What is maturity?

Does receiving an ID, the right to vote, or the right to drive give you a guarantee of maturity? Or being of a certain age? Or having a certain experience? Or having a certain amount of money in your bank account? It does not, but we often mistake what looks like maturity for true maturity.

In the Cambridge Dictionary, maturity means the state of being physically, mentally, and emotionally well developed and therefore responsible. Does the world around you look like a world of mature, well-developed, responsible adults? Hardly. If reaching adulthood and having any of those accomplishments meant being mature, we would be living in a completely different world.

Unfortunately, in reality, it is a world of billions of little children in adult bodies who are playing games with each other, who demand, cry, scream, show tantrums and meltdowns, and use the planet and all its resources as their personal sandbox with buckets and shovels. Although on the surface, all of them look like 20, 30, 40, 50, 60-year-old adults with rented or bought homes, bank accounts, jobs or businesses, and different relationships. The only difference from real children is the price of the toys and the consequences of the games.

One thing that truly differentiates a mature person from an immature one is whether they are ready to take full responsibility for their own life, for their own happiness, on all levels of who they are, physically, mentally, and emotionally. The difference between a child and a truly grown person is that you do not expect a big, strong parent, represented by your partner, your boss, your investor, your president, to come and solve all your problems. A truly grown person does not close their eyes when they see pain, injustice, lies, or things that are broken. They do not expect others to change or fix everything. They take full responsibility and change what is within their power.

The topic of maturity in business, in friendship, and in life, as well as the difference between traditional teams and rhizomatic teams and how they change, all of this and much more we discuss in the new episode, now live.