7 Signs You’ve Grown and Matured as a Person
Being mature is a choice you can make today
As a kid, I looked up (literally) to adults as beacons of hope, as people who have stuff figured out. The older I get, the more I see this as an illusion of grandeur. Adults often aren’t any better than children. Their tantrums just get more sophisticated, their toys more expensive, and all this is exacerbated because they now have no oversight (even though they need it).
It’s not age that makes one mature, but the sophistication of their character. It’s how they handle tough situations and how they go about their life choices.
What follows is my take on what makes mature people.
Let’s begin.
1. Mature people do what’s necessary, not what’s easy
As adults, our life is filled with the stuff we don’t want to do. Taxes, flossing, doing the dishes…stuff that must be done but that we’d rather forgo (or hire others to do for us).
An immature person sees it as a chore. For her, it’s something to be pushed around in her calendar until the deadline hits. And then she somehow squirms out and extends it. The dog ate my homework. Grandma died. That kind of thing.
A mature person recognizes that doing necessary things is a fact of life. They’re there just as gravity is there. It makes little sense to be angry at gravity now, does it? Yet this is what immature people routinely do. They flail around being pouty about doing stuff that must be done. A mature person steps in and does the damn job. Again. And again. Heck, the mature person finds a way to make it enjoyable while she’s at it.
As a mature person, you must transform routine things from drudgery to pleasure. Or find a way to make them less of a chore. Often, it’s a simple mindset thing, of changing your angle. Building habits also helps, so does accountability (more on that later).
2. Mature people don’t complain about their life
Life isn’t fair. There are children dying of hunger in Africa, while in developed countries there are people dying of obesity. The eight richest men (yep, they’re men) own over 50% of the world’s wealth.
There is unfairness on the individual level, too. Often you draw the short straw and have to do a presentation at work that literally anybody else could do but no, the boss assigned to you. And fucking Gary laughs at you for a good measure. You come home and the dishes aren’t done. Today wasn’t your duty. You want to sleep and the neighbors decide 11 pm is an appropriate time to test their new sound system.
When the world is unfair, the immature person complains about it. She throws a tantrum; she writes angry Tweets about inequality (that people hate reading); she scolds the partner about the dishes and complains till they’re done.
A mature person takes things as they are. She recognizes that sometimes life isn’t fair. It makes little sense to that person to make a fuss about it. Instead, she focuses on things she can control, either emotionally or by taking action.
As a mature person, you don’t complain because you know complaining doesn’t work. You roll up your sleeves, focus on what you can control, and get to it.
3. Mature people know when to help others and when to ask for help
It’s safe to say that none of us is a hermit; we live in a society. This means that we are, to an extent, dependent on other people. And other people depend on us.
A mature person approaches this fact by being largely self-sufficient. She tries to solve her own problems before she reaches out for help. She knows that by doing so, she’s learning important coping skills that’ll help her to manage her emotional well-being (more on that later).
An immature person lives in a constant state of having to be saved by the surrounding people. It’s the person who somehow got stuck in a Telenovela. Her life is a series of disasters out of which she’s learned to expect help from friends or family. She’s an energy sucker that forms codependent relationships with others.
A mature person recognizes the need for tough love. She knows that sometimes people can’t be saved. She knows that people have to make their own mistakes to grow. And she lets them. Sure, it’s hard not to help when you know you can, but it’s also mature. Not every help should be given just because we can. Helping is a form of power, and a mature person recognizes that.
To mature as a person, you must let others find their autonomy while preserving your own. Giving and receiving help implies a delicate balance in power. You know how to harness this power.
4. Mature people exercise tough love on themselves
As we’ve already established, mature people do what’s necessary without complaining and are autonomous. What’s implied in this package is a certain amount of tough love.
Immature people live in the world where stuff is handed to them and they act accordingly — they think they are entitled to benefits and whatnot just by the virtue of their being. They’re soft on themselves. They think the carrot can solve everything (we’ll get there soon). They think if they’re motivated or incentivized enough, they could achieve exceptional things. Sadly, they never reach that state.
Mature people know that when it comes down to it, they’re capable of watching reruns of Friends for hours on end while gorging on Ben and Jerry’s (personal experience of this very mature author). So, as a mature person, they recognize that they must keep an iron fist. They know that the carrot can’t solve everything, and they use the stick. The stick can have many forms: self-imposed deadlines, external obligations, accountability buddies, and contracts. They recognize that while we’d all love to be productive and achieve much, there’s a fundamental barrier in the way: our own laziness.
To mature, you must annihilate this barrier by exercising tough love on yourself.
5. Mature people watch what they consume
Most of us live in a state of plenty. There’s a cornucopia of products and services at our beck and call 24/7. Amazon makes sure we have all that we’d ever think about and more. Facebook and other social media giants make sure we’re connected — on their terms — and glued to our screens. Meat and dairy industry, 14%+ of our global greenhouse emissions, make sure we end up eating their sumptuous yummies. Fast fashion churns out gazillions of products at an alarming pace so that when you buy something on Monday, it’s out of vogue by Wednesday.
Living in this environment, immature people are swayed by the opportunity. The ease of access to everything means that they will access everything: they shop on Amazon any chance they get because it’s convenient; they doomscroll on social media because it’s satisfying; they consume whatever is served to them on the silver platter, not questioning where it came from and how.
In contrast, mature people watch what they consume. They know that whatever enters their minds, bodies, and their environments has a tremendous influence on them. So, they weed out temptations if needed.
- They cancel subscriptions that make things too easy to protect themselves (tough love);
- they watch where their stuff comes from because they don’t want to partake in the misery of others;
- They limit their exposure to social media because they’re aware of how it’s designed to make them addicted.
As a mature person, you consume mindfully because you understand how consumption affects you.
6. Mature people take care of their (mental) health
Health is one of our most precious resources. Our destiny is tied to our bodies and their state: if we’re sick, our options are limited, and we must accommodate. The same goes for our minds.
Immature people neglect their bodies and minds. As we’ve learned above they consume without questioning. This often leads to bad eating habits, smoking, alcohol abuse, or irregular sleeping patterns. They aren’t aware that by doing that to their bodies; they set themselves up for failure.
Mature people recognize that proper sleep and diet are the building blocks of health. They also know that alcohol and smoking, if need be, are to be consumed sparsely because of their effects. Similarly, they know that a mind is a powerful tool that shapes their realities. So, they keep the tool sharp by exercising and learning.
As a mature person, you recognize that your body and mind are your most valuable resources, and you treat them so.
7. Mature people’s moral values are sacred to them
In the 1960s, Lawrence Kohlberg measured how (boys and men) develop their morality with age. He posed the following dilemma to his participants:
Heinz’s wife was dying from a particular type of cancer. Doctors said a new drug might save her. The drug had been discovered by a local chemist, and the Heinz tried desperately to buy some, but the chemist was charging ten times the money it cost to make the drug, and this was much more than the Heinz could afford.
Heinz could only raise half the money, even after help from family and friends. He explained to the chemist that his wife was dying and asked if he could have the drug cheaper or pay the rest of the money later.
The chemist refused, saying that he had discovered the drug and was going to make money from it. The husband was desperate to save his wife, so later that night he broke into the chemist’s and stole the drug.
Upon reading this, he asked participants to answer the following questions:
1. Should Heinz have stolen the drug?
2. Would it change anything if Heinz did not love his wife?
3. What if the person dying was a stranger, would it make any difference?
4. Should the police arrest the chemist for murder if the woman died?
The answer to this question then categorized a person to 1 of 3 stages. The lower stages, the stages that are most readily observable with children, are characterized by pain and pleasure, by rewards and punishments. Individuals in these stages ask themselves:
- How can I avoid punishment? or
- What’s in it for me?
and answer the dilemma accordingly: Heinz should steal the drug only if he’s sure he isn’t caught, for example.
The more the person matures and develops their morality, the more of the world they integrate into your own being. Higher stages focus on what’s accepted by the surrounding society. Individuals ask themselves:
- What will others think if I do this?
- What do the law and authority say?
and answer that Heinz should act based on what the social norms are or what the law and authority say.
Higher still we reach stages that have self-imposed and universal moralities (rarely achieved by individuals according to Kohlberg). This level of maturity implies that you act according to your values. You’ll see that whatever this person does is guided by universal values such as honesty, trust, and equality. You’ll see that these people will readily accept punishment or forgo pleasure because it isn’t in line with their image of the world.
While this theory is incomplete and there are many, many loopholes in it, it still serves as a useful guide. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it describes the ideal state of things.
To mature as a person, you must adopt universal values and act according to them. It’s easy to say you value honesty. But it’s hard to tell your friend he has an alcohol problem. Values that aren’t grounded in action are useless.
All you need to know
As you can see, maturity doesn’t correlate with age. You can have a mature adolescent just as you can have a 40-year-old man-child.
What differentiates a mature person from an immature one is how they approach life. Mature people:
- Do what’s necessary, not what’s easy
- Don’t complain about their life
- Are autonomous
- Exercise tough love on themselves
- Watch what they consume
- Take care of their (mental) health
- Their moral values are sacred to them
Being mature is a choice, not something that happens with age.
