Food for thought

As I sat on my couch yesterday after a hard swim practice I looked through some old notes I had made on a video about the millennial generation that I had watched previously. The notes were so interesting they inspired me to seek out the video again. I ended up finding it. It's called The Millennial Question by Simon Sinek and can be found on one of his websites: https://startwithwhy.com/media/. Afterward I took some notes and made some conclusions that I want to implement into my own life, which I will now share with you. So Simon in this talk spoke about the Millennial generation which is "anyone born after 1984." Millennials ha thve been referred to as "entitled, narcissistic, self interested, lazy and unfocused", he says. He spoke about how this group has everything they could possibly want tangibly, but, yet that they still aren't happy. He answers why he thinks this group has received certain undesirable traits and how it "isn't their own fault, but that they were dealt a bad hand." This "bad hand" he says, stems from four different aspects of the Millennial life. These four aspects are "parenting, technology, impatience, and environment." He tells us that too many of us grew up in entitled house holds where our parents told us we "were special", and anytime we demanded something we were given it (Sinek). Parents would complain to teachers about getting good grades in school, so the kids received them, but not necessarily because they even deserved them (Sinek). We got what we wanted. He continued explaining how this devalues the grade or satisfaction of being rewarded for doing something well, while making the people who don't deserve the satisfaction, but got it anyway, feel "embarrassed" (Sinek). He continues in explaining how us millennials will leave high school, enter the real world and then realize that our parents can't help us, and that "we can't have everything we want just because we want it" (Sinek). All of a sudden our world is turned upside-down because of this false parenthood that told us we deserved the world just because we wanted it. This concept of knowing that we couldn't have what we want just because we wanted it; is leaving this generation struck with low self esteem rates and a "shattered self image" (Sinek). And then, "we add in technology". Here we can "put filters on things" we can pretend and show others how great our lives our, when in reality they might not be so great (Sinek). He then mentions how these medias are also highly addictive and how we now have millennial's with low self esteem and addictive technology which can help only TEMPORARILY boost that self esteem with likes, followers and other non tangible satisfactions (Sinek). These habits of using TEMPORARY reliefs to satisfy our low self esteems drive us further from forming the deep relationships in life that will truly fill our inner most voids. These temporary joys will never make us happy, but rather drive us into depression. We have people now turning to devices instead of to friends in times of stress and struggle (Sinek). "People who are spending too much time on these devices are proven to be more depressed." As people turn more and more to these dopamine addictive devices, they pick their heads up less and continue to lack the skills to build personal deep relationships which is what will truly make them happy (Sinek). Adolencese is a very stressful time period where we look for the approval of not only our parents anymore, but of others (Sinek). During times of stress we need people, we need relationships. But, we can't form them because the only way we know to relieve ourselves is through media, and we have never before "practiced the skill set" and "don't have the coping mechanisms to deal with this stress" (Sinek). We have created for ourselves an "imbalance" of media and life. We spend too much time on our phones which will never help us form relationships. Then, one of my favorite points he made was that of impatience. He explains to us how "we live in a world of instant gratification". "We want something, we order it from amazon and it comes the next day". "We want to watch a T.V show, we don't need to wait weeks for it's next showing we can just bindge." "We want to watch a movie, we don't need to even check movie times". This world has made us very impacient people. We don't have to learn how to cope, we just receive. This concept that we've grown up with of receiving only makes life harder later. "We start jobs in the real world and want to quit 8 months in because we don't think we've made an impact." Sinek describes this very well using a mountain. It's like were at the foot of the mountain, the top being impact or purpose or what we want to accomplish. Because of this instant gratification we don't have the patience to get to impact, we want it now. But it doesn't work that way. We have to learn to be patient because the things that really matter like relationships and job satisfaction are "messy and slow processes" that we must be more pacient to be able to uncover. Because we are impatient and don't know how else to find satisfaction we are glued to our phones. This additivity only drives us further from the happiness and acceptance we all yearn for deep in our hearts. The only way to be happy is through meaningful relationships. The only way to make friends is through the little conversations, that happen when we put our phones away. The last category is environment. This idea comes from being put in working environments where people and corporate companies don't know how to treat their employees (Sinek). These work environments "care more about the numbers then the kids, more about the short term gains than the long term of the beings, more about years than lifetimes". These things only bring our confidence down and worse, make us think that were doing something wrong, when it is these companies that are (Sinek). So, my friends, I invite you to go watch the video that I literally quoted throughout this whole thing (lol)! I ask you to be silent, reflect, and try and balance your life more. Remove the technology where and when it is not needed. As Simon says, "I will buy you an alarm clock." We mustn't keep our phones by our beds to wake us up.

We mustn't check our phones before saying good morning to our family members (Sinek). We must live, buid relationships and be the happy beings we were created to be. After all, innovation occurs when we leave our phones behind, when we enjoy the world and look around, thats when ideas form (Sinek). Here are some quotes for the day.. enjoy :))) Subscribe to get notified when I post and I will talk to you guys soon!

"Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress.

Working hard for something we love is called passion." - Simon Sinek

"Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them" - Sinek

"The best ideas are the honest ones. Ones born out of personal experience. Ones that originated to help a few and ended up helping many" -Sinek

"Average minds give up when they fail.

Champions fail until they achieve." - Lewis Howes