HendryTan Posted January 2, 2017 Posted January 2, 2017 WHY GENERATION Y MILLENNIUM'S ARE UNHAPPY BY TIM URBAN HTTP://WAITBUTWHY.COM/2013/09/WHY-GENERATION-Y-YUPPIES-ARE-UNHAPPY.HTML Say hi to Lucy. Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story. So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing: Lucy’s kind of unhappy. To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula: It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy. To provide some context, let’s start by bringing Lucy’s parents into the discussion: Lucy’s parents were born in the 50s—they’re Baby Boomers. They were raised by Lucy’s grandparents, members of the G.I. Generation, or “the Greatest Generation,” who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II, and were most definitely not GYPSYs. Lucy’s Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers. They wanted her parents’ careers to have greener grass than their own, and Lucy’s parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves. Something like this: They were taught that there was nothing stopping them from getting to that lush, green lawn of a career, but that they’d need to put in years of hard work to make it happen. After graduating from being insufferable hippies, Lucy’s parents embarked on their careers. As the 70s, 80s, and 90s rolled along, the world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Lucy’s parents did even better than they expected to. This left them feeling gratified and optimistic. With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own parents, Lucy’s parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility. And they weren’t alone. Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches. This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents’ goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn’t really do it for them. A GYPSY-worthy lawn has flowers. This leads to our first fact about GYPSYs: GYPSYS ARE WILDLY AMBITIOUS The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security. The fact is, a green lawn isn’t quite exceptional or unique enough for a GYPSY. Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream. Cal Newport points out that “follow your passion” is a catchphrase that has only gotten going in the last 20 years, according to Google’s Ngram viewer, a tool that shows how prominently a given phrase appears in English print over any period of time. The same Ngram viewer shows that the phrase “a secure career” has gone out of style, just as the phrase “a fulfilling career” has gotten hot. To be clear, GYPSYs want economic prosperity just like their parents did—they just also want to be fulfilled by their career in a way their parents didn’t think about as much. But something else is happening too. While the career goals of Gen Y as a whole have become much more particular and ambitious, Lucy has been given a second message throughout her childhood as well: This would probably be a good time to bring in our second fact about GYPSYs: GYPSYS ARE DELUSIONAL “Sure,” Lucy has been taught, “everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd.” So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better— A shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn. So why is this delusional? Because this is what all GYPSYs think, which defies the definition of special: spe-cial| ‘speSHel |adjectivebetter, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual. According to this definition, most people are not special—otherwise “special” wouldn’t mean anything. Even right now, the GYPSYs reading this are thinking, “Good point…but I actually am one of the few special ones”—and this is the problem. A second GYPSY delusion comes into play once the GYPSY enters the job market. While Lucy’s parents’ expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Lucy considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as she, and for her it’s just a matter of time and choosing which way to go. Her pre-workforce expectations look something like this: Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they’re actually quite hard. Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build—even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them—and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s. But GYPSYs aren’t about to just accept that. Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert, has researched this, finding that Gen Y has “unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback,” and “an inflated view of oneself.” He says that “a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren’t in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting.” For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, “Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?” He says that “if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the ‘why,’ there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They’ve been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief.” And since the real world has the nerve to consider merit a factor, a few years out of college Lucy finds herself here: Lucy’s extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one’s own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college. And her reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving her “reality – expectations” happy score coming out at a negative. And it gets even worse. On top of all this, GYPSYs have an extra problem that applies to their whole generation: GYPSYS ARE TAUNTED Sure, some people from Lucy’s parents’ high school or college classes ended up more successful than her parents did. And while they may have heard about some of it from time to time through the grapevine, for the most part they didn’t really know what was going on in too many other peoples’ careers. Lucy, on the other hand, finds herself constantly taunted by a modern phenomenon: Facebook Image Crafting. Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation. This leaves Lucy feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing really well, only adding to her misery: So that’s why Lucy is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate. In fact, she’s probably started off her career perfectly well, but to her, it feels very disappointing. Here’s my advice for Lucy: 1) Stay wildly ambitious. The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success. The specific direction may be unclear, but it’ll work itself out—just dive in somewhere. 2) Stop thinking that you’re special. The fact is, right now, you’re not special. You’re another completely inexperienced young person who doesn’t have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard for a long time. 3) Ignore everyone else. Other people’s grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today’s image crafting world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you’ll never have any reason to envy others. Saltpepper, shyc and Bern 3
BY TIM URBAN HTTP://WAITBUTWHY.COM/2013/09/WHY-GENERATION-Y-YUPPIES-ARE-UNHAPPY.HTML Say hi to Lucy. Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story. So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing: Lucy’s kind of unhappy. To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula: It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy. To provide some context, let’s start by bringing Lucy’s parents into the discussion: Lucy’s parents were born in the 50s—they’re Baby Boomers. They were raised by Lucy’s grandparents, members of the G.I. Generation, or “the Greatest Generation,” who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II, and were most definitely not GYPSYs. Lucy’s Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers. They wanted her parents’ careers to have greener grass than their own, and Lucy’s parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves. Something like this: They were taught that there was nothing stopping them from getting to that lush, green lawn of a career, but that they’d need to put in years of hard work to make it happen. After graduating from being insufferable hippies, Lucy’s parents embarked on their careers. As the 70s, 80s, and 90s rolled along, the world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Lucy’s parents did even better than they expected to. This left them feeling gratified and optimistic. With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own parents, Lucy’s parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility. And they weren’t alone. Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches. This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents’ goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn’t really do it for them. A GYPSY-worthy lawn has flowers. This leads to our first fact about GYPSYs: GYPSYS ARE WILDLY AMBITIOUS The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security. The fact is, a green lawn isn’t quite exceptional or unique enough for a GYPSY. Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream. Cal Newport points out that “follow your passion” is a catchphrase that has only gotten going in the last 20 years, according to Google’s Ngram viewer, a tool that shows how prominently a given phrase appears in English print over any period of time. The same Ngram viewer shows that the phrase “a secure career” has gone out of style, just as the phrase “a fulfilling career” has gotten hot. To be clear, GYPSYs want economic prosperity just like their parents did—they just also want to be fulfilled by their career in a way their parents didn’t think about as much. But something else is happening too. While the career goals of Gen Y as a whole have become much more particular and ambitious, Lucy has been given a second message throughout her childhood as well: This would probably be a good time to bring in our second fact about GYPSYs: GYPSYS ARE DELUSIONAL “Sure,” Lucy has been taught, “everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd.” So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better— A shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn. So why is this delusional? Because this is what all GYPSYs think, which defies the definition of special: spe-cial| ‘speSHel |adjectivebetter, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual. According to this definition, most people are not special—otherwise “special” wouldn’t mean anything. Even right now, the GYPSYs reading this are thinking, “Good point…but I actually am one of the few special ones”—and this is the problem. A second GYPSY delusion comes into play once the GYPSY enters the job market. While Lucy’s parents’ expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Lucy considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as she, and for her it’s just a matter of time and choosing which way to go. Her pre-workforce expectations look something like this: Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they’re actually quite hard. Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build—even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them—and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s. But GYPSYs aren’t about to just accept that. Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert, has researched this, finding that Gen Y has “unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback,” and “an inflated view of oneself.” He says that “a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren’t in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting.” For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, “Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?” He says that “if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the ‘why,’ there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They’ve been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief.” And since the real world has the nerve to consider merit a factor, a few years out of college Lucy finds herself here: Lucy’s extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one’s own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college. And her reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving her “reality – expectations” happy score coming out at a negative. And it gets even worse. On top of all this, GYPSYs have an extra problem that applies to their whole generation: GYPSYS ARE TAUNTED Sure, some people from Lucy’s parents’ high school or college classes ended up more successful than her parents did. And while they may have heard about some of it from time to time through the grapevine, for the most part they didn’t really know what was going on in too many other peoples’ careers. Lucy, on the other hand, finds herself constantly taunted by a modern phenomenon: Facebook Image Crafting. Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation. This leaves Lucy feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing really well, only adding to her misery: So that’s why Lucy is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate. In fact, she’s probably started off her career perfectly well, but to her, it feels very disappointing. Here’s my advice for Lucy: 1) Stay wildly ambitious. The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success. The specific direction may be unclear, but it’ll work itself out—just dive in somewhere. 2) Stop thinking that you’re special. The fact is, right now, you’re not special. You’re another completely inexperienced young person who doesn’t have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard for a long time. 3) Ignore everyone else. Other people’s grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today’s image crafting world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you’ll never have any reason to envy others.
lonelyglobe Posted January 3, 2017 Posted January 3, 2017 how to be happy when a 3 room resale flat jump from 100+k to 300+k while the income just go up from 2k to 2.5k?
fab Posted January 3, 2017 Posted January 3, 2017 EasleyLim 1 鍾意就好，理佢男定女 never argue with the guests. let them bark all they want. 结缘不结怨 解怨不解缘 After I have said what I wanna say, I don't care what you say. 看穿不说穿
Guest Lopp Posted January 3, 2017 Posted January 3, 2017 25 minutes ago, fab said: Looking at the job responsibilities, one leg kick but salary $1900. This company is a blood sucker.
Guest Guest Posted January 3, 2017 Posted January 3, 2017 13 hours ago, Guest Lopp said: Looking at the job responsibilities, one leg kick but salary $1900. This company is a blood sucker. ...and expecting the candidate to come with 4 to 6 years of working experience too. Which MNC is this?
kingbitch Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 17 hours ago, fab said: wow!! This is too messed up. I really do think they made a typing mistake. Otherwise, this would have been on Facebook or Stomp.
EasleyLim Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 17 hours ago, fab said: Entry level job but ask so much. And people say younger folks are entitled and whiny and unrealistic, lmao.
Guest MindSet Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 It's all in the mind how you feel - sad, happy or mixed feeling. Just look at under developed countries, they all seemed look happy for what they have.
EasleyLim Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 1 minute ago, Guest MindSet said: It's all in the mind how you feel - sad, happy or mixed feeling. Just look at under developed countries, they all seemed look happy for what they have. Why look at under-developed countries? Why not look at more advanced countries? Why do we always compare ourselves to a lower standard? fab 1
Guest MindSet Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 9 minutes ago, EasleyLim said: Why look at under-developed countries? Why not look at more advanced countries? Why do we always compare ourselves to a lower standard? Because they can endured more hardships than people in developed countries that whinging everyday like a princess.
EasleyLim Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 1 minute ago, Guest MindSet said: Because they can endured more hardships than people in developed countries that whinging everyday like a princess. Please remember that line when you ask for an increase in salary.
Guest MindSet Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 Just now, EasleyLim said: Please remember that line when you ask for an increase in salary. No need to ask, pay rise is assessed and based on an employee's performance and profitability of a company.
Guest old trick Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 Simple logic. They need to advertise like that to ensure that no locals will apply for the position in order to fulfil their requirement to bring in a foreign talent. Old trick.
Guest EntitledGen Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 The very reason is they feel entitled, WE ARE WHAT WE PRAY. OUR PRAYER FORMS OUR CHARACTER. When our prayer is selfish, we become selfish and reap the fruit of selfishness, fear, greed, chaos, restlessness, destruction. In materialistic Singapore and in most societies thesedays, when they sleep, when they wake up, they think about money, money, money, how to expand their businesses, they pray for the their own pocket, own palace, own bling bling, own self, own family, for the victory of their own religious group.
Steve5380 Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 On 1/2/2017 at 7:25 AM, HendryTan said: It comes down to a simple formula: If this article is based on the above formula, it may not be fully trustworthy. I know many people whose realities never reached up to their expectations, yet THEY ARE HAPPY! They spent most of their lives thinking that their expectations would be fulfilled in a future, until they did run out of time for such a future. This is the case of many old people, and when this happens it is up to them to match their expectations to their reality. This is one simple way to reach happiness. And many old people are able to make this adjustment. Those who are in the generation the article calls "Y" are too old to live in fantasies but still too young to come to this point. It is well known that happiness typically reaches its lowest between the 30s and 50s, and then increases with advancing age. We should not see aging as something purely negative.
Guest Workerbee Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 2 hours ago, Guest MindSet said: No need to ask, pay rise is assessed and based on an employee's performance and profitability of a company. No, that is not entirely true. Many a times is how you suck up to the boss, and the optics of your performance.
Guest Workerbee Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 37 minutes ago, Steve5380 said: It is well known that happiness typically reaches its lowest between the 30s and 50s, and then increases with advancing age. We should not see aging as something purely negative. The old hunched back 70+ yr old aunty I see pushing her full trolley every day collecting cardboard around the neighbourhood, I wonder if she's happy. A few weeks ago I saw two china men pushing a trolley around the neighbourhood collecting cardboard, then I saw the old aunty later that evening with fewer cardboard on her trolley, I wonder if she's happy. The 60+ yr old uncle I see eating the scraps of leftover food at the hawker centre after the people had left, I wonder if he's happy.
Guest Guest Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 This stupid generation have been unhappy because the parents always asked them what they want since young , from eating to toys that choosing seats , etc ....and when they could not get it ...they become abusive thinking the world and people owes them a happy life !
Guest Guest Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 Just now, Guest Guest said: This stupid generation have been unhappy because the parents always asked them what they want since young , from eating to toys that choosing seats , etc ....and when they could not get it ...they become abusive thinking the world and people owes them a happy life ! ....and choosing seats ....
Guest Guest Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 3 hours ago, Guest MindSet said: Because they can endured more hardships than people in developed countries that whinging everyday like a princess. True
Guest selfabsorbedprincesses Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 Generation of entitled, self absorbed princesses due to being too spoilt by their parents and gov that provided them with high standards of living.
Samezuka Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 Lol at the above. It isnt just about the generation, please dont 与老売老. Ive seen countless self-entitled uncles and aunties demanding for seats and cutting queues. It isnt about the generation, the issue lies with all singaporeans.
Guest Non NTUC member Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 23 hours ago, fab said: Such audacity of unfair and unjust treatment towards workers, are the result of LOUSY, WEAK & LAZY LABOUR UNION. This company will often seen complaining about not being able to find local talent and their bosses will be put on show in our msm TV, to whine and rant about Singapore being an unconducive place due to "high" labour cost. The above ads, is just one of the many classic examples often seen in Singapore and no where else. Time for NTUC to wake up and do something about it, or after decade of no competition, they still remain complacent and in denial of worker's woe? With such salary, will the boss be willing to pay for our household electricity which has been going up and so are many other worker's epenses like transport & meals? The above ads look more like a joke or an outright kick ass on workers.
Guest 30% smart voter Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 Singapore monopolising msm has been feeding Singaporeans, from craddle to grave, with deluded news. The only outcome is a herd of cocky, self-righteous deluded people, led by a small group of aritocratic individual who control the msm.
Guest Guest Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 5 hours ago, Guest selfabsorbedprincesses said: Generation of entitled, self absorbed princesses due to being too spoilt by their parents and gov that provided them with high standards of living. Feel free to live the lives of our grandfathers and grandmothers from half a century ago, ploughing the lands and breeding chickens, waking up at the crow of the rooster and planting seeds in the field if you want to. And while you are at it, throw away your computers and TVs, and make sure you walk to work everyday. Yeah, that's right. I guess your grandparents will be proud that you are not the generation of Princesses which you claimed to be all around us nowadays. And they will be so happy that they had worked hard all their lives and left NOTHING for their future generations to enjoy.
Steve5380 Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 7 hours ago, Guest Workerbee said: The old hunched back 70+ yr old aunty I see pushing her full trolley every day collecting cardboard around the neighbourhood, I wonder if she's happy. A few weeks ago I saw two china men pushing a trolley around the neighbourhood collecting cardboard, then I saw the old aunty later that evening with fewer cardboard on her trolley, I wonder if she's happy. The 60+ yr old uncle I see eating the scraps of leftover food at the hawker centre after the people had left, I wonder if he's happy. I have also seen these people wandering around Chinatown, many old folks on the streets with nothing to do. But homelessness happens everywhere. They are the exception, not the rule.
Guest Guest Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 2 hours ago, Guest Guest said: Feel free to live the lives of our grandfathers and grandmothers from half a century ago, ploughing the lands and breeding chickens, waking up at the crow of the rooster and planting seeds in the field if you want to. And while you are at it, throw away your computers and TVs, and make sure you walk to work everyday. Yeah, that's right. I guess your grandparents will be proud that you are not the generation of Princesses which you claimed to be all around us nowadays. And they will be so happy that they had worked hard all their lives and left NOTHING for their future generations to enjoy. You must also consider do we have such place kampungs ah.. You can't sukat sukat do like that ah. Wait hdb and garmen come after you ah... We don't have such places anymore anyway ah.. Do you know ah..my princess？
Guest Guest Posted January 4, 2017 Posted January 4, 2017 5 hours ago, Guest Guest said: You must also consider do we have such place kampungs ah.. You can't sukat sukat do like that ah. Wait hdb and garmen come after you ah... We don't have such places anymore anyway ah.. Do you know ah..my princess？ HDB??? You are such a princess! Why can't you live in kampungs? Long ago, people even managed to live in caves! What will you be thinking of next? Condominium? Have you been so "spoilt by (your) parents and gov that provided (you) with high standards of living" that you want MORE now??? You should remain in stone age era, instead of living among all those whom you called "Generation of entitled, self absorbed princesses ".
Saltpepper Posted January 29, 2017 Posted January 29, 2017 On 1/2/2017 at 9:25 PM, HendryTan said: WHY GENERATION Y MILLENNIUM'S ARE UNHAPPY BY TIM URBAN HTTP://WAITBUTWHY.COM/2013/09/WHY-GENERATION-Y-YUPPIES-ARE-UNHAPPY.HTML Say hi to Lucy. Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story. So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing: Lucy’s kind of unhappy. To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula: It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy. To provide some context, let’s start by bringing Lucy’s parents into the discussion: Lucy’s parents were born in the 50s—they’re Baby Boomers. They were raised by Lucy’s grandparents, members of the G.I. Generation, or “the Greatest Generation,” who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II, and were most definitely not GYPSYs. Lucy’s Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers. They wanted her parents’ careers to have greener grass than their own, and Lucy’s parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves. Something like this: They were taught that there was nothing stopping them from getting to that lush, green lawn of a career, but that they’d need to put in years of hard work to make it happen. After graduating from being insufferable hippies, Lucy’s parents embarked on their careers. As the 70s, 80s, and 90s rolled along, the world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Lucy’s parents did even better than they expected to. This left them feeling gratified and optimistic. With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own parents, Lucy’s parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility. And they weren’t alone. Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches. This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents’ goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn’t really do it for them. A GYPSY-worthy lawn has flowers. This leads to our first fact about GYPSYs: GYPSYS ARE WILDLY AMBITIOUS The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security. The fact is, a green lawn isn’t quite exceptional or unique enough for a GYPSY. Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream. Cal Newport points out that “follow your passion” is a catchphrase that has only gotten going in the last 20 years, according to Google’s Ngram viewer, a tool that shows how prominently a given phrase appears in English print over any period of time. The same Ngram viewer shows that the phrase “a secure career” has gone out of style, just as the phrase “a fulfilling career” has gotten hot. To be clear, GYPSYs want economic prosperity just like their parents did—they just also want to be fulfilled by their career in a way their parents didn’t think about as much. But something else is happening too. While the career goals of Gen Y as a whole have become much more particular and ambitious, Lucy has been given a second message throughout her childhood as well: This would probably be a good time to bring in our second fact about GYPSYs: GYPSYS ARE DELUSIONAL “Sure,” Lucy has been taught, “everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd.” So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better— A shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn. So why is this delusional? Because this is what all GYPSYs think, which defies the definition of special: spe-cial| ‘speSHel |adjectivebetter, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual. According to this definition, most people are not special—otherwise “special” wouldn’t mean anything. Even right now, the GYPSYs reading this are thinking, “Good point…but I actually am one of the few special ones”—and this is the problem. A second GYPSY delusion comes into play once the GYPSY enters the job market. While Lucy’s parents’ expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Lucy considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as she, and for her it’s just a matter of time and choosing which way to go. Her pre-workforce expectations look something like this: Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they’re actually quite hard. Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build—even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them—and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s. But GYPSYs aren’t about to just accept that. Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert, has researched this, finding that Gen Y has “unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback,” and “an inflated view of oneself.” He says that “a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren’t in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting.” For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, “Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?” He says that “if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the ‘why,’ there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They’ve been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief.” And since the real world has the nerve to consider merit a factor, a few years out of college Lucy finds herself here: Lucy’s extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one’s own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college. And her reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving her “reality – expectations” happy score coming out at a negative. And it gets even worse. On top of all this, GYPSYs have an extra problem that applies to their whole generation: GYPSYS ARE TAUNTED Sure, some people from Lucy’s parents’ high school or college classes ended up more successful than her parents did. And while they may have heard about some of it from time to time through the grapevine, for the most part they didn’t really know what was going on in too many other peoples’ careers. Lucy, on the other hand, finds herself constantly taunted by a modern phenomenon: Facebook Image Crafting. Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation. This leaves Lucy feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing really well, only adding to her misery: So that’s why Lucy is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate. In fact, she’s probably started off her career perfectly well, but to her, it feels very disappointing. Here’s my advice for Lucy: 1) Stay wildly ambitious. The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success. The specific direction may be unclear, but it’ll work itself out—just dive in somewhere. 2) Stop thinking that you’re special. The fact is, right now, you’re not special. You’re another completely inexperienced young person who doesn’t have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard for a long time. 3) Ignore everyone else. Other people’s grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today’s image crafting world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you’ll never have any reason to envy others. This is actually true for most cases... Thanks for the advice!
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