The Millennium Generation
How do you understand the Millennium Generation? That’s crucial to finding your management voice with them. Here’s a note I sent to help that understanding move forward.
In the movie “Dancing with Wolves,” I’m reminded of the idea that we have established for ourselves a lifestyle that is nonsensical and unsustainable. The Native Americans lived a life that looked poverty stricken to the white men, but it was a life that preserved the connection to the pure joy and love we all strive for. I always come away from these kinds of experiences wondering how to simplify and move our lives closer to that ideal — but struggle with the idea of giving up hot showers every day!
It seems to me that the Millennium generation may be more successful moving toward this ideal than our generation.
As I mentioned last night, this generation has watched ours do “all the right things” and fail at life.
We have been strivers.
We think we’ve succeeded by hard work. (though you and I find that we do better when we go with the flow and harvest what comes our way than when we push)
We’ve learned discipline. (which meant we gave up and followed nonsensical instructions from monolithic corporations because it was easier than trying to point out the folly of the instruction) We’ve strived to get formal educations. (And then discovered that our best learning is from paying close attention to ourselves interacting with the world, and our own independent study.)
We enjoy opportunities we worry the Millennium generation will miss.
We have money to spend. (And then succumb to the pressure spend that money to keep up with the Joneses.)
We enjoy luxury. (And pressure ourselves to pay attention to fashion rather than utility)
We enjoy “good jobs.” (and live in a pressure cooker that shortens our life and disables our ability to enjoy our life.)
We have choices about where and how to live our lives. (And we pay more attention to whether we live in the “right” neighborhood than whether our family is thriving.)
We disconnect from our relationships to focus on career and lifestyle, missing the real place we are meant to learn our lessons.
Without the striving this generation will forfeit the opportunities we’ve enjoyed.
And that may be a very good thing.
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