I need to make before I become great at it?”

8.) Toxic vs non-toxic relationships

Rule 8 of maturity involves a harsh truth you don’t want to hear.

If the people in your relationships keep doing selfish or hurtful things, it’s likely you are too, you just don’t realise it. 

Healthy love is the goal to strive for, because toxic love holds nothing for you but despair, anxiety and late night text messages with paragraphs longer than Shakespeare's Hamlet.

As Mark Manson distinguishes:

“Unhealthy love is based on two people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other—in other words, they’re using each other as an escape. Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support.”

“The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves. Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own problems in order to feel good about each other.”

Maturity arises in relationships when you not only understand your values but you understand where your personal responsibility lies with your loved one. 

You’re not responsible for making them happy. You’re not responsible for regulating their emotions. Nor are you responsible for their problems, values or boundaries. 

What we see in toxic relationships is people avoiding taking personal responsibility to then adopt responsibility for their partner’s problems and boundaries. 

What do poor boundaries look like? 

Here are some examples:

“You can’t go out with your friends without me. You know how jealous I get. You have to stay home with me.”

“My coworkers are idiots; they always make me late to meetings because I have to tell them how to do their jobs.”

“I can’t believe you made me feel so stupid in front of my own sister. Never disagree with me in front of her again!”

The product of avoiding the inner pain of adopting personal responsibility and instead becoming entitled in our relationships leads to us expecting other people to take responsibility for our problems. Or overstepping our personal boundaries for other people leads us to adopting too much responsibility for other people's problems.

• “I wanted a nice relaxing weekend at home. You should have known that and canceled your plans.” 
• “She just lost her job again, but it’s probably my fault because I wasn’t as supportive of her as I could have been. I’m going to help her rewrite her résumé tomorrow.”

Maturity flourishes in relationships when both people choose to support each other. Not because they feel obligated or entitled to. But because they choose to.

The yin and yang of toxic relationships involves 2 characters: the victim and the saviour. The person who starts the fires because it makes her feel important and the person who puts out fires because it makes him feel important. 

“Acts of love are valid only if they’re performed without conditions or expectations.” - Mark Manson

Unconditional love doesn’t mean you like whatever your partner likes. It means you love your partner no matter what they like. 

“Babe, does my butt look big?” your girlfriend asks you.

“Yes” you respond if that’s what you truly think.

Because the last person you should lie to is your partner. No matter the situation.

Lastly, with the plethora of beautiful people who stand as potential partners for us, maturity in relationships involves an understanding of the paradox of choice; that our life dissatisfaction increases as our options for choice increase to a point of overwhelm.

Where’s the meaning to be found in sleeping with whoever you want?

Where’s the love to be found in flitting from one partner to another?

Maturity, not just in relationships, but in life, involves a joyful acceptance that the gold is found in the depths. There are only some rewards you can experience through being in a relationship for years, learning a skill for decades or embracing a philosophy of life for your entire existence. 

Enact the courage to commit. Or be tormented by the possibility of everything.

9.) The importance of saying No

We’ve all heard the word “boundaries” before. 

Some of us might roll our eyes at it because we’ve heard it so many times. 

But it is a law of maturity that without the ability to say no to things we don’t want or like, we’re setting ourselves up for a miserable life.

However, you might be questioning the simplicity of such a statement with: “but Lewis, of course we’d say no to things we don’t want or like! Who wouldn’t?”

Well, there exist some of us who aim to accommodate every need of others whilst neglecting themselves in the process. 

As much as we love them, accommodators seek to fulfil the every need of others in the hopes others will think positively of them in return. But they do so because they believe if they can get others to like them, all the negative things they hate about themselves won't be reflected back to them.

"Accommodators" is synonymous with "people pleasers".

And both just need a little bit more assertiveness.

Being assertive is about being open and honest with the person sat in front of you. With enough self-respect and respect for the other person to communicate your wants and needs in the heat of the situation, with the belief that whatever you admit to the other person, they'll be able to handle it.

10.) When you say you’re going to do something, do it.

Integrity. 

What a fine word. 

In a simplistic sense, what separates adults from children is a commitment to one’s word. 

To be more mature, when you say you’re going to do something, do it. Even behind closed doors.

11.) And then… you die.

Finally, as fantastical as it is to embrace the thought of infinity, the last rule of maturity involves letting go of life. 

For the art of living also comes with the art of dying. And it is our duty as human beings to accept when our time is over and to watch the curtains close without complaining. 

Most of us try to deny death. Passing it off as something which happens to everyone else but not us. So to escape it, we try to build things which will be immortal; businesses, albums, books, tangible objects. But it’s only through an awareness of death that we can awaken to the fierce meaning and energy it provides. 

"Let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more in mind than death… We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere." - Michel de Montaigne

And they were the 11 laws of maturity.

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