The 33 Marks of Maturity

By Brett McKay and Kate McKay

While growing up is hard to do, it is essential for both societal strength and individual fulfillment. But what does it mean to be mature, anyway? Difficult to define one-dimensionally, it is best understood as a constellation of many traits, behaviors, actions, and mindsets.In this short ebook, we illuminate the 33 characteristics that make up this constellation of maturity. Each quality is given a succinct summary that serves as both description and reflection, so that you understand what it is, and how you may better grow towards it, and into a thriving adult.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780999322253

Brett McKay

Brett McKay and his wife reside in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and run ArtofManliness.com, the manliest website on the internet.

Book preview

Introduction

It will mean much to our confused and hostility ridden world if and when the conviction begins to dawn that the people we call ‘bad’ are people we should call immature. This conviction would bring us to the realization of what needs to be done if our world is to be rescued from its many defeats. The chief job of our culture is, then, to help all people to grow up.

—The Mature Mind by H. A. Overstreet

So far in the history of the world, said the war veteran and psychiatrist G.B. Chisholm, there have never been enough mature people in the right places.

Though the history of the world has marched decades on since the mid-20

th

century when Chisholm made this observation, it remains as true now, as it was then.

So strong is the gravitational pull to remain childlike — to stay comfortably ensconced in dependence instead of fighting for independence; to drift in irresponsibility rather than embracing responsibility — that many individuals, no matter the historical age, or their chronological age, never escape this force. They grow into adulthood, but not into maturity.

Yet much is staked on the process of maturation, both collectively and individually.

In The Mature Mind (1949), psychologist Harry Allen Overstreet argued that the most dangerous members of our society are those grownups whose powers of influence are adult but whose motives and responses are infantile. Such individuals have stumbled into roles in which their decisions impact wide swaths of people, and yet lack the psychological resources and steady character to make those choices soundly.

Even if not always existentially fraught, immaturity of mind makes for poor teachers, unethical businessmen, impetuous police officers, ineffective politicians, and brain-explodingly bad customer service reps — a reality easily observed today, where so many domains in life resemble a circus staffed by clowns. Yet, ironically enough, those who roundly lament the state of society are often the same people who seem rather childlike in their own orientation; they want to remain a little immature themselves, while being led, protected, served, and tended to by mature adults. They wish to remain children, in a world of grown-ups.

But the world of children is only made possible by the world of adults.

As the story of the Little Red Hen taught us, you cannot eat the bread, unless you’re willing to help make the bread. It takes everyone committing to developing a mature mind in order to create a culture that is safe, healthy, sane, and fulfilling.

Individually, while the easy path of remaining childlike may seem desirable, the

Reviews for The 33 Marks of Maturity

[Brandon Eckstorm · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I guess I had great parents because I was doing this by high school.

[SidhantBansal · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book will help you realise many facts which you are unaware about yourself until you read it here and will help you grow up.