Who Are Millennials And Why Most Of Them Don't Succeed

Millennials, which is a group of people who were born proximately 1984 and after, are tough to manage, accused of being entitled and narcissistic, self-interested, unfocused and lazy. But entitled is a big one and because they confound Leadership so much, what is happening is leaders are asking the Millennials, "What do you want?" And Millennials are saying, "We want to work in a place with a purpose or we want to make an impact or we want free food And beanbags."

But as we all know there is a lot of free food and beanbags and yet for some reason, they are still not happy. And that’s because there’s a missing piece. What I have learned is I can break it down into four pieces.

There are four things or four characteristics:

1. PARENTING

The generation that we call the Millennials, too many of them grew up subject to failed parenting strategies where they were told that they were special, all the time. They were told that they can have anything they want in life just because they want it. 

Some of them got into honors classes not because they deserve it but because their parents complained and some of them got A’s not because they earned them but because the teachers didn’t want to deal with the parents. 

Some kids got participation medals. They got a medal for coming in last. Which we know in science, that it devalues the medal and the reward for those who actually work hard and that actually makes the person who comes in last feel embarrassed because they know that they didn’t deserve it and it actually makes them feel worse. So when this group of people graduate college and get a job and they’re thrust into the real world and in an instant, they find out that they are not special. Their moms can’t get them a promotion and that they get nothing for coming in last and they can’t just have it because they want it and in an instant, their entire self-image is shattered. 

The other problem to compound it is we’re growing up in a Facebook Instagram world. In other words, we are good at putting filters on things. We are good at showing people that life is amazing even though we're depressed and so everybody sounds tough and everybody sounds like they got it all figured out and the reality is there is very little toughness and most people don’t have it figured out.

So we have an entire generation growing up with lower self-esteem than previous generations through no fault of their own. They were dealt a bad hand.

2. TECHNOLOGY

We know that engagement with social media and our cell phones releases a chemical called Dopamine. That’s why when we get a text it feels good. So when we are feeling a little bit down or feeling a bit lonely and we send out 10 texts to 10 friends because it feels good when we get a response. It is why we count likes.

Dopamine is the exact same chemical that makes us feel good when we smoke, when we drink and when we gamble. in other words, it’s highly addictive. We have age restrictions on smoking, gambling, and alcohol but we have no age restrictions on social media and cell phones. We have an entire generation that has access to an addictive numbing chemical called Dopamine through social media and cell phones as they are going through the high stress of adolescence.

So why is this important? 

Almost every alcoholic discovered alcohol when they were teenagers. When we are very young the only approval we need is the approval of our parents and as we go through adolescence, we make this transition where we now need the approval of our peers. This is very frustrating for our parents but very important for us. This allows us to acculturate outside of our immediate families into the broader tribe. It’s a highly stressful and anxious period of our lives and we are supposed to learn to rely on our friends. 

Some people, quite by accident, discover alcohol and Numbing effects of dopamine to help them cope with the stress and anxiety of adolescence, unfortunately, that becomes hardwired in their brains for the rest of their lives. when they suffer significant stress, they will not turn to a person, they will turn to the bottle. Social stress, financial stress, and career stress are pretty much the primary reasons why an alcoholic drinks.

What’s happening is, because we are allowing unfettered access to these dopamine-producing devices and media, basically, it’s becoming hardwired and what we are seeing is, as they grow older, too many kids don’t know how to form deep meaningful relationships.

They will admit that many of their friendships are superficial. They will admit that they don’t count on their friends or they don’t rely on their friends. They have fun with their friends. But they also know that their friends will cancel out them when something better comes along. Deep meaningful relationships are not there because they never practice the skillset and worse they don’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with stress.

So when significant stress starts to show up in their lives they are not turning to a person, they're turning to a device or social media. They're turning to these things which offer temporary relief. We know, according to science, that people who spend more time on Facebook suffer higher rates of depression than people who spend less time on Facebook. These things should be balanced. Alcohol is not bad, too much alcohol is bad. Gambling is fun, too much gambling is dangerous. There is nothing wrong with social media and cell phones. It's the imbalance. 

If you’re sitting at dinner with your friends and you're texting somebody who is not there, that’s a problem. That is called an addiction. 

If you are sitting in a meeting with people you're supposed to be listening to and speaking, and you put your phone on the table, face up or face down, that sends the subconscious message to the room that "You are just not that important to me right now." That's what happens and the fact that you cannot put it away is because you are addicted. 

If you wake up and you check your phone before you say good morning to your girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse, you have an addiction. And like all addiction, in time, it will destroy relationships, it will cost time and money and it will make your life worse. 

So we have a generation growing up with lower self-esteem, that doesn't have coping mechanisms to deal with stress.

3. IMPATIENCE

Now you add in the sense of Impatience. 

We've grown up in a world of instant gratification. If we want to buy something, we go on Amazon, it arrives the next day. If we wanna watch a movie, log on and watch the movie. We don't check movie times. If we wanna watch a tv show, we do binge-watch. We don't even have to wait for weeks. I know some people who skip episodes just so they can binge-watch at the end of the season. 

Everything we want we can have instantaneously. Except, job satisfaction, and the strength of relationships, there ain't no app for that. They are slow, meandering, uncomfortable, and messy processes. 

So when we see and meet these wonderful, fantastic, and idealistic and hardworking people who've just graduated from college and are in their entry-level job and ask them, "How's it going?" Most of them will say "I think I'm gonna quit because I'm not making an impact." The irony here is that they've only been working there for eight months. It's as if they're standing at the foot of a mountain and they have this abstract concept called the impact that they wanna have in the world, which is the summit of the mountain. What they don't see is that between them is the mountain. It doesn't matter if they go up the mountain quickly or slowly but there's still a mountain. 

And so what this young generation needs to learn is patience, that some things that really matter like love, job fulfillment, joy, self-confidence, a skill-set, all of these things take time. Sometimes you can expedite pieces of it but the overall journey is arduous and long and if you don't ask for help and learn that skill-set, you will fall off the mountain.

The worst-case scenario is, we're seeing an increase in suicide rates and accidental deaths due to drug overdoses. We're seeing more and more kids drop out of school or college or take leaves of absence due to depression. This is really bad.

And the best-case scenario is, we have an entire population growing up and going through life and just never really finding joy. They never really find deep fulfillment in work or in life. They just walk through life. 

4. THE ENVIRONMENT 

There should be no cell phones allowed in conference rooms. If cell phones are allowed, when people are sitting and waiting for a meeting to start, they will check their phones or text someone and wait for the meeting to start. That's not how relationships are formed. It's the little things.

Relationships are formed this way: when we're waiting for a meeting to start, we should talk to other people and try to have a good conversation about life, love, or family. That's how we form relationships and trusts. And we have to create mechanisms where we allow for those little innocuous interactions to happen.

When you're out for dinner with your friends, leave your cell phones at home or just don't use it and keep it in your pocket. It's because we cannot trust our willpower or we're just not strong enough to resist the temptation. But when we remove the temptation, it actually makes it a lot easier. i.e when someone tells us to don't check the phone, we'll agree at that point. But as soon as the other person goes to the bathroom, what's the first thing we do? Obviously, we check our phones because we wouldn't wanna look around the restaurant for a minute and a half. But if we don't have the phone, we just kind of enjoy the world. And that's where ideas happen. The constant engagement is not where we have innovation and ideas, ideas happen when we see something and our minds wonder. That's how innovation happens.

So at last I just wanna say that we millennials are not the worst generation. We just need to build our confidence, learn patience, learn social skills, and find a better balance between life and technology.

Make sure you are happy in real life not just on social media.