This Is What Truly Makes Successful Millennials Successful
And Every Millennial Owes It to Himself to Know It
There may be a lot of standards and practices to determine what is averagely “successful” in generally relatable terms. But what determines it for millennials is how they take it upon themselves to have values that are not as conventional as that of the baby boomers’, yet just as consistent with their moral and social growth.
Millennials are the ones who revolutionized creativity as a trait that can be invested in, and have proved as much by showing extreme devotion as being how far they will go to embody and live off of it. And they are so good at it that they play a major role in creating as much information every couple of days as the whole of humanity did up to 2003.
I am a millennial.
I value growth over progress. I value the lessons that I learn through failures than revel on a success with a sense of its fake security being something I can cower behind the rest of my career. I prioritize subjective insights and feelings over objective compensations.
“Contentment over money. Smart work over hard work. Consistency over reliability (because consistency is reliability).”
Yeah, I am one of those.
And all around me, I see the “hustle”. There is always a startup to be found. There is always this growing idea for a book to be written, or a movie to be made. Or a chord to be struck, or time to be warped so that the perfect picture can be taken. Six-figure jobs don’t mean as much now as they might’ve to the older generation — if they prioritize being in a field that doesn’t align with the passions or dreams of a person. Conventions are stigmatized.
And all these point the finger in one direction:
“Living life on your own terms.”
It’s every millennial’s dream. And it is not so much as to prefer solitude along their journey toward wherever it is they need to go as it is to be independent thinkers who can amount to some worth on their own.
They need to travel the world.
They need to be in a position to determine how much they are worth an hour.
They need to be their own bosses.
Such millennials who have what it takes to live on their own terms are better agreed to as the “go-getters”. They don’t wait for suitable stimuli to go in search of something that would help them along their path — they create whatever stimulus they need for themselves. They know what works and what doesn’t. They understand what it means when a picture is captioned, “I am who I am, I am what I am, I do what I do and I ain’t never gonna do it any different,” in Instagram — now more so than ever. They understand why they feel like going back to the same cafe over and over again where they can sit back and write on their laptops, while socializing with other like-minded people and picking their brains. Now more so than ever.
But in the end, not many end up realizing their dreams of being whatever it is they have always wanted to become.
It could be because they lacked the discipline, vulnerability to show what they amount to as humans, or simply a clear consciousness of their goals.
But mostly, it’s the one thing that truly successful millennials do, that average millennials fail to:
Successful millennials define their own success, and work toward measuring up to it.
Everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to Jessica Alba knows it.
Successful millennials are successful because they took it upon themselves to know what worked for them more than what other people encouraged that they do.
They trusted in themselves to go deep with whatever they had, even if that wasn’t enough to convince their circle of baby boomers and preface them with the level of success they intend to achieve.
Unsuccessful millennials, on the other hand, although they know what they want to pursue, fail to measure up. Or worse, they simply end up attaining a standardized form of success that may have nothing to do with their interests.
They encounter a solid obstacle in their path, and they think it’s final.
They hear people say they can’t do a thing, and they believe they can’t.
They understand it when baby boomers offer them a sheltered life aligned with outdated conventions, and they are ready to dump their own dreams for it.
They are okay with sacrificing their definitions of success for what’s conventionally accepted as being successful.
Because they are scared. Scared of losing. Scared of not knowing what they may find at the other end. And if it turns out to be bad, it’s a legion of steps they have to retrace back to the “sheltered life” they were promised.
And that’s bad.
They become millionaires without any sense of success.
They become cubicle-workers or engineers without the contentment of achievement.
And this is the line successful millennials draw between themselves and all the noise. They focus on what matters to them most. They go from being flustered to banging-head-on-a-wall devastated, but they don’t settle for anything other than their definition of success.
This is something we should be taught in schools. If anything, schools owe it to us. Rather, we are taught what’s supposed to be “The Big Picture”.
Which ultimately isn’t.
We are forced into following a generalized system. A system drafted by the generation before us. A system that rebukes anyone who upsets the comfort of status quo. A system that requires everyone to have a high-quality left part of the brain than right.
This is what you have to know. There are simply too many with an engineering degree. Too many cubicle workers.
Not enough people who would rather be doing what they have their heart in.
And fewer still follow through the sluggish uncertainty of their path, just knowing somehow that they can’t stop, can’t sleep, can’t be distracted until they find and achieve their definition of success.
So which one are you?
