Five Core Attributes Of Millennials That Help Explain Our Struggle With Self-Esteem

To be honest, it’s only just recently that I’ve to learn that I fall within the millennial generation. I always thought I was a part of Generation Y, but it appears that this term has been since replaced. As it turns out, anyone born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s also happens to be a millennial.

Trust me, I resent the label, too.

The whole millennial thing got me thinking of all the ways in which we’re different from our parents’ generation and why that might be. Here is a short list I’ve compiled of core differences I’ve observed between my cohort and those of our predecessors (Generation X and Baby Boomers).

1. We were not “allowed” to fail

In the classroom, on the soccer field or within the confines of the family home, failure wasn’t much of an option. Our parents, for the most part, approached us in a way that many describe as “helicopter parenting”. Helicopter parenting is a phenomenon wherein parents metaphorically hovered over their children and got overly involved in their lives.

So our parents sought to rescue us from our struggles and to prevent us from facing rejection. But this approach didn’t stop us from actually failing, it simply left us unequipped and fragile when we did face failure. The control our parents were exerting over our lives was more about their own issues and less about our intrinsic abilities. That said, it ended up at the expense of us being able to develop our own autonomy, confidence and resilience.

It was more important for us to feel good about ourselves than it was to learn that hard work is the best way to achieve anything. When you don’t let someone learn how to fail, you are also not letting them learn how to truly succeed. We are left unable to access our potential, at a loss in the face of adversity and unable to take a risk (for fear of rejection).

We got awards not because we worked hard and deserved them, but by default for participation. We avoided failing not because we passed a class, but because our parents complained and our teachers wanted to avoid it.

This only devalued the hard work and effort required for success and stipulated that we were “special” just by showing up. So you can just imagine how we felt when we entered the workforce and didn’t have our parents acting as buffers for all the things we weren’t learning.

“A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.”

— Simon Sinek

2. We were raised within a financial security net

For the majority of us, our parents grew up without a lot of financial means because their parents and grandparents faced the economic disparities of the Great Depression. As a result, our parents largely value financial stability, careers, pensions and benefit plans. They also strive to provide for their children financially in hopes of offering what they couldn’t have when they were young.

More than just financially-providing, many millennial parents also have an open-door policy when it comes to their children returning home after having left for school. In fact, many millennials never even left their childhood homes at all, paying little to no rent well into their mid-twenties.

According to a recent Pew Research Center report, 56% of US adults aged 18 to 24 and 16% of US adults aged 25 to 31 are living at home. This can be explained by a decline in job opportunities, an increase in post-secondary education and the trend of a reduction in marriage during these years.

The Yconic/Abacus Data Survey of Canadian Millennials suggests that almost 30% of 25- to 29-year olds are still living at home, compared with 18% of 30- to 33-year-olds. More surprising yet is the fact that a whopping 43% of 30 to 33 year olds claimed to still be financially dependent on their parents.

3. We are more broke than ever

According to social media, we’re all taking lavish vacations, sipping mimosas and getting our tans on. Behind our Instagram filters, however, most of us are still knee-deep in student debt well into our late twenties without the employment opportunities to quickly pay it off.

And we’re earning much less than the generation before us, largely due to entering the workforce during an economic recession. This means we’re breaking the trend and not earning more than our parents’ generation did.

In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, startup businesses run by 20-somethings are on the decline. It appears that we’re just not that comfortable with, or able to afford, financial risk. However, according to the Kaufman Foundation, entrepreneurs within our parents’ generation appears to be on the rise.

Seems a little backwards, no? We’re young, have less ties, and are more tech-savvy than ever before and yet we’re less and less likely to invest in our own businesses.

4. We are accustomed to instant gratification

According to author Simon Sinek, technology is one of the leading problems of the millennial generation and unfortunately, we just can’t filter that out. The internet — more specifically social media — has created a culture of comparison and a false sense of connection.

We are left unable to forge deep relationships and we avoid committing to one person or career, for very long. We don’t know what hard work looks like because we remain unattached and ready to switch jobs, apartments or partners every 6 to 12 months.

We are the generation that began with analog and finished with digital. Our brains are wired to get what we want when we want it, whether that looks like validation or an Amazon order. So we’re described as being self-entitled because we have grown accustomed to never hearing “no”.

Everything in our lives until adulthood has happened so quickly and easily that we don’t recognize the normalcy and merit in things that take time and hard work. Milestones like relationships and careers are things we should learn to build, not stumble upon online.

Indeed, the fact that we are unable to pay attention to anything for longer than 140 characters is concerning. We may switch jobs and relationships more than ever before, but finding satisfaction and depth within these roles remains a struggle for a lot of millennials.

5. We have far too many choices at our disposal

Having choices isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. But so many people get overwhelmed and refuse to make any decision for fear of making the wrong one.

When we don’t know who we are because we can be anyone and we don’t know what to do because we can do anything, we’re swept up in a sea of inertia. The only wrong choice to make is not making a choice at all.

It’s fine to spend time figuring out what we want and what works for us before investing in a life-altering decision, but that actually requires action. We have to avidly try something out to know whether or not we like it.

We are refusing to work entry level jobs because we feel as though we’re overqualified or we’re too scared of rejection to put ourselves out there and apply. So we create what we fear.

We don’t allow ourselves flexibility and we become perfectionists who care more about appearing that we’re successful than actually discovering what success means to us.

We underachieve or stagnate because it’s not what we “think” it should look like. Even though we really don’t know what it should look like because we haven’t even gotten there yet.

We forget that moving forward professionally or personally requires work. We fail to invest in harnessing new skills and getting to know ourselves. We want to get to the finish line but don’t want to run the marathon, and we think there’s something wrong when we have to start sweating.

Every generation tries to rectify the shortcomings of the previous one. If it’s our parents’ fault for how we turned out then we can logically blame our grandparents, too. That doesn’t change anything. Besides, if we’re victims of circumstance that means we cannot ever transcend them.

This list does, however, help to shed light on why the millennial population has garnered a certain reputation.

Although we are described as being self-entitled and as having a fragile sense of self-esteem, those of us who can learn and grow despite the mentality behind which we were raised are bringing other interesting attributes to the table.

We are now the only generation in recent history that may not end up making more money than our parents, but it doesn’t seem to discourage us. We’re more educated than ever before and increasingly liberal with our political views.

We’re the least religious generation and yet the most socially conscious. We prefer team-oriented environments in the workplace and seek meaningful tasks, creative outlets and engaging feedback. We want to do more than just gain a salary, we want to make a difference.

So who knows where the future will lead us. Although we entered the workforce during an economic recession, perhaps it’s the slow and steady pace that eventually wins the race. Nevertheless, I agree with the late Steve Jobs when he says that:

“the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.”