Stable: not likely to change or fail; firmly established.
What I will do in the following paragraphs is give color to how what can be viewed as stable to one can be viewed as instability to others and how having a stable life is far more than just having stable finances.
There was a piece that I wrote back in 2016, which touched on my first year out of undergrad which was titled “Creating My Own Rotational”. This piece touched on the variety of jobs that I had within my first year out that helped guide me to where I am now. The interesting thing about that time is that when I was looking at each new job or area as wanted experiences most people looked at it as instability. In my eyes, me having jobs that I truly wanted at the time while making sure my bills were paid looked like and felt like stability to me. What I did learn that year is that when you are doing things that are outside of the norm, whether it be the profession you choose or how you choose to go about gaining experiences those who do the traditional path will always look at your path as the unstable one, no matter how stable it may look and feel to you. What I would advise folks not to do is to optimize their life around what stability means to someone else because more often than not their version of stability and your version of stability are so different that when you try to mimic their version you do not feel stable at all.
When you hear someone say “I just want to be stable”, what is the first thing that pops in your head? I know for many people the first thing people think of is financial stability. In the world we live in if your finances aren't stable then how can the rest of your life be? What I want people to do is to push past the idea that stability in your bank account is the first type of stability one should be seeking mainly because no matter how much money you make if your costs rise with it you always feel like you are in a state of financial instability, and the more you focus on that the less likely you are to try to bring stability to other parts of your life. Think about this, if you were to hit your version of financial stability what other parts of your life would you instantly want to make more stable? Physical Health? Mental Health? Family Life? it's important to ask yourself what parts of your life you want to be stable so you can prioritize them accordingly in their own level of importance to you. I am also in the camp that some part of your life will ALWAYS have an air of instability within it due to life being life and things happen.
The way I believe that people can lead a more stable life is by committing to decisions. For those in their 20s and 30s, they always feel like they have so many choices of what they can do professionally and how they can spend their free time so people get stuck in analysis paralysis and do not truly commit to a decision. The sooner you commit to a decision the more stable that portion your life will feel over time. Recently for me, I have chosen to bring more stability to my life by committing to two things, which are the location I am going to build my life in(California) and the career path I am choosing to follow(Product Management). After committing to these two things it has truly opened up space for me to commit to other important parts of my life. I am one of those people that believe once you commit to a career path (loosely) and a location you can really bring a lot more stability to your life, whatever stability looks like for you.
What I want people to remember the most is that what stability is to one is not what stability is to all, so always look to create your own version of stability.
