Why This Millennial Is Proud to Be an Entitled Millennial
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Why This Millennial Is Proud to Be an Entitled Millennial
Is there something so wrong about feeling you deserve a certain sort of life?
@ChrisMatyszczyk
Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.
When I was of millennial age, I used to think my bosses were talentless, arrogant oafs who twisted and manipulated solely for their personal gain.
I was right, of course.
In turn, my bosses must have thought of me as an entitled brat who believed that he deserved only the best projects and unlimited adoration.
They were right, of course.
These days, though, millennials have become their own distinct emotional category.
The wear their entitledness not only on their sleeves, but on their TOMS.
Their parents have paid for extremely expensive educations, so, like good investors, they’re demanding their immediate returns.
This attitude tends to disappear up some people’s noses so far that it reaches their brains.
Especially when millennials complain about their bosses at Yelp on Medium.
Some millennials are, though, perfectly proud to be entitled.
I just came across an explanation of this phenomenon offered by millennial writer and journalist Charlotte Ottaway.
She sees nothing wrong in entitlement and is prepared to stand up for it.
To her, being entitled means “refusing to work a job you hate for 10 years, despite being told repeatedly you need to ‘pay your dues.’”
Paying your dues might have been an acceptable concept when there was a genuine trust between employer and employee, when there was a belief that the employers would see right by employees for life. Now?
To Ottaway, being entitled also means “declining to spend decades of your life driving in rush hour traffic everyday, and sitting at a desk from 9 to 5 for no clear reason other than the fact your boss told you to do it.”
Finally, millennial entitlement means “refusing to believe freedom is something you only achieve upon retirement.”
Your head is performing an involuntary nod, isn’t it? You’ll be talking about this with your shrink at the next appointment.
Last year, I wrote about 4 Reasons Why Millennials Are Telling Bosses Where To Stick Their Jobs.
Oddly enough, some of Ottaway’s concerns are reflected there. Millennials look at corporate life and see the scam it entails.
There is no promise of a certain future. They’ve seen what corporate life has done to their parents. And it can’t be easy to watch some of your contemporaries get rich very quickly.
Ottaway puts it like this: “What if [being entitled] meant you simply demanded something better? A better approach. A better career. A better life.”
How many times, indeed, does one see adults who survived and prospered in the corporate world retire and then muse daily about how they wasted their lives?
Think of all the hours they spent in meetings, silently cursing the halfwits around them, gritting their teeth and praying their bonuses would be paid on time.
Ottaway defines being an entitled millennial with three tenets.
The first is to be present, to work in order to enjoy your life right now.
The second is to appreciate that in knowing you only live once, you don’t have to blow everything on one crazy night. You might eat cheap meals for a month, in order to enjoy what’s important: to “build your career around your life instead of building your life around your career.”
And then there’s the enormous resistance to living your life according to someone else’s rules.
“You’re tired of conforming to the rigid boundaries of the traditional corporate world,” she says. “You want something more. And you understand the only person who can make the change is you.”
Well, once you get off of the skateboard you float around on at the office, that is.
Part of the reason we mock millennials (admit it, you do too) is that we recognize some of our own attitudes from the past.
Perhaps one of the problems we have with today’s millennials attitude is that it’s now being expressed more openly than ever before.
When younger generations are used to expressing their every thought online as regularly as they wash their hands, why be surprised that they take that attitude into (what’s left of) the real world?
Of course, when the next recession hits (my bet is still on this year), millennial attitudes may be sorely tested.
As, dare I say it, will most people’s.
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Absolute ‘Truth’!!!
The secret of happiness is hidden under the cover of spiritual knowledge.
The soul in Sanskrit, in the terms of the Vedanta, is called Atman which means
happiness or bliss itself. It is not that happiness belongs to the soul; it is that the
soul itself is happiness. Today we often confuse happiness with pleasure; but
pleasure is only an illusion, a shadow of happiness; and in this delusion man
may pass his whole life, seeking after pleasure and never finding satisfaction. …
Do you think that if these people gained their desires they would be happy?
If they possessed all, would that suffice? No, they would still find some excuse for
unhappiness; all these excuses are only like covers over a man’s eyes, for deep
within is the yearning for the true happiness which none of these things can give.
He who is really happy is happy everywhere, in a palace or in a cottage, in riches or
in poverty, for he has discovered the fountain of happiness which is situated in his
own heart. As long as a person has not found that fountain,
nothing will give him real happiness.
A Marathi poet has said, ‘O mind, my restless mind, my mind with its thoughts of
a thousand things which it supposes will make it happy, saying, ’If I had that, I should
be happy; if I had this, I should feel life was not wasted.’ O, my mind, will you tell me
who in this world is happy?’ The mind says, ‘if I had the wealth which I see others have,
I should be happy.’ But are these others happy? They in their turn say
they would be, if they had something still higher!
The secret of happiness is hidden under the veil of spiritual knowledge. And
spiritual knowledge is nothing but this: that there is a constant longing in the heart
of man to have something of its origin, to experience something of its original state,
the state of peace and joy which has been disturbed, and yet is sought after
throughout its whole life, and never can cease to be sought after until the real source
has at length been realized. … It is only those who are blessed by perceiving the
origin and source of all things who awaken to the fact that the real inclination of
every life is to attain to something which cannot be touched or comprehended or
understood. The hidden blessing of this knowledge is the first step to perfection.
Once awake to this fact, man sees there is something in life that will make him really
happy and give him his heart’s desire. He can say, ‘Though there are many things in
life which I need for the moment, and for which I shall certainly work, yet there is only
that one thing, around which life centers, that will satisfy me: the spiritual attainment,
the religious attainment, or, as one may even call it, the attainment of God.’ Such a one
has found the key to all happiness, and has found that all the things he needs will be
reached because he has the key to all. ’Seek, and ye shall find: knock, and it shall be
opened unto you…
Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.
’ This kingdom of God is the silent life; the life inseparable, eternal, self-sufficient,
and all-powerful. This is the life of the wise, whatever be the name given to it; this
is the life which the wise contemplate. It is the face of this life that they
long to see; it is the ocean of this life that they long to swim in;
as it is written: ‘In Him we live and have our being.’
These are the ones who are really happy, who are above all
unhappiness, above death and the destruction of life.
INNOVATE
7 Difficult Lessons Millennials Must Learn the Hard Way
Nobody wants to learn these things, but they are essential to personal growth.
I can’t say for sure, but I would wager that in the grand scheme of things I am a rather young professional writer. I have achieved a number of accolades. I have built what I consider to be a healthy foundation for my future aspirations. But at the end of the day, I am only 25 years old, and much of what I know had to be learned the hard way.
Looking around at many of my peers, I realize my unique position. Somehow, I have found myself in front of a podium. What I write and say is not just “my writing” anymore; it is a representation of others like me—similar in age, career, pursuit, etc. We are Millennials. Compared to the world’s leaders, we are very young. We are ambitious, we are lofty in our dreams, and we are constantly at odds with our own impatience. We know what we want, but at the same time don’t know what it is we don’t want. We are a unique generation in that we firmly believe we have all the skills to become whomever and whatever we believe, and yet we struggle to slow down and understand, step by step, what it will take to get there.
I am only halfway through my 20s, but already there have been seven things I can say for sure Millennials have all had to learn the hard way:
1. Nobody Cares
Let me explain: In the real world, there are no participation points—and if you are in an environment that awards participation points, get out, because it is only doing you a disservice.
Nobody cares that you “tried.” Nobody cares that you “worked really hard on it.” Nobody cares that you “didn’t know.” Nobody cares. What people care about is the final product, the end result. People care that you did what you said you were going to do. People care that you didn’t run and hide when things got tough. People care when you put your pants on and you get done what needs to get done.
People care when you do more than is expected of you, and don’t ask for a pat on the back in return. Nobody cares—so do it for yourself.
2. Time Is Money
I know we all heard this phrase growing up, but it takes context to understand it.
Every time you make a choice, you are spending time (money). Success, then, has less to do with talent and more to do with financial discipline—finances here referring to your time.
Lazy people say yes. They let life carry them like a ship lost at sea from one activity to the next. The key is to be the surfer, to ride the waves, to carve them, to use them to your advantage instead of letting them decide your course.
If you want to create things of value, if you want to accomplish your dreams, if you want to go where you truly want to go, then you have to ride the waves on your own terms. You have to say no to things. You have to learn to be disciplined with your time so that you can invest it properly.
Otherwise, everyone else will invest your time for you.
3. You Have to Network
The people you know are sometimes more important than what you know. After all, you could be the most brilliant designer or writer or project manager, but if nobody knows it then you’re out of luck.
The reason your network is so important is because it is an easy way to increase your value. The more people you know, the more opportunities you will have at your fingertips. Networking is one of those easy ways to engineer serendipity.
You never know whom you might meet.
4. Doing Something Is Better Than Doing Nothing
The easiest (and most deadly) trap to fall into is the belief that you can’t take that first step until you know exactly where you’re headed.
People spend so much time brainstorming or thinking about all the possible outcomes before they take a single step. And then when they finally do take that first step, they realize all that theorizing was for nothing—and yet they repeat the entire cycle, wondering where to move next.
How on earth are you going to steer a stationary ship?
It is so much better to do something than to do nothing. Get the ball rolling. Start flowing. Steer as you go instead of trying to plot your course from land. The journey never goes as planned anyway, so just get on with it.
5. Hard Work Is Hard Work
We live in an age where it is very easy to recreate feelings of productivity and accomplishment without actually being productive or accomplishing anything at all. We check off our to-do lists. We receive “Completed” notifications. We can easily be made to feel like we are doing a lot, which leads us down a road of distraction instead of decision. We avoid the hard stuff because it involves prolonged process—and we would much prefer instant gratification.
If you look at the things that actually move the needle, the work that actually gets you from where you are to where you want to go, it can rarely be summarized in a checkmark or a “Done” notification. Instead, it involves rigorous analysis, tough thinking, and usually prolonged peace and quiet (a rarity in today’s world). You have to actually think through the problem to find the answer.
If the majority of your time is spent doing tasks on your to-do list, I would question whether the work you are doing is hard work or busy work.
6. Invest, Don’t Spend
I mean this both realistically and metaphorically. Don’t get caught up in settling for smaller, short-term rewards when you can invest in larger, more fulfilling opportunities.
Realistically, I mean don’t spend money you don’t have, or try to live a life you can’t afford. Metaphorically, I mean continue investing in your skills instead of spending your time celebrating your small accomplishments.
I am a firm believer that the people who are extremely successful in their 30s and 40s are ones that delayed gratification in their 20s. They invested in themselves and their skills. Conversely, where people tend to cap out is they celebrate prematurely. They bask in successes seemingly large in the short term but small in the long term.
That is not to say you shouldn’t be happy about what you accomplish or achieve along the way. Just don’t get too attached. There is more to be done.
7. You Have Time
And finally, the biggest lesson I have learned thus far: You have time.
You have time to figure it out. You have time to get it right. You have time to change, time to grow, time to create and become the version of yourself you are aiming to become. I know it doesn’t feel like you have time, but you have time. You do. Trust in that, and enjoy the process more than imagining that overwhelming feeling of “I’ve finally made it.” There is no end of the road, no pot of gold at the end of the tunnel. The joy comes from doing the thing in the first place, walking your path, and staying true to where it is you want to go.
Work hard, stay focused, but take a deep breath and realize you don’t have to have all the answers right now. You are learning—and that’s the point.
http://www.inc.com/chris-matyszczyk/why-this-mi...